Bent but not broken

These are a couple of the birch trees in my yard--trees that should be vertical but are now kind of horizontal. We had a major ice storm here ten years ago, and the weight of the ice caused many of the trees to bend or break. If the trees didn't stand back up right after the ice was gone, they're still like that 10 years later. We were without power for 13 days during that storm. It was the suckiest suck that ever did suck.

We had gorgeous blue skies today. I wanted to try out the graduated neutral density filter I got for Christmas. As you can see, I didn't rotate it correctly when I turned my camera. The darker blue should be on top, not diagonal. This is SOOC except for cloning out a distracting leaf in the upper left corner and running USM. I thought this photo pretty well illustrated what the filter does.

I love my macro lens

I'm on theme only in that I have a horizontal and a vertical shot.

I'm losing my mind

So I went outside looking for something to shoot, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed that my scarf was dangling out of my coat pocket and making a cool vertical line (aha-the theme!) and I liked the color in the white snow, so I decided to take a photo. I uploaded to my computer and it looked like this:Then I started thinking, "Wait a minute, that looks like someone standing in front of me took the picture. That's not how it looked in my viewfinder." So in Photoshop I rotated it until it looked like it did to me through the viewfinder. I had to do a flip image vertical and then a flip image horizontal to get it:
And since then I've been taking pictures of my feet and comparing how they look through my viewfinder to how they look on the LCD screen afterward and making myself crazy. What the heck? Up is down and horizontal is vertical today and this confused me so much I need to go sit in a corner and rock myself now.

Cranberries

Vertical:Horizontal:
Horizontal:
Vertical:
The macros sure show that these cranberries have seen better days, huh? CC welcome!

Just Listen

I walked by my DD's library book sitting on the kitchen counter and realized I wasn't done with words week yet. These words are a good reminder to me, particularly when it comes to DD, DS, and DH.

I'm sure having fun with this texture thing, too. Opinions and CC welcome and appreciated, as always.A dark chocolate action:
With a texture from textureking.com two different ways:

There are no words

No word photo today. I didn't even take photos today, so this is from yesterday. I did finally figure out how to do textures thanks to 2Peas, though, so my first try is below. CC always appreciated; thanks for all your comments!

And to answer a couple of questions: the dorky love song from a couple of days ago is Clint Black's Something That We Do. And yes, Weight Watchers does work, IF you follow the program (that IF is why it's the story of my life).

Moi

My attempt at a self-portrait. How the heck do you guys get good focus? Not that I'm going to try this too often because I hate being in front of the camera. And why when I made it my profile picture/avatar does it look so bad? I resized it. I think I'll change it back to Baxter. He's way cuter anyway. Usually I love CC, but in this case, please be kind. :-)And since it's still word week, a theme picture. Story of my frickin' life. Sigh.

Happy Friday

Is Friday your favorite day of the week?

Words from a love song

Words from one of my favorite dorky love songs. CC definitely appreciated. I've put up the SOOC shot too in case you have suggestions for some other and better way to process this photo. Thanks as always for looking!

My word for today

A note about my last post

You guys can go ahead and rag on me about the Patriots, I can take it. :-) I feel kind of bad that you all were so sympathetic to me about the death of someone I knew. My roommate and I didn't keep in touch after college, so although I'm sad for her and sad that someone I knew died so young and tragically, I have some "distance" from it, if you know what I mean. Not that I don't care, just that I'm not suffering horribly. Am I just babbling and making myself sound like a bad person? Anyway, I do appreciate all your comments!

Words

Words that make many angry, judging by a thread I read on 2Peas, but words that make us very happy around here. I've got to learn to use textures, because I think that would look cool with this photo. The other words on the front page of my newspaper this morning made me very sad: the husband of one of my college roommates was killed hiking Mt. Washington this weekend. :-(

What a difference an ISO makes

You may recall my basketball photo from last week, which looked like this:Next game, I remembered to bump my ISO up. Things are improving.

Glass vase

DH got me this vase for Christmas. A guy in my hometown has a glassblowing studio and we like to go there and watch him make stuff like this. I took this photo a few days after Christmas but played with it in Photoshop more today. I've brightened and color popped it, cloned out the windowpane from the window it's hanging in, whitened the background, and added the frame so it would show against this white background on the blog. I kind of like the overall effect of the PS'd picture but like some things about the original better: the color of the vase is more true in the original, and I kind of like the blue tint of the background. What do you think? As always, CC appreciated.
Original:
Photoshopped:

My big boy

Not a great photo, just a proud mom moment, and a chance to give DS a turn on the blog. My son winning his division in shotput at his track meet this afternoon. Does he look 14?

Whatever

I love this clock that I found in a little tourist shop on the coast. It just makes me smile. I wish I was this laid back. Visitors to my home seem to like the clock too, although I have had more than one person ask me how I know what time it is :-O.
Before:After (straightened, cropped, brightened, cloned out the part of the holder that showed and ran USM):

Before and after

I didn't take any photos today because I had my pupils dilated for an eye exam and was visually impaired most of the day :-) so this is from the other day. I liked the idea of plopping a bright flower in the snow, but this was before our last storm when the snow was all ucky and I didn't have any good snow for the plopping of the flower.
SOOC:So I decided to play with it. Ran an acid wash action, cropped, and rotated:

Baxter again

The skies have cleared and the kids are back to school , so it was just me and Baxter in the snow today. Shot w/ 70-300mm/4.5-5.6 IS lens at SS1/400-F4.5-ISO400. Added the border so it would stand out from the white background here.
SOOC:After (cropped, brightened, slight up contrast, slight boost in saturation, and USM):

Snow day

DD enjoying her day off from school:
And since it's before/after week, the SOOC version. Not a lot of PP, just levels adjusting and USM:

My trusty hikers

I'm editing my post to show my SOOC version of my photo because I forgot it was Photoshop before/after week when I first put it up. I used a Sepia action I bought from Photoblast on it because I don't know how to do my own conversions. I can do a little bit, like hue and saturation adjustments and warming or cooling filters and some cloning, but what I really want to learn is how to adjust part of an image and not the whole (like just skin tones or eyes, etc.) I've learned so much in the past year though that I know I can learn this too.
I love my hiking shoes. I love to tromp in the woods. I also love to walk outside in the wintertime, and these Yaktrax I keep on my hikers this time of year make it so I can still walk outside when it's snowy and icy and not be too scared I'm going to fall and break my head. (I still fall sometimes because I'm just plain clumsy.)

Settings: XT w/ 24-70 lens at F2.8 SS1/30 ISO 400. Ran a sepia action from Photoblast on it.

CC always welcome.

I told you I stink at people pictures

The other day I tried to snap a few quick shots at my DD's basketball game before I had to leave to pick up her brother. This is the best of the bunch. I just had to laugh when I saw how terribly they all came out. Seriously bad. Like a monkey took over my camera, except a monkey would do better. I think the biggest thing was not checking my ISO-it had been set at 200 and I forgot to up it. Anyway, DD is the blur on the right. She's my baby.But I actually love this next one of her. Not in a technical sense because I don't love any of my people photos in a technical way, but just because I love her.

Technicolor flowers in macro

Some macro shots of the technicolor grocery store flowers from yesterday. Someone asked about how I lit yesterday's shot. I just set them in a vase on my dining room table. There are windows on two walls in there so good light. I set up a white foam board behind them and used a gray card to get a custom white balance.

You guys would laugh if you saw my house--almost everything is still builder's beige. I love color but have made some real bad decisions on paint so I'm chicken.

As always, all CC appreciated!

Get a load of these colors

When I walked through the grocery store today and saw these I just knew I had to have them. I swear to you this shot is SOOC. No levels adjustment, no color popping whatsoever, not even a little USM. Funky dye job, huh? I didn't have much time to take photos of them today, but tomorrow I'm going macro on them.

Another knitting photo

I had a hard time picking a photo today, so I got DH to do it. Shot w/ 24-70mm lens at F8.0 SS 1/20 ISO200. CC welcome and appreciated.

I really need to start posting some people photos, because basically I stink at people photos and it's what I need the most work on, but I've always been hesitant to post pics of my kids on anything public. I don't know why, because I never think a thing of it when other people do.

Thank you all SO much for the comments. I really appreciate all of them!

Ribbon Candy

I got out the leftover box of ribbon candy and the macro lens and went to town. I couldn't decide on one to post, so here's a bunch. Did I pop the colors too much? I also used custom white balance. How'd I do? Shot in AV mode with 100mm macro lens , various SS and apertures.