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Each week now for a few months I have been sharing about a topic surrounding autism. Both of my nephews are autistic so this topic is near and dear to my heart.
Last week I tackled the vaccine debate. I appreciate that this is a controversial topic and I thank those of you who contributed to the discussion in the comments. This week, as promised, I am going to share some recommendations for approaching the decisions about vaccines that you face as parents. Before I do that though, one of my blog readers sent me a link today to an article about a brand new study that came out just last week that shows that vaccines cause brain changes that are consistent with those found in autism. Click here to read the article. I'm so thankful that research is being done and am hopeful that we will soon have more answers to this baffling disorder that has reached epidemic proportions.
The content I am going to be sharing today comes from reliable sources found on the Autism Research Institute website as well as Dr. Sears' website. Dr. Sears is a leading authority on alternative vaccine schedules. Here are some things to consider when facing vaccines:
-If your child is premature, has recurrent ear infections or if you as parents have a history of autoimmune disorders or allergies, these are indications that your child may not respond well to vaccines. Each child is unique and some are born with weaker immune systems. The current vaccine schedule is a one-size-fits-all approach that assumes that all children are born with strong immune systems. This just isn't the case.
-Make sure your child is not or has not been ill recently or is not coming down with something at the time a vaccine is administered.
-Do not vaccinate at a time when your child has been on antibiotics or if they have recently come off antibiotics.
-Spread out the vaccines. Make numerous appointments so that only one vaccine per appointment is given to your child.
-Don't give the hepatitis B vaccine to newborns. Delay it until 2 months old or bypass it altogether. Today there are more reports of adverse reactions from the vaccine than there are reported cases of the disease in children. The acknowledged toxic dose of aluminum for babies is 20 micrograms and the amount found in the hepatitis B vaccine is 250 micrograms!!
-Prime your child's immune system with immune protective nutrients prior to vaccinating. Give 250mg of vitamin C, 2 or 3 echinacea drops and 1/2 tsp cod liver oil for a few days before and after the vaccine.
-Consider checking "titers" (blood immunity levels) for various shots before doing boosters. Some kids don't need some of the booster shots at age 5 because their original infant series may still be working fine. While this is a costly and time-consuming approach, some parents prefer it instead of automatically getting all the boosters.
-Limit large combination shots like the MMR. Ask your doctor to split up the shots into separate components to decrease the chance of a reaction.
-Consider delaying vaccinations until 4 or 5 years of age when your child's brain is more fully developed.
-If you choose not to vaccinate your child at all, know that despite what you might feel or hear, you are not alone. A growing number of parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. Of the ones that I know personally, their children are nearly full grown and rarely even succumb to the common cold. They are extremely healthy. And know that no school can turn your child away as a result of your decision. Even though they may say that certain vaccines are "required" they can not force you to vaccinate nor can they turn you away.
Next week I'll share about how to best approach your pediatrician with your concerns about vaccines as well as a list of "vaccine-friendly" pediatricians who will be open to alternative schedules. |
This last weekend I took a quick flight out to San Diego to meet up with my friends Kindra and Michael and shoot some family portraits for Michael's family. I photographed Kindra and Michael's wedding just over a year ago and since then they have become dear friends. It was SO refreshing to escape the Arizona heat and spend a day on Coronado Island. I decided it is my dream place to live. Now if I could just come up with 2 million dollars for a house there, I'd be set.
The day looked like this: |
It felt like total bliss, but it's not the best lighting for getting blue skies. Oh well! We still had fun and worked with the light!
We started out at Michael's parents' house. I couldn't resist getting a few shots with their super-cute casa: |
| The whole fam -- Kindra, Nancy, Michael, George and Michael's sister Kelly: |
| What a fun family to shoot: |
| The girls were rocking some colored heels so we had to show them off: |
| We headed over to the beach so we could get some shots for Nancy in front of the Del: |
| And the cuteness just keeps coming: |
| Finally we rounded the shoot out by heading down to the yacht club. I had to get a couple of Kindra and Michael. I guess since they're super-cool and have been photographed by me endlessly, they knew how to work it: |
| Michael needed some photos with this random owl. I'm thinking Facebook profile pic: |
| And we made sure to include George and Nancy's "baby" in the shoot: |
| SO fun! Thanks for a great shoot guys! |
I'm so excited -- Josh and Vanessa's beautiful green and purple Spring wedding is featured today on the Style Me Pretty blog!
Josh and Vanessa were married in March at Villa Siena and their day included the most amazing personal touches and details: |
Thank you to all of you who participated in my blog reader survey! I had so much fun reading through the results -- I can't believe I didn't do this sooner! It is so helpful to know who you are. Sometimes writing a blog can be an overwhelming and lonely endeavor. I know when I first started, I wondered who would even care what I had to say. And I still wonder why you guys care sometimes. But getting your feedback has been so humbling and encouraging. Thank you again for taking the time to share with me!!
As promised, I am going to reveal the results of the survey to you. Since there is a lot of info, I'm going to break the results up into two posts. So stay tuned for the second half later this week!
For those of you who are wondering, I used Google Docs for the survey and to tally the results. The nerdy-minored-in-math-in-college side of me had a blast with the charts and graphs! Aren't they pretty? :)
A total of 774 people completed the survey. As I suspected, the majority of you are women: |
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| Mostly in your 20s and 30s: |
| I have a lot of married readers: |
| To find out where you live, I tried to be clever and divide up the United States into three areas. This is the map I had in my brain which doesn't really exist in any other realm: |
| I probably could have done a better job with the multiple choice on this one -- I guess geography isn't my strong suit -- but here are the results nonetheless: |
Those who fell in the "other" category are mostly from Australia and Asia with a few from Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Those of you who thought Texas should have its own category -- sorry to disappoint. I put you in the "middle state" category :). But you get extra points for having the most state pride :).
Most of you are photographers or photo hobbyists -- shocker! |
I guess I need to figure out ways to keep my non-photographer readers happy so they'll stick around more. Good to know.
Only 19 wedding vendors filled out the survey and they range in type with most being planners: |
| I was interested to find out how long those of you who are photographers have been in business. I figured most of you would be newbies because of the tips I share, but was excited to find out there are some more experienced photographers out there as well. I've only been in business for 7 years myself, but I'm trying to bring more depth to the content of my posts to keep those of you who are more experienced in the conversation as well. |
| The next question was open-ended because I wanted to hear any of your stories about how you originally found my blog. I speak on blogging quite a bit and many newer bloggers want to know how to get people they don't know reading their blog. The web is a crazy place and most of the time you don't know how people find you. But the answers to this question shed some light on how those connections might work. Many of you couldn't remember how you first came across my blog, but for those of you who could, these were the results: |
A big thanks to Jamie Delaine, David Jay, Gail Werner, Amanda Pair and Promise Tangeman for linking to me on your blogs! You were all mentioned numerous times by my readers as their source for finding my blog.
It was interesting to learn how long you've been reading my blog. Thanks for sticking around! |
| Fully half of you never comment! No wonder many newer bloggers struggle with getting any comments at all. If my stats reflect the norm, only 5% of readers comment regularly! |
This survey was a great way to hear from those of you who don't feel comfortable sharing your thoughts regularly in the comments. I'm glad to know a little about you and hope that you will feel comfortable commenting in the future! I want my blog to be more interactive and a place for open discussion. So please share!
Later this week I'll post the rest of the results including what your favorite thing about my blog is and any changes you'd like to see made. Stay tuned! |
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I haven't done a Behind the Image post in ages and I hear that you guys like them. SO. Here's another edition.
The image I've chosen to share about today was shot at Jade & Amy's wedding in St. George, Utah in June of this year. It's a portrait shot in full sun. My favorite type of lighting is backlighting where the background is full shade. But sometimes, like when you're in the middle of the desert, there is no shade to speak of. So this is a great trick for getting beautiful close-up portraits in full sun.
In Camera:
This image was shot in RAW with my Canon 5D Mark II, on manual, with a Canon 50mm 1.2 lens, at f1.2, 1/4000 of a second & ISO 100. This trick only really works if the sun is somewhat low in the sky. That's because you have to block it partially with the subjects' heads. I usually squat down a bit so that their bodies are fully blocking the sun. I lock focus and then move a bit (I probably look weird moving my upper body randomly from side to side) to get a variety of shots with the sun partially blocked by the subjects' heads. If you don't block the sun adequately, you'll get too much flare in your lens. But it's fun to have a little peeking through, like in this shot where the sun is coming through the veil giving it a soft, etherial feel. Another key to this shot is to overexpose slightly. If you properly expose according to your in camera meter, your subject will be drastically underexposed. As you can see in this shot, the subjects are the darkest part of the image. So I generally overexpose by 2/3 of a stop or so. I do the same thing when shooting in my favorite lighting situation -- backlighting with the background in full shade. In that instance, I don't care if the hair light isn't properly exposed, I want the faces exposed correctly.
This is the image straight out of the camera: |
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As you can see, the subjects are still slightly underexposed. In this instance, I'm ok with that because I need some detail in the veil. Because I don't want to lose any more detail in the veil, I'm going to convert this image to a .jpg and just do some selective dodging to lighten only the bride and groom's faces rather than brightening up the image as a whole.
So I basically don't make any adjustments in camera RAW. Here's the shot right before processing it to a .jpg: |
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| After converting it to a .jpg I used the clone tool to get rid of the distracting hair over the bride & groom's faces. I don't always do this, I just knew this was one of my favorite photos, so I wanted to make it perfect. I then used Kevin Kubota's digital fill flash tool at around 18% opacity to selectively lighten Amy & Jade's faces. I love this tool. It's a lot like the dodge tool in Photoshop but much more natural looking. Then I ran a Kevin Kubota action -- X-Process Combo -- customized to around 18%. I use this customized action on all of my color images. This is the final result: |
| Let me know if you have any questions or if there are any other images you'd like to know more about! |
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