RESTING UP AS THE SEASON DRAWS TO A CLOSE

 

I’M THINKING THIS IS A HOUSE FINCH

And as another Christmas slides into the history books I breath a smiling sigh of relief & close the book on another season.  We talked this morning about heading off somewhere on a day trip but just didn't get it pulled to-gether.  Stayed on the ranch just relaxing & catching some rays.  Kelly spent time on the computer looking at real estate properties & prices in & around the Tucson area & I cleaned up some donkey do-do's in the corral.  Them there donkeys sure do do-do a lot!!

<< DOGS, DOGS, EVERYWHERE

Ever wonder how a herd of mosquitoes could hold back a truck??  Check Barneys, OLD FAT MAN'S ADVENTURES:))

Have been asked about that Christmas collage I put to-gether Christmas Eve & posted in the blog.  We had a few strings of chili lights plus a 40' section of rope lighting that we picked up really cheap at Wal-Mart a few days ago.  Kelly strung the lights in an apple tree beside the motorhome in the afternoon.  Plugged them in when it got dark & while sitting in my chair looking out the window I had myself an idea.  Took a few pictures through the screened window & by focusing on the screen itself & not the lights I was able to get that crosshair look with the out of focus lights in the background.  Slipped outside & took a few more unfocused & focused pictures.  Two of them in the collage actually have the night's half moon in them.  A few photos with the rig in the background completed the project.  Opened up my Picasa Editing program, did some cropping, enhanced some colors, threw in a couple special effects & clicked on the Collage button.  A bit of photo re-organizing in there & it was done.  In hindsight I wished I had thought to put our blogsite profile photos in as well.  Oh well, there's always next year.

  

KELLY PUTTING UP SOME CHRISTMAS LIGHTS THURSDAY

Ray had an interesting post on his Monday's QCC blog about photo manipulation & that kinda got me to thinking.  I'm sure there are two schools of thought on this & it boils down to the age old question of, what is art & where & how is it done??  I think there are very few professional photographers out there who do not run their fine photos through their very professional photo programs.  These people are making a living with their photographs & it's an extremely competitive field.  You have got to be the best of the best & if photos have to be enhanced & manipulated to reach the final end product for sale, then so be it & that is what is done.  But, that's the professional guys so we'll leave all that wrangling to them.

   

BIRDS IN OUR APPLE TREE BESIDE THE RIG

Having worked in the photo finishing business for awhile back in the mid 80's I understand a few things about enhancing & manipulating prints because I had to do it almost every day for people.  Now, I'm going back a few years before the digital age when everything was done on film.  Mainly 35mm, 126, & 110 film formats.  I worked for & managed a one hour photo finishing store in Stratford, Ontario.  I spent many countless hours sitting at one end of a large photo processing machine printing thousands & thousands of people's films day after day.  Most of it was 35mm.  If the processing chemicals in either the film or paper processing machines wasn't exactly correct it effected the quality of the prints in the end.  Could be as subtle as a color shift on the cyan or magenta side giving the prints a cool or warmer look than was actually the case when the person took the picture therefore unintentionally manipulating the prints color.  If the color print filters in the printer were not calibrated correctly each & every morning the prints once again were going to be 'off!!'  

 

CATCHING A FEW RAYS BY THE POOL TO-DAY

The printing machine itself was programmed to automatically adjust for each & every negative but in the end it's just a machine & that final decision as the film negative passed in front of the person doing the printing could be overridden by the printer person.  As I sat there hour after hour I would have to make snap decisions on each & every negative whether to override the machine or let it go.  As long as the negative was correctly exposed the machine did a great job but if a light or dark negative popped into the frame carrier I generally overrode the machine to try & compensate for the over exposed or underexpose negative.  In other words I manipulated a lot of prints everyday to make them look as good as I possible could.  Sometimes at the counter when people were picking up their prints they might comment on a particular picture saying how nice it turned out.  They didn't realize that in effect they had over or underexposed it but the person at the printer had caught the mistake & corrected it making it acceptable.

 

CAN YOU SEE THE FIGURE IN THE CLOUDS…..

Out of habit I work with every photo I take.  I crop a bit here, I enhance a color there, add some contrast for a darker effect, maybe add some yellow to warm up a sunset, or put a hint of color into a cloudy gray sky.  The camera cannot exactly reproduce the colors your eye sees.  Many times looking at a sunset I am seeing subtle shades & shadows.  I am seeing either soft or brilliant colors & hues.  Quite often when I load those photos into my computer I am not seeing exactly what I really saw & so begins the work of remembering that photo how I actually saw it.   The free Picasa Photo Editing program although not at the level of the expensive professional photo programs does a fine job for folks like myself who are not professionals but want their photos to look as good as they can with as little work as possible.  You can bring those dull colors to life, add a soft focus, give it a black & white effect or use any of a couple dozen other enhancements.  No, you can't put Aunt Sally's head on Uncle Charlie's masculine frame or drop the grandkids into a dogsled at the North Pole but you can, with a little bit of work, make your photos look a whole lot better.  Picasa is so perfectly suited to the blogger crowd for sure & if you enjoy seeing this beautiful world through a cameral like I do then you will take the time to reproduce your photos the same way I do:))

GROANER'S CORNER:((  I've often wondered why Kamikaze pilots ever bothered to wear helmets!!

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The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now....AL.