Birds.

The weather is here, I wish you were beautiful

Ahhhhhhhhh.....

The weather finally broke. I didn't expect it to be in the middle of August but it was only 76 degrees yesterday! It's only supposed to be in the 80's for the next 5-6 days.

Now I know how Paul feels! LOL

A dogs life

Had fun with this top photo... Even though I have been keeping my camera at -0.7ev for most of my picture taking this picture was blown out, it was quite a bright day and all the detail in the Maggie's fur was lost. But with a little creativity in Photoshop CS4 I was able to get most of the detail back without giving the picture a goofy look.

Maggie, Sunny and Buster... The chase is on! Wouldn't it be nice to have this much energy? It was making me tired just watching them.

Arizona Landscape.

In Pairs!

I'm not sure I have posted these pictures or not. These are just old pictures that I found from my external hard-drive.

Quartz and???

I have no idea about rocks and minerals much but I know how to spot pretty ones... LOL

These rocks are from the same beach walk where I found the sandstone formation and took the picture of the Lighthouse.

Extreme Make-Over

A monstrosity in progress.

A new trailer park popped up overnight for all of the TV people's trailers and campers for some of the crew.

The folks from the TV show Extreme Makeover have been in our little town the last two weeks building a home for a veteran who suffered a brain injury during a road-side bombing. He has PTSD and was in therapy in California for the PTSD before all of this started. The TV show apparently took him out of his therapy so they could send him on "vacation" so the show could film the family together.

I have seen this show a couple of times and all the while thought it was a good thing and was charitable work but seeing these folks up close makes me think otherwise. A lot of folks in our little town are extremely concerned about the house they are building and the things they are doing to the family.

This family, a husband, wife and two kids were living in a 1500 square foot home and the show is building them a new home of 4700 square feet, including a swimming pool. The family was having a hard time paying their $600 a month rent and now they will be living in this monstrosity that will cost them that much just in utilities each month, not to mention the taxes and insurance costs.

The show is setting this family up for failure and it's dispicable. The veteran that has PTSD doesn't like and can't be around large open spaces or a lot of noise without it affecting him so what did they do? They built him a huge house with a "theater room".

Keep in mind the show builds these houses in just one week and they started from scratch on this one. The land was donated, they dug a hole, formed and poured the basement and started building before the concrete ever had a chance to cure. The show has been advertising for volunteers to donate the time to help in construction and some of the people who actually work in construction and did volunteer their time did not go back after a few days just because of the shoddy work that was being done.

Can you tell I'm a little upset? This is at least a $300,000 home if not $400,000 and they are trying to build it in a week for someone who the house itself will drive crazy. The show doesn't appear to have any consideration for the veteran at all.

And if that wasn't enough, our town has a little country club with a golf course and one of the Kansas Senators showed up to take a tour of the club house becuase the show was going to have a dinner this Sunday for some of the volunteers. Once they had their tour they started demanding that the owners paint the walls and get new furniture and and make several other costly changes because the senator was going to be there and it will be shown on TV. The manager of the club was shocked and didn't know what to tell them. I on the other hand, could have thought of plenty of things to tell them and most of the words could be spelled with four letters!

Pultney Point Light Station

Looking to the right from those interesting sandstone formations I posted yesterday you can see Pultney Point Light Station on Malcolm Island. Took this with the Nikon 18-135 then embellished it some in CS4.

SLOW ONE WAY

This is what the sign read as the lead rider approached the summit of Mt.Scott. After the long circular and sometimes extreme grade to reach the top slow would just come natural. These two guys were flying and not even breathing hard! Hats Off to youth and being in shape!

From the archives.

Interesting sandstone blocks

Found this patch of sandstone with this pattern of cracks in it while out hiking the other day. Perhaps it's the old road to Atlantis! LOL

On another note I finally figured out where the "Straighten Horizon" tool is on PS4...

- From the pull down menu select "Filter"

- Select "Distort"

- Select "Lens Correction"

- Now look up in the upper left of the screen, there are several icons there. One is the "Straighten Horizon" tool.

Talk about hiding the silly thing away or what!

Long Exposure!

I thought this might cool us down a little! It's 106 right now, and I just want to book a fight to Kauai for month.

Old Man's Beard

Found a rather gnarled tree growing on the edge of a beach a few miles from here. Not only was it gnarled but it was also the only tree covered with "Old Man's Beard" in the area.

Got curious so went looking on the internet. "Old Man's Beard" is a type of "Lichen" which is a complex partnership between fungi and algae. It has many traditional uses, fabric dye, tender for starting fires, food and nesting material for forest animals to mention a few. Apparently it does not hurt the tree it grows on either as it only grows on the tree and not into it. Lichen only needs moist air and sunlight to grow. And lastly lichen will not grow where the air quality is bad, like the preverbal canary in the coal mine of air quality... Interesting.

Yellowstone Lake

This picture combine with 4 frames, and stitched in CS5. Yellowstone is a big lake, so I could not get the background close to the frame. Therefore, I have to find a little cove so I can get the background clear enough. This location is somewhere North of Grand loop Rd.

Setup the Camera!

The two pictures of me are from my friend camera. I just want to post these pictures for you guys to see the way I setup my shot.

Sun worshipers

Found these wild daisy like beach flowers enjoying the sun.

Reflection!

Have a nice weekend everyone.

Little more HDR

This is the combination of 3 pictures using the HDR feature in CS4. I tried to make this picture as realistic and true to life as I could though I'm still not entirely sold on whether HDR makes for better pictures or not. Perhaps my technique needs fine tuning... Just the same this seems to be the amount of light/dark I was able to see at the time I took the pictures.

Water Falls

To get this shot, I have to set my tripod in the water, and mounted a ND -8 stops filter. M. exposure, f/16, shutter speed 50 sec., -1/3 exp. comp., and preset white balance.

Small Town U.S.A

For this shot I took photos of two different streets, blending the two sides together and then I painted in the bricks and grass to make it look like an old street. Just kidding Parker!! This is an actual photo. LOL

This was taken with the Sigma 10-20mm. As much as I hate to admit it, I should have been using a tripod on this one so I could set the f stop to 16 or 20. Shooting handheld I could only get to f11 and that didn't give me the focus I was looking for in the distant objects. I just didn't want to be out there that long in the heat!

Yellow Chair

I'm sure looking forward to that yellow chair over in the sun! You can have your shade! LOL