Photography

[ozzie]

HAHA! GREAT group of pix Lenn!
As far as your well shot goes......you never know. I have heard too many stories of folks seeing / feeling a presence in certain situations. I've never experienced it myself, but people I know and trust swear they were visited and I'm not one to doubt.

[LennG]

Lou

Don't want to change the theme of this thread, but my wife is a true believer. Myself, not so much, but we have lived in our house for about 25 years and we both swear it is haunted. We both hear noises in the attic when we are in our bedroom, like some one walking in the room above us. My wife has thought she saw someone standing in front of our fireplace one day when she came downstairs. We find cabinets open when no one will admit to opening them and we have a tension rod shower curtain holder in our bathroom. This bar has been up for God knows how long, then one day I go in the bathroom and it is down. I put it back up and 2 days later it is down gain, same thing happens for about 2 weeks and after that it has stayed up for another 5 years then the same thing happened again. Call it anything you want, but we truly believe our house is haunted. No one has ever bothered us, so we just ignore it and live with it.

[ozzie]

Very interesting, Lenn. Like I said, I am not one to doubt.

[LennG]

From what I hear the Fall colors are already happening in many of the New England states. We are scheduled to do a trip to New Hampshire in a couple of weeks and I fear we will have missed this event. It is so hit and miss, but because we have been so dry, the colors came early.

So I have a few more Autum pixs from previous trips

Driving on the Kanc (Kancamagus Highway) in the White Mountains of New Hampshire





The Golden colors of Autumn






Driving along back roads and finding these cute Fall decorations






In the Berkshire Mountains of Mass






I have put up many pixs of flowers from open of our favorite places, the bridge of Flowers in Shelbournes Mass. But he Bridge is also alive and well in the Fall with another show of Autumn colors






And what would Autumn be without all those gourds?

[LennG]

 I was going thru some of my 'older' pix and I found a group that might interest some.
We did a cruise to Alaska from Seattle. We went a week early and used that week to tour around the Pacific Northwest, an area where we had never been before. If memory holds, I think Ozzie was there also. It is truly like another world, especially for those from the Eastern part of the Country.
We went from Seattle, up thru the Cascades then down and around thru the Columbia River Gorge and back to Seattle. Truly one of our favorite road trips.

Some pics along the way

Mt Rainier National Park





In our travels, we drove up Mt St Helens. Myself, I don't mind driving up and down mountains, but this particular road was extremely narrow and whenever I could, we tried to drive in the middle of the road. Just scary. Where we were, I was shooting almost right into the sun, but, if you remember when this volcano erupted, about half the face of it blew up and off. You can see the crater better in real life. So much destruction. While riding up, all the trees that were uprooted, all still lay, like thousands of matchsticks, along the road.








Driving along, there was a spot where I got a great shot of Mt Hood in Oregon





We tried to do a hike up Mt Ranier, but the trail was a bit too steep for us. We got a bit of the way there, but after that, we decided to drive around it instead.





Wherever you looked, just marvelous scenery





I'm pretty sure I already put up a pix of one of the most famous waterfalls in the USA, Multnomah Falls, here is another shot. We wanted to get to the bridge, but we were on our way back to Seattle to catch our cruise, and time didn't let us. A good reason to go back. This is truly a remarkable place.

[ozzie]

I thought I was all caught up on this thread, but I somehow missed your latest offerings, Lenn. Once again, just beautiful!
Yes, I have a sister in law used to live in Oregon, but now she's in Washington. Her Oregon house had a view of Mt. Hood. The scenery in the Pacific NW is just stunning!

[philo43]

I thought I was all caught up on this thread, but I somehow missed your latest offerings, Lenn. Once again, just beautiful!
Yes, I have a sister in law used to live in Oregon, but now she's in Washington. Her Oregon house had a view of Mt. Hood. The scenery in the Pacific NW is just stunning!

You are correct about the Pacific NW and the stunning views.  I was stationed in Ft Lewis (Tacoma) for about 2 years.  Unfortunately many of the views of Puget Sound are limited unless you take a boat into the Sound.  Alot of the great views are from the military reservation. 

I learned to repel in the Garden of the Gods (Colorado Springs - next to AF Academy), but took it to the next level repelling down the 100' cliffs on Ft Lewis to the Puget Sound. None of this was military related.

This was very beneficial to me.  A few years later I was a Drill Sergeant at FT Jackson SC and the Trainees had to be taught to repel off off Victory Tower (40 feet).  There were a bunch of rope bridges etc, they had to navigate before going up the tower.  2 side were open and one with a wall, they repelled down.  A fellow DS of mine and me would go straight to the tower to get everything set up.  We then laid down on top of the platform (no one could see us), anchored in waiting for the company to arrive.  Once they assembled around the tower and the explanation of what the training was going to be. Dan and I would jump up and Australian repel (face first) over the free side they were assembled on.  One day Dan braked a second late and got the wind knocked out of him.  We usually stopped our free fall 2 - 3 feet above the ground.

I traveled the entire area extensively on our time off, just beautiful.  Even western WA (Yakima) is beautiful - high desert country.  Different story.

[LennG]

We are finally going out on a road trip to our favorite place, the White Mountains of NH. From what I have read, seems we already missed peak foliage, so we will have to settle for scraps, but I find good shots everywhere, you just have to know where to look.   

I'll post more Fall shots as I go, but I just wanted to continue on our Alaska adventure that  we went on after our time in the Pacific Northwest.
We have had the great fortune to have visited Alaska 3 times now, all on cruises. The pixs I am going to put up are from our second trip, and, as I said, right after we toured the Northwest.

If anyone does do a cruise to Alaska try to do one that cruises to Glacial Bay National Park. Every cruise does have a stop at a glacier, but Glacial Bay is simply spectacular. At one time only a few crusie lines were able to go there, now I'm not sure, but they only allow 2 or 3 ships in at a time. Again, truly just a spectacular place










This is Mendenhall Glacier, right in the city of Juneau





One of the ports we stopped at Ketchikan, Alaska, there was a small animal shelter where they helped animals that were injured. They had several eagles there which were more than happy to pose for me








And Mr Owl





And our last port, was Victoria, British Columbia. We stopped there just before dark and stayed until late, but this is their like Parliment building, lit up at twilight





More when we get back.

[ozzie]

Wonderful, Lenn.
Have a great trip. I look forward to see what gems you will post from your travels!

[Shoelessjoe]

Gentlemen, I haven't posted in a while to to this thread as I have been busy working in lightroom and Photoshop.  So here goes some of that  work.

This image of a lighthouse with the sun directly behind it bother me.  I knew that I wanted to remove the windmill and some of the artifacts next to the Lighthouse.  So I used it as an example in a workshop that I attend once a month and opened it up for ideas about how to improve it. One of the suggestions was to make it vertical or portrait which I did and I think it looks much better in the second photo below.  Notice that the windmill and the garbage on the island is now gone.


vertical orientation and cleaned up photo.


These photos were were taken at my nephews 4th birthday party on a pirate ship.  I had two phots were one of the boys looked good and the another photo where the other boy look good.  I'm sure we have all come across this situation.  I took both phots and opened them as layers in Photoshop, masked out all but one of the people in the picture and came up with a decent picture of both kids.  Because you and the subjects will move between photos I had to align both photo before I did this.  This is not done as I'm going to replace the sky with a new Adobe tool for sky replacement that is coming out in the next few weeks. When I do it I will post the new photo.

The kid on the left looks good.


The one on the right looks good.


Replacement image.


There are some things wrong with the replacement.  See if you can identify it.

[T200]

There are some things wrong with the replacement.  See if you can identify it.

The kid on the right:

1) collar is too squared and doesn't match either of the original shots
2) some kind of weird shadow between his eye patch and his dad's hat
3) stripes on his shirt below his neckline don't match up


Great job on the lighthouse 

[Shoelessjoe]

I posted the wrong finished picture.  The final is the one below where I whitened the adults teeth and removed a red mark on the fathers face.

[Shoelessjoe]

The kid on the right:

1) collar is too squared and doesn't match either of the original shots
2) some kind of weird shadow between his eye patch and his dad's hat
3) stripes on his shirt below his neckline don't match up


Great job on the lighthouse 

Tim you got some of it.  I fixed the weird shadow between his eye patch and his dad's hat it in the new post.  That was bleeding from the bottom layer.  Take a look at the father's hat by the kid. there is a line which is the border between what I cut the two together.  The shirt on the kid is what I was talking about and you got it.

[ozzie]

Great shot of the lighthouse, Joe.
I actually didn't think there was a problem with the first (horizontal) shot, but after seeing the vertical shot all cleaned up, I stand corrected. Nicely done.

[Shoelessjoe]

Great shot of the lighthouse, Joe.
I actually didn't think there was a problem with the first (horizontal) shot, but after seeing the vertical shot all cleaned up, I stand corrected. Nicely done.

Ozzie, thanks.  I more then 9 times out of 10 shoot landscapes as landscape orientation and when one of the people on the zoom call stated that we should make it portrait.  The instructor cropped it like I have it in the second photo and we all liked it better.  In the first there is to much wasted space to the left and once we changed it the lighthouse became more prominent which is what the photo is about.  I learned a lot from that session.