13:15 CDT: the color was bugging me, so I read did the image and reduced some the saturation. Much better!

We jokingly refer to my mother as "The Britt" sort of like how Madonna and Cher only have a single name. And like Madonna and Cher, she has a knack for reinvention. She's been a model, a published artist, a toy inventor but always an inspiration. Happy Mother's Day The Britt!

I took this shot last night at her workplace—Alfred's Grand Petit Magasin—at a party intended to promote the store to their good customers.

I took my camera along last night because I thought there would be plenty of opportunities to capture candids of people shopping, eating, dancing to music—and there were—but I forgot to charge up my battery before I left and my camera pooped out shortly after I took this picture. It was only the third shot of the evening.

It was dark. I cranked the camera up to 3200 ISO, flipped on the spot meter and crossed my fingers as I turned on anti-shake. The shot looked decent enough on-camera. First stage processing included processing the RAW image to try and reduce all of the nuclear-hot highlights from overblowing in the backdrop—only some of which was successful as you can see— then applying manual white balancing and finally some noise reduction.

Then into Photoshop for more color re-balancing (which I still am not 100% happy with), a light unsharp mask, and the application of an adjustment layer to Mom to have her pop out a bit more. Not one of the best shots in the world but hey, it's Mother's Day! Definately the artist's fault here for not getting a true enough capture of a true beauty, inside and out!