Simpler sometimes

OK - here's another view of the tulip taken two days later - sun is different and provides the glow to the flower that is hard to not be surprised at!

Sometimes things are really simple - the beauty just stares back at you until you have to take it's picture.  Here I was, sitting on the bench on the front porch with my two dogs Murphy and Fenway enjoying a glass of wine and this scene just kept talking to me.  I finally wised up and got the camera.  Jeez I am dense sometimes!

Fenway

It's pretty hard not to love this guy!  He's our neighbor's dog, named after the Boston Red Sox stadium.  He is soft and cuddly and loving, and he digs holes in our garden, chews up Murphy's dog collar and comes in the house and eats the cat food!  Like most of those beings in our lives, part time fun and part time pain! 
He loves being over here and I love having him.  Murph is normally pretty good with him; occasionally plays rough and makes him cry out.  Often when Murph and I go for a walk at night, Fenway will show up half-way down the street to go with us.

Watching!

Our daughter's border collie, Brodie, spends time with Murphy regularly.  When he comes over and his Mom and Dad are not here, as tonight, he spends most of his time sitting at the door watching us.  He's a border collie, right?  So next to herding, his work is watching?!

This was shot in the evening, through the glass door, at an ISO of 2500.  I applied some noise reduction in Lightroom, but really like the variety of reflections and shapes the glass provides, as well as the graininess of the noise.

Wonder and Joy!

What kids can teach us!  Remember when you did this?

Playtime

Fenway and Murphy have become best buds again, playing together almost every day in the front yards (ours and the various neighbors).  Here's a picture of what their play looks like!!  Watch out for your fingers!

Experimenting

Murph and I went up to the refuge today, the first time in about a month.  Got some neat photo's of the refuge inhabitants - click on the link on the left of the page to see them (Postings from the Refuge).
A couple of the pictures I chose to play with, as they had lines or forms that I liked.  The black and white is a group of cormorants and I really liked both the line that they and the land formed as well as the head positions of the birds.  Since color really didn't add anything to it, I converted it to B&W and then worked with various attributes both in Lightroom and ACR to bring it to where I wanted it.  There were some lines of light coming down so I accented them a bit.  Kinda looks "old-timey" in a way.

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The other one is a picture of clouds above the mountains.  It has wispiness, light and shadows, and a playfulness about it that I really liked.  A lot of different colors would probably work with the forms, I just happened to like these.

Making it look like i remember it

As I become more experienced in photography, I want my photos to look like my mind remembers them at the time of the shot.  This is incredibly subjective, and, as I age, my rememberance is suspect :-).  But, nonetheless, I try!

Here's a before and after of flowers down by Diana's garden shed.  To my eye, the colors are so much more vivid than the initial camera capture shows.  So I worked to find the 'sweet spot' of hue, saturation, exposure, white balance, etc.  All of the work was done in Lightroom 2.6 and is really a trial and error process.  While I know what many of the sliders will probably do, in this case, trying the recovery slider (usually used to recover highlights that are blown out) resulted in a warmer background and one that I immediately liked.
I think we are all in competition with ourselves - expressing ourselves however that may be.

Moments of Beauty

I named my business Moments of Beauty because I wanted to capture those moments that we walk by in life and forget to stop and experience.  Tonight I was dumping dog poop in the garbage can, looked down and saw this picture.  The sun and the light just called to me.  I ran and got the camera and here we are!
Enjoy!

Kids of Kensington

Spring is here and the kids are out.  I've begun capturing images of them and others in preparation for another end of year book, The Kids of Kensington Ave, part 2!

Here's a few from the last couple of days.  Murphy is such a part of the fabric - the kids include him as one of them - and so have I.
BTW - the boys don't wear shoes in the winter either!!

Teddy

When Carmen was here last week, she played with Teddy Bear.  He was on the downstairs bed in the guest bedroom, but she brought him upstairs and left him in our purple chair when she went home. 

Now Teddy is wondering when Carmen will return to take him back to his own bedroom.  He's sent her an e-mail with his picture so we will see what she says.

Carmen is growing!

Carmen visited us yesterday, along with her Mom and Dad.  She now calls Murphy by his name, Diana is Anna and I am Erry (or something along those lines!).  She slept for a long time in the car, while Murph and I worked in the front yard.

After getting up, we did her usual activity in the back yard - picking up small stones and throwing them in the pond!  She occupies herself with that for quite a while, then back inside for some food.  I have to clean the pond out anyway so not a big deal.

It was a fun time with her, listening to her growing vocabulary and watching her interests in different things.  She plays well by herself, and when she wants you, she comes over and gets you by the hand.
Impossible to resist those eyes!

Signs of spring!

For each of us, the signs of spring are very personal.  Somethings trigger a very strong response based on our experiences in our youth.  Others elicit a "WOW" response just based on the beauty of what we are looking at.

Here's some scenes taken today - we just had a wonderful snowstorm (25+ inches in the mountains) and the sun was setting and the dark cloud bank coming in to obscure the sun.  Murphy - as usual - leads the charge by just being out in the space!







Buds are filling to the bursting point.  Aspen are doing their thing with the furry things, that then capture the snow.  Flowers and roses are expanding and rising to the warmth and joy of the sun!

Carmen's Birthday (number 2)

Carmen had her two year birthday party today, and we got to go.  Her folks did it at the Discovery center in Gateway shopping mall, which is a place for kids of all ages (63 also!!).

She had some wonderful friends there and I got a few pictures - here's some of the best.  The beauty and innocence in a young child's face is truly astounding to experience.

Dog Days!

Murphy has been spending a lot of time with Fenway, the golden retriever down the street.  For a while, Murph either wouldn't play with Fenway or he would play very rough.  Fenway is a sub-beta dog, so he won't stand up to Murph at all.

But lately, for whatever reason, Murph has modified his play with Fenway to be gentler and they spend hours playing in the front yard(s)!  Here's a couple of shots that I got - remember, this is gentle play :-)

To the victor goes the spoils!!!

The best camera

The best camera is the one that you have with you at the time you need to take a picture!!   In this case, it was my iPhone!

My girlfriend and I celebrated 32 years of marriage tonight, at the New Yorker, where we began the journey 32 years ago.  Wonderful to be there, lots of memories.  Tom Sieg, one of the owners who always sat at the end of the bar and welcomed everyone, left us about 3 years ago.  We talked to him everytime we came in.  They leave an empty chair at the end of the bar - we all believe that Tom sits there and still greets us.

Here's an iPhone pic of the evening...