Pine Warbler

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Took this picture of a beautiful Pine Warbler out my  kitchen window.  Tried to take some Christmas light pics from the car window and none of them were worth sharing:-(

I've been really sick with a fever and runny nose.  Ugh.  Trying to get well before Christmas while still doing all that needs done for Christmas.  Hasn't been easy.

Had a real treat today.  Donnie installed a new 39" LED HDTV in our family room entertainment center for Christmas.  He did a great job implementing a customized mount with a swing arm.  Lots of research and planning allowed us to keep the original entertainment center which was designed for an old style TV.  At any point, I feel really blessed by all his efforts.  What a difference!  That 20 year old Sony Trinitron RIP.

Brrr...

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It's feeling a bit more like Christmas out there today!

Johnny Domo

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A quick iPhone 5 shot of Johnny wearing his Christmas Domo shirt.

Lights to Music

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Another house in our area that does light to music.  It's a bit of a struggle to expose the lights correctly because there are a lot of lollipop shaped real street lights that flash on and off and that are very bright.  Yet, I like the challenge.  It's also hard to get all the lights on when they are all going on and off all the time.  In the original shot 258 I didn't have the roof on.  Thankfully shot 259 did.  Yet shot 258 was composed better overall.  I pulled the  roof out of 259 and applied it to 258.  Otherwise just a basic crop:-)

Video

A Frosty Season's Greetings

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I like the original shot, but sometimes I get tired off all my Christmas light shots being on a dark background. I used Picasa with a very strong but then faded pencil sketch to transform this shot to look like it had snowed.  I then used the Boost filter to make it more colorful.  I had an error in Picasa where the boost didn't really save to disk correctly (multiple times) yet looked great on my screen.  I ended up taking a screen shot and then using Elements and Perfect Resize from OnOne to make the shot 16X20 300dpi.  I also toned down Santa's one bright leg and fussed iwth the tree branches in front of the house columns a bit. Text and Museum Matte frame added in Picasa too.

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Lake Myra TakeTwo

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Another shot from Lake Myra.  I like the first one better, but this angle is also pretty cool I think.

Here's the original.

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Lake Myra

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We went to Wendell, NC last night to see the Lake Myra Christmas light show.  They moved the show this year out of the front yard of two houses on a busy road to a vacant lot downtown.  It did seem safer.  It was quite crowded and finding just the right spot to set up with my tripod was tricky.  Donnie hung out with the boys and let me maneuver the display as I wanted.  That was really nice.  It's not just standing there with the boys it's wrestling the boys:-)  Thank you, Donnie.

This was our third year going.  Other galleries are here.  You can also search on my SmugMug homepage on Lake Myra to see cards from prior years.

The boys got to visit with Santa.

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