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Dream Home

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Life presented a unexpected challenge yesterday. Short story is that my van (2006 Odyssey) needed a new positive battery cable put on. The clamp and nut and housing were so acid eroded that it was affecting the battery from starting the car. This whole thing had me running around yesterday afternoon to several car repair places instead of doing all the things I wanted to do including playing with the kids and taking pics:-( Thank goodness Donnie was able to help me drop my car off and then drive me and the kids home.

Here's a shot I took this past Saturday in Scotland Neck. I love old houses, and every time I go to Scotland Neck now, I have to drive by this one and take a picture. It's just off the main road through town. This is a 3 shot HDR in late day very warm light.

My grandmother taught me to appreciate Victorian Era houses and antiques. Not for sure this classifies as that, but you get the idea. Apparently it is owned but not occupied. I thought it looked a bit lonely. It should have been all decked out for Christmas and had a grand party taking place inside.

During the whole battery fiasco, Donnie took me on a road coming out of Fuquay that I don't normally go on. I saw lots of interesting photo ops and hope to go back soon when I have time to take some pics!  Today?

Blue Teardrops

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I didn't take any pics yesterday that I wanted to share today as my daily. We were at Ritter Park in Cary for a few minutes, and I fired off a few pics of the boys having fun, but it was very windy at the park and despite being 54 degrees, and we didn't stay as long as we would have otherwise. Mom was cold!

Ritter Park is near the boys' old stomping grounds across the street from where they went to preschool, so they always enjoy a trip, back in time, there.

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At any point, today's daily is a chandelier shot taken at Home Depot this past weekend.  Here's the original:

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I knew I liked it right away but was bothered with the setting for the pretty round beads.  I really liked the reflection of the other strands of beads reflected in the closest strand.  So last night I started playing around with the shot some.  I ended up using a Spotlight Lighting Effect to get the outer edges dark.  And then I played around with some bokeh style textures (not in the daily) and then an action from The CoffeeShop Blog called CoffeeShop Denim.  If you've ever wanted to remove all the color from a shot except just the blues in the shot, this action is for you.  I'm using PSE7 btw, but this action works on PhotoShop too.  As with all these actions, you can do the steps yourself, but the action is a nifty way to combine several steps into one saving time and giving you a way to achieve these results without fully understanding all the individual steps.  Granted, installing the first action into your PSE or PhotoShop might cause you to have to concentrate a bit, it's not trivial, but once you have it figured out on your machine, each one after the first is pretty simple. Rita on The CoffeeShop Blog has some great instructions, and you can ping me if you're stuck (on a Windows box:-).

Here's a golden version that more maintains the original colors:

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I'm open to the opinion that the gold one is prettier, I just thought the blue one was more unique and that the cold blue fit today's winter weather with snow and ice now settling into much of the country.  I like my daily pictures to be on theme with the calendar:-)

Fence and Texture

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I have a real interest in taking my post processing skills to what I consider the next level. I've seen several photos recently that have a texture applied to them, and I think the texture really adds to the piece of work transforming a photo to a piece of art. Of course I don't think all photos need a texture, and finding the right texture for a photo could be a bit challenging, but it's something I'd like to play around with more.

So, I was looking at a tutorial on The CoffeeShop Blog which led me to a texture in the Chaos texture set on the Shadowhouse Creations blog. I ended up applying the light colored Chaos texture to my fence shot as an Overlay. I used Color Variations to make it a little darker and warmer too. I think the main thing here is that there is no right way and no one way it's just try a texture as various kinds of layers and with various color adjustments and go from there and see if you end up liking any of the results. This is not a science but more a journey.

One thing I learned that I really took away in my travels last night was that ctrl u takes me quickly to the screen to desaturate a texture. Sometimes we want the texture but not the color. I also learned ctrl o will bring a moved/transformed layer into complete view. That might not make sense, but I've had lots of grief resizing dragged layers before, and ctrl o makes it much easier to fix. Yippee! If you saw the way I do some things you'd wonder how I ever manage to post process any images. I could use to add a few short cuts to my repertoire.

Here's the original fence:

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I also worked on this barn shot yesterday:

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I shot through the branches on purpose thinking they framed the barn very nicely but back at home found the branches to be a bit of a distraction.  What do you think?

I so often include food shots in with my daily pics, and yesterday was no exception.  I added a can of corn, fresh asparagus, onion, and browned sausage to this potato soup mix, and it was yummy.  I would recommend the mix and then adding in items of your choice.  There are suggestions on the back.

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Sophia

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I'm pretty torn up about what to post today. Some days are just like that. I do many different things and have photos from each activity, and it's hard to decide which one tells the best story or is the best shot or is the one I just feel like sharing.

One of the things we did yesterday was go to Chick-fil-A for family night. The boys got to make a snowflake craft which I thought was extra nice due to the thick foam snowflake.

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The cow was there last night...always a real treat especially for Johnny who got a personal escort out to the van when we were leaving:

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After Chick-fil-A, I took the boys for their first big boy haircuts.  The nice lady, Glinda, at Veasey's who cut my hair last week cut their hair last night.  Both boys have much shorter hair now...gulp.  Both seem pleased.  More work on mom with gel and styling, though.  If there is gonna be a part to the side, we're gonna have to work on it:-)  Here's a cute shot of Johnny (I need to retake a cute shot of Joey):

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I look at that shot of Johnny after the haircut, and I see my father and his brothers through and through.  Wow!  Dad in high school:

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Johnny insisted that Ms. Glinda let him sit under the fancy hair dryer.  He had her wrapped around his little finger with his cuteness, so she was glad to oblige, and then Joey didn't want to be left out.  Pretty soon I was looking at this shot!  Oh my!

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I spent some time filtering and doing and SCurve adjust on this mirror dimensions shot which I really like.

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While we're on the subject of hair, I am going to share a very personal shot with you of what's happening with mine.  Really, I'm OK.  I wanted to share this as my daily, but I don't want to evoke too strong emotion with it and hurt anyone with it.  I have a few minutes here or there where I cry on Donnie's shoulder about it, and then I go on about my life.  I can't totally forget about it, but I don't let it spoil the good things in my life either.  As I washed my hair last night and it came out in my hand, I went to get my camera.  I do tend to take pics of everything, and I think when it's grown back in I can look back on this shot and how it made me stronger.  Of course the bathroom steam fogged up my lens, and the first shot was murky, but it was that first shot that ended up being the one I liked after bringing the details back out.

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I'll leave you with a POTD of an adorable little girl, Sophia,  that was at the park where the boys and I went to play yesterday afternoon.  Turns out she lives 4 houses up the street from me.  I made friends with her mom, and Johnny 'watched' the little girl.  They were so cute playing peek-a-boo and him being a 'big' brother to her.  He was all giggles.  She was trying to figure him out.

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And, yes, that adorable red 'stuff' on her face is ketchup from lunch.  When you're that cute you can wear your ketchup proudly!  I wouldn't have had her face for the photographs any other way.  I sure hope her mom likes the shots and will let me capture her cuteness again:-)

Dreaming...

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My POTD was taken first thing yesterday morning.  I noticed Johnny sleeping so peacefully on the couch with some wonderful natural light spilling in the window and decided it was worth getting out the tripod and taking his picture before he woke up.  I wish a bit more of his nose and some of his mouth was showing, but I resisted the temptation to start altering the scene.  I ended up liking the flash shot better than the very low light 10 second exposure shot.  Here's a modified version of the low light shot:

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It was a cloudy and rainy here yesterday, and I was busy running around to various doctor's appointments.  The highlight of my day was a nice roasted chicken dinner with Donnie, Joey, and Johnny.  I took this picture which I love, but everything that could go wrong with a flash apparently did:-(  I tried to fix the color and glare as best as I could.

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New PJs for Joey, and they are as cute as they can be:-)

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Trying to stay positive today.  I noticed last night that my hair is starting to come out.  I had hoped that when they said 2-3 weeks after chemo I'd be on the 3 week side.  Nope.  Sigh...  I know it will grow back...and that it's not really important in the scheme of things.  Maybe I can find something to take pictures of today that is exciting.  That always improves my mood:-)

Birdatude

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As I mentioned yesterday, there are a few more shots from Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park in Scotland Neck, NC that I'd like to share with you.

For my POTD, I've chosen a close-up of a Sandhill Crane.  There are two birds in this habitat, and boy do they have some attitude.  You have to be careful about getting too close to the fence otherwise you are liable to have that long beak coming through one of the holes toward you:-)  I love the eye, but I am not happy about the overexposed area under the eye.  I tried to adjust a bit, and it's better, but I couldn't completely fix. Still, I like the birdatude here.

And, here are a few more:

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Donnie gave Johnny an Erector set for Christmas, and they started building it after dinner last night. I know they worked on it for at least an hour.  I thought it was cute how Johnny sat in Donnie's lap the whole time, and I became interested in how their hands were working together to get the job done.

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That was some OT game last night.  Go Tebow!  Go Denver!

A Bird's Life

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After going to the Kids Workshop at Home Depot for their first Saturday of the month project, a Savings Shed (bank), we headed to Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park in Scotland Neck, NC.

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Google Maps says that the park is 100 miles taking 1 hour and 51 minutes to drive from my house.  That's about right.  To put it in perspective, we're about 130 miles from Cape Hatteras by the time we've driven that far east and north!  When I see the sign for the Aquarium and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, sometimes I just want to keep on going!  One day!

After entering the park and passing through the visitor center, there is a pond of mixed nationality ducks.  The boys love this section because they are allowed to feed the ducks food sold in the gift shop.  At 50 cents a bag, we usually get 4 bags and have plenty to share with our friends in this pond and the other designated areas around the park.  Here are the boys enjoying themselves.  Below is a collage of the ducks that came to visit.

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Now I'm not going to show you every picture I took that I liked.  This might have to be a 2-3 day series:-)  But  needless to say having taken 1026 pics and saved 289 from the garbage bin, there are a few that might be worth sharing.  This place has an endless number of photo ops!

Now I go to the park to enjoy being outside with the kids, taking pics, and to some extent continuing my education and appreciation of birds of all types.  The boy go to see Matilda and play in the beaver blind, treehouse, and playground.  Who is Matilda you ask?  Well, she's a Cape Barren Goose native to Africa.  She has some real personality, and if you're lucky, she might eat out of your hand.

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I tried and tried and tried to get a good picture of the black swan that's in the area with Matilda, but I didn't get exactly what I wanted at least not in the sharpness of the shot.

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You almost can't see the wire...  I just love the colors!

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I became incredibly fascinated with the eye of the Toco Toucan:

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Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a picture of an eye of a constantly moving bird through a wire fence?  :-)

I went through quite an effort to try to get the eyes of the Eurasian Eagle Owl only to discover back at home that the reflection in the eyes was kindof annoying:

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I took pics of the turkeys, and the boys played on the boardwalk:

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I tried and tried to get a shot of one of the turkeys with light in their eyes and the fence shadow NOT on their feathers and I just couldn't do it:-(

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There are those silly boys again...  Donnie pointed out that I put them in their Angry Birds shirts yesterday.  Oops!

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Did I mention that it was 70 in Scotland Neck yesterday and that I saw a blooming daffodil?!?

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At the end of the day, as the boys were playing on the playground and I was contemplating leaving, one of the staff members saw me trying to take pictures through the fence at the front pond.  She proceeded to tell me about a diamond-shaped hole in the fence over on the side where the sun would be at my back.  You move and clip to the side a piece of plexiglass allowing for much better pictures.  Cool!  Here is a collection of shots taken then:

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There were a few photo ops on the way home too. By the time I turned around and came back for the shot, the sun had fallen out of the sky.  I was so disappointed!

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I wish I could be back at that spot at 5:10PM to try again...  This is a barn from a previous daily.

I did get this sortof nice last minutes of sunset color on a pond at a sand pit:

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So which shot did I take yesterday that is the best shot?  Which shot should I share as my daily?  Be darned if I know.  I guess I'd better just throw a dart and pick one at this point:-)  OK...a flamingo shot...who can resist them, right?

If you live anywhere near Scotland Neck, NC or are passing through NC on I95, you really should stop in and enjoy Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park!