Posts Tagged Photos

Top 10 | Landscape photos | landscapes with a soul. I was just surfing randomly around the web as I often do, going from a link on one site to another one and then another until I am so far removed form the orginal site i dont even remember how I got there. Anyway I stumbled upon this site tonight and saw some of the most amzing landscape photos from around the world. It seems a collaboration of sorts by hundreds of photographers, and i havent seen a single one yet that I can’t call breathtaking. Amazing pictures. There are some related sites indirectly linked to this one, one of animal photography, another of glamour shots, and then portraits, all equally as hypnotizing to view. Enjoy

I can see us in this :)

The only car shows I get to attend this time of year are right here in the parking lot of the place I work! I have seen quite a few that worthy of being in a car show, especially this one, the paint job was immaculate. Wish  got a closer look.

Not sure what the make or model of this car was but it sure caught my eye, wish I had the regular camera with me to get a better picture. Glad I have the iPhone now as it does a fair job anyway.

Wonder why it made me think of Alison instantly? ;)  I can see her behind the wheel of this. :)  I’m absolutley clueless to what kind of car this is and I was in too much a hurry to get away from the store to stop and look closer, wish I had now. if anyone knows or recognises the make and model give me a shout!

With the July 4th holiday this week, traffic makes it look a safe bet
its going to be busy!

Day 6 found us on the way to Paphos for a mini 3 day holiday given to us by Alison’s parents, Jack and Maureen, as an engagement present. It was so nice of them to do this and it is a memory we will have all our lives. We set out Monday morning and did a little sightseeing along the way as we had to wait to check in to the hotel anyway. I have always loved antiquities and ruins, so I couldn’t pass up a chance to visit the Sanctuary of Apollo located very near to Curium (Kourion) (more…)

From my Cyprus trip in October 2007, Oct, 14, 2007 recap finally done , 6 months later! ;)

Sunday Morning, the 5th day of our holiday we had been invited to go to a tavern in one of the mountain villages that Alison and her friends frequent, Taki’s tavern, for lunch. With no rush to get ready in the morning, we had a coffee or two and a bit of breakfast out in the garden.

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Smoke update:  Saturday- June 14, 2008

We had probably the worst smoke from the wildfire in Hyde County than we have had since the first 2 days of it starting. You could smell the smoke inside the house this morning, and just to walk outside would leave you with burning red eyes from just a few minutes out in it. It seemed to get a bit heavier too the closer I got to work, so I used my cell to try and get a couple of pictures, and it really doesn’t do it justice but you can get the idea as normally about this time the sun has been up about an hour I guess and usually its good enough light most headlights are off, but you can see here they were needed this morning.

This next shot is just crossing into Dare County across the Wright Memorial Bridge. I fight that glaring sun very clear morning and its hell to see the traffic lights normally, even at the light. Well the smoke was  thick enough this morning to block the sun a great deal and you can see how the smoke just envelopes the whole region.

This last photo was around 5 PM this evening with me just turning down the road I live on, you can see the smoke is still heavy in the air, but decreased some. not a lot though. The smell stays with you and just hangs in the air. Thankfully the wind seems to be shifting some as I write this and its clearing off a good deal now. More pics coming if we have any more rough days like this.

Update: Pics From Saturday, June 21, 2008

On the way to work Saturday morning around 7 am (yes I am always late for work!) The smoke was heavier than I have seen it since the fire started. Thankfully its not been so bad for us here with the way the wind has been blowing but I do feel really bad for those right near it having to suffer through this for such a long time. Although the fire is well contained, about 70%, just the nature of it, being more or less one huge pile of peat, is going to have this thing smoldering for weeks. It would take many days straight of a good soaking rain to even put a dent in putting it out completely. This time of year the odds are against that happening.

Just about a week ago a lightening strike in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge sparked a fire that has to date burned about 42000 acres in Northeastern North Carolina. There’s a great deal of information and some very good links at this site, InciWeb, so I wont bother to rewrite all the many details. Suffice it to say its still not contained (40%) thus far and its effects reaching way beyond the area that is burning. This picture is from my front door in Grandy, NC yesterday afternoon on a day with cloudless skies. that isn’t just a summer time haze but smoke from the fire itself reaching us, and it got even thicker as night fell with the way the winds shifted. Needless to say with temperatures near 100 degrees, it was miserable to have to be outside. And several smoke warnings along with the heat advisory have been issued since this fire began. The photo of course doesn’t do justice to the acrid thick air that burns the eyes. I cant imagine what its like for the firefighters there on the scene.

We’ve had some relief today with the wind once more shifting and coming from the northwest, and this cold front that passed through last night has really cooled things off as well so its been a very nice day. Well the bad news is this fire is in an area that basically is a big pile of peat moss which will smolder and burn fro possibly months to come, It would only take a deluge of rain for several days straight to come close to getting this thing completely out. Not likely to be happening anytime soon. 

I remember last Wednesday morning and walking outside on the deck after i woke up and seeing the area around here very smoky and thinking too myself someone was burning leaves or trees stumps, that sort of thing which is sort of common in a rural area like this with fields being cleared and such, but then it occurred tome being that early no one would likely have been up long enough to have a fire causing that much smoke, so my next thought it was a house fire nearby but I hadn’t heard any sirens or anything like that. Well like i say its sort of common to see smoke in the area as it is legal to get a burn permit around here for clearing land. Well i just took it as a good reason to stay inside for the day and be lazy :)  It really wasn’t until the next morning I was waking up and getting ready for work that I checked the news and found out it was a wildfire and one expected to grow. I wish I had thought to get a picture of it then as it reminded me of driving in the mountains when the clouds are hanging low and its resembling a fog.  By that afternoon the wind had shifted some and it wasnt so noticeable. So its been like this a week now depending on the wind and what area is having to deal with this. I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of it here either. Not that I am hoping to get any more photos by any means, but if it gets bad again I sill post a few.   

Somehow with all these different natural disaster type of incidents occuring with so much frequency lately; floods, tornados, fires, earthquakes  I am always thinking of this line from the Cowardly Lion in the “Wizard of Oz” – “Unusual weather we’re having, ain’t it?”

Memorial Day weekend traffic Saturday afternoon. Its a bit lighter this year, probably because of gas prices!

One of my hobbies is restoring and retouching/enhancing photos and portraits. Now combine that with the fact my beautiful bride to be is 5000 miles away I tend to work a lot on pictures of her! :) I guess in some sense its a touch from far away, well it is for me, each one of the photos is a memory of some event shared between between us, or from some event we attend in our respective countries, but still share them to let the other feel they are joining in the day to day activities. I find myself many nights sitting in front of the pc and looking through all the many we have and often times open up my Paint Shop program and just play around a bit seeing the different effects and moods I can create. And also in some way only those in a long distance relationship can understand, to touch the woman I love! :)

Well tonight I found one that just seemed to be calling to me to open up and do just that. This particular one is cropped from a larger photo, ad i replaced the background and then just gave it a few fixes here and there, these photo filter plugins can really give a normal digital photo a professional look too it. Well I’m not trying to brag, just saying even a regular pic without any other work on can be much improved just applying one of these filters using the default settings. I do ten though to do a few more things first, such as removing a busy background and adding one to focus the attention on the subject, not that my attention is ever long from Alison! ;)

Oh I may get myself in trouble now as I cant remember off hand now what the date was this picture was taken, I want to say late September or early October of last year. It was a wedding she was going to attend and she took a few pics before she went.

Here’s the original… Well not that she doesnt have a lovely home, I just thought the plant and the part of the kitchen showing was taking away from over all look of the photo, and I was just wanting all my attention on her :) Well I hope she’s not minding me using the picture, at least its photographic proof of a sort that I was thinking of her tonight! ( Hi baby, I Love you! XXX) 

Well its not really hard to do these if you have had a bit of practice. most of the work is done using layers in the program, well like stacking parts of photos over top of another if you will, except the areas fo some are transparent and what lies underneath shows through those parts. So basically all I did in this one was to add a layer beneath this original and fill it with colour using two shades, the darker around the edges and the lighter bit behind here, just a sort of emphasis and a basic photo backdrop. then I went to the original layer and just erased everything but her. The most time of course is doing the fine lines close to her, which is where I get to have the feeling I am touching her in a sense, so that part takes time and to be honest i am taking my time doing it, I love to lala! ;)  lol well once all the bits not her are removed I simply merge the layers and then go about sorting the colour levels and lighting and deciding what kind of effect i want. In the case of this one it, I basically left it as it was and just maybe added a bit of warmth to it and a just a very slight blur to give it that bit fo a dreamy feeling is what I call it. :)  Anyway just thought I would share with the world what I ahve been up to this evening and now I better go and write my love’s morning mail or she will soon be up and wondering where I am!! Well I think she knows by now I sometimes get sidetracked either with pictures or on YouTube. :)