Photo Manipulation

I've been playing again with photo manipulation. Check out this pic of my grandson, Matthew, and his sister Jaden.

OK. I think I'll go take a nap now. I have been up all night just playing with photos in PhotoShop.

G'night, er g'day, all.

Always Learning Something New

I'm still busy with my camera, but also with my scanner and old photos and enhancing photos. This is a picture I took a few months ago. I was just trying to capture the glimmer of the water in the little creek in the woods--so imagine my surprise and happiness to see what I had captured in those woods. The woods are on the edge of property owned by friends Heather and Jack in Niles, NY. John's shadow played a part in the ability to capture this view. I see many faces in this photo, but the two that really jump out at me are the "panther face" and the man's partial face tucked into the left side of the panther. "I see faces..." hmm, where have I heard that before? LOL

See if you see more faces (monsters have faces too)--and the head of a bird--in the same picture turned upside down.

Working on my photos helps me forget for awhile the cold that is on the other side of the walls of my house. My fingers get a bit cold even inside though because I keep the thermostat set to 62 degrees F. Even though this has been a very unusual and mild winter, I am thoroughly looking forward to the warm sunshine of spring.

Reminiscing with Old Photos

Hi, everyone. I've been having fun scanning old photos--makes you think back to life during the era the photo was taken. I'm not old enough to have been alive at the time all the photos were taken though, LOL. Photos of my ancestors are kind of fun to see. The first picture is of my mother's fraternal grandparents. You can see I didn't take the time to remove the crack in the photo.

The second picture is my oldest (half-) brother. He died in a car accident when he was 27. His son was six months old at the time and my son was a newborn. My son will be 37 this year! The second picture (obviously not really an "old photo") is of my grandson during one of his hare scramble races last year or maybe the year before. He's been racing since he was 5 years old. He will be 11 this summer.

The next photo is, to me, the most perfect Santa picture. Look at those rosy cheeks! How could anyone doubt that this guy is the REAL Santa. He is being hugged by one of my great nephews (David) when he was a little guy.

This photo is my mother, father, oldest brother and oldest sister. It makes me feel ancient that they are all deceased now.

I love this computer age (at least most of the time).

Sharing Christmas Morning

Just thought I'd share a couple of pictures from Christmas morning. This is my granddaughter, Jaden, and my son's dog that Jaden named Clifford. (So far, my son has not been able to rename him.)

Hooray, It's a New Year!

I had another nice weekend with John. I always take my portable toolbox with me because there is a good chance I can use some of them at his house. I love that we can work on projects together. Of course, it is always a learning experience as well! This weekend we laid new linoleum in his second bathroom--operative word being "second". As beginners on a project like this, it took us a good part of three days to complete. John had previously removed the old floor tiles, so we didn't have to deal with that also. We had to fix the water shut-off valve to the toilet first of all because it leaked when we tried to shut off the water. That turned out to be the easiest fix--we replaced the gasket. We had several places to cut around to make the flooring fit. We didn't have a grease pencil, so we used a felt-tip pen on the reverse side (which meant we had to "reverse" everything) so that took a bit of studying, measuring, re-measuring, and re-cutting (because I figured it was better to have to cut out more later, rather than cutting too much). That process paid off. The floor ended up fitting pretty well. Before we could cut out for the toilet area, we had to remove the toilet. So after all that and glueing the linoleum down, we had to rebuild the toilet! It was so old, all the bolts and nuts were rusted and the gaskets were hardened and misshapen. The jury is still out on how well that turned out. When I left today, the water was not leaking from around the tank to toilet gasket, but the water would not shut off in the tank when it got full. John is going to get new guts for the tank now sometime this week. We're beginning to feel like "John" experts now. Who knew a toilet had all those gaskets or that I would ever be part of replacing the "wax seal"? One of our next projects will probably be removing the rust and repainting the heat venting in the bathroom.



On my way home today, I stopped and took another picture of a tree that fascinates me. I've taken pictures of it before, but the sun wasn't shining and they didn't turn out that great. The sun cooperated today. I love the way the shadows show on some of the branches and I also love the way the branches seem to reach out like welcoming arms.

I also got a great shot of the moon this afternoon. I manipulated the shadow lighting so that the texture shows through a little better.

That's all for now, folks....