Beautiful Weekend before Costa Rica trip

This past weekend and the days since have been a boon to my mental health! I fare a lot better when it is warm and sunny! This coming Saturday John and I will be heading to warm and sunny Costa Rica. I will try to update the blog while there, but don't know how successful I'll be.

Here are a few photos out of a whole bunch I took this past Sunday (April 22, 2007). See if you can see at least two faces in the "mantree" picture. Hope you enjoy it and the rest of them. I also recorded the spring peepers that we were surprised to find whooping it up in the late afternoon instead of early evening (it's not much to look at, but the sound is impressive).





I liked this picture because it looks surreal.

I loved this view of the countryside with Skaneateles Lake in the background:

Being a fellow motorcycle rider, I had to capture this biker out enjoying the great riding weather after being stuck on four wheels through the winter season:


I believe these next photos are of a downy woodpecker:

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.

Photos and Paintings

A few weeks ago, I captured some images on my way to John's house in Auburn. One shows a prism in the sky, taken from the parking lot of the Ford garage in Ithaca. I took the sunset pics between Genoa and Scipio Center. It took me at least a half hour longer to get to Auburn because of my frequent stops to take pictures. The sky and the clouds fascinate me.




I spent this past weekend with John and his family, beginning Thanksgiving day. I went to John's house and he and his two sons and I went to John's brother's house in Fairport to have dinner with a houseful of relatives. It was very nice. The following day was bright and sunny, so we took some of John's art collection outdoors to get photos of them because I didn't want to have to use the flash because it washes out parts of the pictures. The only problem with that is the sun sparkled on the paintings and makes them look like there are small white spots on them.

Sunday, we drove around and found some cool scenes to capture. I am still learning about the camera. I have found that some of the ones that look fantastic on the camera screen don't translate as well onto the computer screen and also don't print as well as they look on the camera. I hope to get better with trial and error--in addition to reading. I think the lighting has a lot to do with it. I hope you can see the "two faces in the water" in the pictures posted here. I just wanted to take a picture of the water in the creek; but the lighting and shadows ended up forming a "sleepy-eyed jaguar" and also a man's face to the left and kind of tucked into the jaguar face. I often "see faces" (Oooooooo Oooo Ooooooooooooooooo!) in other images and textures.


This next picture is at 12X optical zoom. For some reason, the pictures I take at extreme zoom look hazy to me. Maybe it is the filters on the camera that cause it. I will try taking the filters off next time. These other pictures were taken around Owasco area. Hope you enjoy looking at them. Maybe tomorrow I will post some more art by John's artist friend "Jak WRobel".