Current And Beyond

As you look at the picture of my dog Isabella, (such a wonderful dog), you might be able to understand why I haven't been posting anything. If you haven't guessed, it's because this picture is what I have to post. I've been kind of unsuccessful at getting good new nature material to post.

Every bit of ground surface around here seems to be covered in super-slippery ice, which I encountered the hard way the other day. It didn't feel very good when I crashed to the ground.

But today I was finally able to dig out my ice cleats from their elusive hiding place in my garage. It took me forever and a day to find them. So I'm going to go back out there with some good traction attached to the bottoms of my feet this time. Hopefully, I can have something good by the end of the week.

And finally, I have a cool new idea for a nature post that maybe nobody else has ever tried. I'm not going to reveal what it is until it happens because I want to be the first one to do it. And I'm not sure how entertained all of you will be by it, but I will find it to be revolutionary. I'll reveal more when I actually do this amazing stunt.

So with that, I'll talk to you later.

Another Look At My Glorious Past

The weather around here has not improved at all. We've gone back into the deep freeze again. I think today might be the day we finally warm back up a bit. I probably could have gone out in the deep cold, but to be honest I just plain didn't feel like it. I've really felt the cold a little bit extra this year and I don't want to bother with it. It's been making me extra grumpy and not fun to be around anyway.

So I decided to dig around in some of my old pictures again. This time I only did two, but I also included the originals so you can see the difference in my editing. The originals probably didn't need to be edited, but I'm just having a little fun. Both versions are here forever.

The picture at the top is my edited version and this second one is the original. You can see that this one is a little bit duller than the newer one. Both good enough pictures, but I think the top one is a little better. What do you think?

The same goes for these next two pictures. The top is the edited version and the bottom is the original. Like the first picture, I fixed up the shadows a bit and I clarified the picture. You can see that the one above has a little extra sparkle. With this one, I also straightened it out a little.

Editing these pictures indulges my love of nature and my love of computer technology at the same time. And looking at these makes me want to get back out and explore a bit. Now that it'll be warming up a little I think I'm going to try out one of my nature parks.

Maybe in my next post I'll be back to my nature loving self with lots of brand new pictures. They'll look snowy, but snow is good too. I'm excited just thinking about being back out there now. And with the warmer weather, I'll be in a little better mood. Now the neighbors don't have to hide from me. I'll talk to you later.

Things I'm Doing Because Of Bad Weather

The weather around here has improved a bit but the effects of the bad weather have lingered. We have such deep snow that some of the roads are not drivable. That keeps me from some of my favorite nature spots. That deep snow now has a hardened sharp crust on the surface that hurts your ankles when you sink down in it. That keeps me from hiking my nature parks. So now I'm not sure what to do for my nature adventures.

Maybe that's all a bit of an excuse, and maybe I'm a little busy with other things too, but I think I'll wait till things improve some more to go out to some of these places. Until then I do have a few ideas. Today I'll bring you one of them.

I've been looking at some of my old pictures from about ten years ago. I miss those times a lot. I decided to revisit a few of them. What I did was put a few pictures in my favorite photo editor and play around a little. Some are very good and some aren't so good. Let's see how you like them.

Some of my changes were kind of subtle, but they really did a lot if you look closely. I guess maybe I should have shared the originals too so you could see the difference. I decided not to do that so even my bad edits might look better.

This one of Carpenter Lake may just be my worst one. I think it looks okay here by itself, but I'm not sure I made it better than the original.

I think this last one looks good, but I may have over-edited it just a little (a lot). I wanted the bridge to stand out more than in the original. I think I accomplished that, but it looks a lot different than the original photo.

I decided to learn a bit about photo editing because I've never thought my pictures measured up to those cool looking professionally done nature pictures I see on the Bing homepage. I know they didn't get the look of those pictures straight out of the camera. Lots of editing had to be done. I want to do it too. Maybe I can eventually make a masterpiece.

This isn't my only idea. I have a pretty good sized nature area that I own myself right outside my house. The first six months that I was here I used this area for my nature photography. It worked out just fine. Maybe I'll share a few pictures of my own property for you for a week or two while I wait for conditions to improve. And there will be other ideas too. I'll talk to you later.