Great Blue Heron

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My daily shot of the Great Blue Heron (GBH) was taken at The Museum of Life and Science in Durham yesterday.  I often see a GBH on the far side of the wetlands area and was thrilled yesterday when he was much closer than usual.  I was able to watch him and take pics for about 15 minutes from two different locations.  I saw him come away with a frog one time and a fish another time.

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I mentioned yesterday that life had thrown me another curve ball, and I think I'm ready to say today that I found out this week that I have breast cancer.  I was at the hospital yesterday having some tests done on and off while the boys were with Don at the museum.  This was Don's first visit to the museum although he's seen many pics from there of course, and he did a great job with the boys.  I really appreciated them all being with me and keeping my spirits up.

We're in the assessment stage of what steps to take to treat the cancer.  I think I'm in for a rough 6 months of treatment but that my chances are good at beating this.  I know without you saying that you are pulling for me.  From time to time I'm sure I'll let you know how I'm doing.

A few other pics from yesterday that warmed my heart...

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White Clematis

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One of summer's final beauties...

Joey had an early birthday celebration with his Aunt Debbie at Tutti Frutti (frozen yogurt) last night.  Fun!

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I really like this fun shot of Joey and Buddy yesterday too:

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Under the Lights

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I haven't had as much time as I'd like this week to concentrate on taking 'real' photos. It's kindof frustrating since the desire and ideas are there but the opportunity seems to escape me.

This was taken last night at the Clayton Community Center basketball court as the boys played soccer. I've found that I can't really get any good soccer shots in that environment and there isn't much else to shoot either, but I was desperate. I thought I'd show you one more in a series of B&W light shots.

It makes me think of being 'under the lights'. What's going on?

I also took a picture of the ceiling of the gym and tonemapped it and tried various tinting and gradient maps on it. This is my favorite:

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Lego Light

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Joey and I went to the Lego Store at Crabtree Valley Mall last night for their first Tuesday of the month Mini-Build. This month...a vampire:-)

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Next month...a turkey!  We had to wait in line for a while, but it was worth it, and they seemed to have a very sufficient number of kits to give away.  I took this shot from line just before we got our turn to build.

Here's the original shot:

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I removed the seam lines in the light fixtures themselves and a few glare marks that were introduced by taking this through the glass storefront. I also cropped to 8X10 and of course did a B&W conversion which for me is a Tint in Picasa and then an adjust of the Brightness and Shadows. I chose to leave in the wires holding the lights up but wonder how it would look if they were also removed.

Boo!

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Today's daily is a work of art created by me and Joey.  It involves a couple of sets of window gel clings, a large and unfortunately heavy textured but clear plate, and some orange tissue paper.  Joey arranged the clings on the plate, and we proceeded to try to take pics.  That wasn't working out quite right...too much of the background light and objects bleeding through, so I dug out first white computer paper and then orange tissue paper to soften the light and hide the background.  Joey REALLY wanted to hold the plate for me, but even with two hands, it was just too heavy to keep it over his head.  I ended up holding it with my left hand while taking pics with the right hand.  Now the original sooc shot was too close to the sides to crop to 8X10, so I created a new blank and orange 8X10 layer in PSE7 and then drug the original shot onto it.  I did get rid of a few black blips on the very outer edge of the original shot.  Then, I added a green frame to the picture layer.  It looked pretty cool, but then I experimented with some other filters on the picture layer and ended up duplicating it and making the duplicate layer solarized with pin light.  That added in the green cloudy effect. What do you think? I produced it in 8X10 and 4X6.

My helper Joey:-)

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Original shot:

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Another shot I did last night with a different gel cling and some very tiny green glass gravel.  The kitty cat and bat are part of a brush set.  Same concept here as described above with the blank layer being new and 8X10 and just dragging over the part of the original image that I wanted to use onto it.  I had to fix the green gravel a lot around the edges.

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Original:

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Oh, and a candle shot to round out this Halloween card series.  I was burnt out by the time I got to this one but cleaned it up pretty good with the clone tool and then Noiseware filter.

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Original:

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We all know I enjoy producing cards from my pictures, and this is just a sample of ones for Halloween this year.

Big Pumpkins

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The big pumpkins are now on display at Porter Farms and Nursery.  When the boys got home from their dad's house yesterday, we went for ice cream and pictures.  Joey was delighted that they had pumpkin flavored ice cream in the freezer case now.  Both boys posed for pictures and enjoyed their ice cream.  We always buy several small pumpkins over the month of October as we go to various farms, produce stands, and stores, but we've never bought a large pumpkin before.  This year we decided to pick one out.  That's going to be something to carve!   Joey even offered to take a pictures of his mom.  Wasn't that sweet?!?  The sun was just killer on our eyes just about no matter which direction we posed.

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The boys are tracked out from their year round school for 3 weeks now.  More fall destinations and orange coming your way in pictures soon:-)

Waffle House

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Just a quick shot I took last night at Waffle House on the drive back from my dad's house. We made a big dent yesterday in boxing things up but much more to do too. I'll be back on my normal routine tomorrow.