Jamie Cheslock

Lovely Foggy Fall Mornings are my Favorite Time for Pictures

2009-10-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

This morning the sun was just beginning it daily rise over the hilltops spreading warm rays across the pastures and onto the fog that was hanging over the mountains like a warm blanket. This is my favorite time to go out with my camera to see what I can capture. The lighting that the early sun and provides is absolutely wonderful and the fog provides unique photo effect opportunities. In this photo, I was thrilled to allow the fog to blur out the background that I would normally do by adjusting the aperture setting on my camera.

I know, it’s a boring photo but be patient I am going somewhere with this.

In this next photo, I wanted to capture the colors in the black walnut tree and allow the sun to have a part so I set my aperture wide open to catch a bit of the suns rays but I didn’t want the sky blown out so I used my spot metering and metered on the fog and yippee the blue sky came in just like I wanted it.

Then, if you put the fog, the sun, the fall colors all together and add an interesting subject matter you end up with a nice shot like this.

See? I told you I was going somewhere!

Cabin Fever

2009-08-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I broke my ankle. It was one of those stupid accidents that just happen no matter how careful you try to be. I have a water trough blocking a gap in the fence where there should be a small gate that was never installed. Rather then walk all the way to the other end of the barnyard, I climbed over the water trough to get quick access to the horses and put on their fly nets in the morning. When I climbed back out and jumped down I landed wrong, my ankle twisted and I heard a loud SNAP along with intense pain. I lay there awhile skirming around and moaning from the pain hoping it was like all of the other times I've twisted my ankle and it would just be okay after a minute or so. Unforunately that wasn't the case so I screamed for John to come help me. I yelled to him that I thought I had broken my ankle, he thought I said one of the horses had a broken ankle so he went back into the house and brought out a gun. I'm sure glad he didn't shoot me! He brought the car around so he could take me to the hospital, that is when poor Riley got scared. He screamed to his grandpa, "Don't run over my Grandma!!!" The poor little mushy boy. :)

At the hospital they did xrays and a CT scan, sure enough it was broken. They sent me home with a boot thingy and instructions to go see a surgeon about pinning me back together. Thank GOD the surgeon said I didn't have to have surgery and didn't put on a cast so here I sit with a 6 week sentence of no weight on the foot. I go back to the doctor Wednesday for new xrays and hope that my sentence will be shortened by a bit because I'm going start raving MAD being locked up in this house.

Here it is two days after the break. I really don't think it looks all that bad but what do I know.

That's it, my life is so boring and uneventful now that I have nother more to ad so I'll just end this post with a photo that I took BEFORE I broke my stupid ankle.

Photographing a Wedding

2009-06-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

My look a like niece got married this past Saturday and had asked me to be the photographer. I tried to talk her into hiring a professional but she insisted that I would do fine. I ran around like a crazy person for the entire ceremony and took almost 1100 photos. I'm exhausted but I think I got so good photos, I sure hope she likes them!

I got a couple of new pets to add to the menagerie

2009-05-21T08:35:00.001-07:00

Vanessa is a very freindly little Nigerian Dwarf with a silly personality

Bindi is a sweet little blue eye Nigerian Dwarf. She's a little shy but is comming around slowley.

These little goats like to follow me all around the ranch and look for trouble to get into.

The Building of a Box Culvert

2009-05-12T14:37:00.001-07:00

Last weekend Dad and I accompanied Ernie, Scott and Jeff up into the woods to pack in the supplies and construct a box culvert to provide a temporary creek crossing along the new trail being built for the Mule Skinner's Memorial Day Poke Ride.

Here, we are loading up Ernies miles with the supplies we needed to back in. In this photos, Cody is being loaded with the lumber.

Here, I provide a nice view of Coday all loaded up and ready to go

Whisky gets to pack in some of the additional supplies we need, chainsaw, buckets, lunch etc.

Chex waits patiently while the mules get all packed up.

The mules are all loaded up, we head out to a hillside to grab some rock

This is the area before we did any improvements. It doesn't look like much but we worry that after 500 horses cross, it'll be a muddy mess.

Scott was the lucky nail straightener guy. Remember, RECYCLE!

While Ernie works on preparing the creek bed, Scott and Jeff start assembling the box

Putting the final touches on the box

The box is set over the creek flow and tamped down into place

The creek flow is adjusted just a little more to make sure it flows through the box

Some large branches are placed on each side of the box to help stabelize it

Ernie has these handy paniers that open from the bottom, this made it really easy to unload the gravel right over the culvert

Ernie tromps around on the fished product to make sure it is solid

Finally we are finished with our project and head back to the trailers

Finally a moment for ME

2009-04-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

I never in my wildest dreams that my rescue would get so incredibly big and busy that I would no longer have the time to enjoy my photography hobby and keeping my personal blog updated. This morning however, I did take just a few minutes to grab my camera and head out for some photo opportunities.

Here are a couple of my roosters. They are really shy so getting a photo of them is difficult but this morning I was sneaking up on some elk and managed to surprise he roosters in the process!

By the time I got done photographing the roosters, the stupid horses had discovered the elk and chased them down to the bottom of the field near the road. I high tailed it to the house and screamed a Dad to GET IN THE CAR, NOW! The poor guy was in the middle of shaving and had no shoes on but I sounded serious so he scrambled and off we went to our lower field. I spotted the elk again and they were in my woods right next to the road all set up for a perfect photo opportunity. I stopped the car, rolled down the window, did the 4 point check on the camera (shutter speed, ISO, F-stop etc) and prepared to take the shot when Dad started talking. GAAAA!!!!! At that point it became very clear to me why my Dad was never much of a successful hunter instead of hand signals he screams out, “There’s the elk!”

They ran off, here is a photo of their retreat back across my hay field.

Oh well, it was fun anyway.

It's Been Very Busy Here

2009-03-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

I haven't had the time to post in here lately because my rescue has been taking up all of my time. Make sure you click on my rescue link and take a look at all of the new horses that we have in.

My Dad is moving back over to this side of the mountain and will be living with my sister Jill. This will give me lots of opportunity to spend quality time with him.

Fly me to the Moon

2009-02-01T08:47:00.000-08:00

Freezing cold weather and a brand new moon peaking out from behind the shadow of the earth drug me out into the night to get these shots. I took one at the proper exposure for a nice moon shot and the other is over exposed a bit so you can see the outline of the rest of the moon in the shadows. It was fun trying to figure out what settings to use on my camera to get just the right effects.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday!!!! We always have a big party and lots of fun with all of our friends. There is always way too much food, some drinking, a freindly bet and lots of visiting with our friends. It's a house full but it's danged FUN!

Now, on to something serious, if any of you are in need of a really nice, well broke, gentle horse let me know. I'm helping a neighbor find homes for some of his retired dude string horses.

Here We Go Again

2009-01-25T22:14:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes I know there are a lot of people who wish they could get just a glimpse of some of the wildlife that we see here nearly every day but it doesn't make having them here all of the time any easier to deal with.

Every year one or two large herds of elk show up around our place. Fortunately, they favor the new green grass on our neighbor's fields but that doesn't stop them from paying a visit to our fields and taking down our fences as they come and go.

There is always a lead cow that chooses where the herd goes.

Then comes the rest of the cows, last years calves and the small bulls

Then the larger bulls bring up the rear. It's the same story every day.

This particular day I was feeling rather frisky as this herd headed straight towards my lower field so I grabbed my camera and made a mad dash for the closest vantage point I could muster without being spotted. Sneaking up on elk isn't rocket science mind you but it is harder then most people think it is. On this particular forray into wildlife photography I sprung my crotch climbing over the fence, tore my pants on the blackberries, lost my rubber boot in the boot sucking mud and poked my boob on a wayward branch. None-the-less in spite of my lungs heaving for air and my hands shaking from exhaustion I managed to get a few shots.

BUT, yes there is always a BUT in wildlife photography; the elk were MOVING and the lighting was less then ideal for shooting a moving object with a 300 zoom lense and shaking hands. Oh well. None of the shots are worth framing but they are better then what I've gotten in the past. At least this time I didn't feel like spiking my camera off the floor after I downloaded the photos.

Good bye for today elk. That's a big darned herd!

I'm hoping for some inspiration

2009-01-19T15:39:00.000-08:00

I haven't been making very frequent entries lately for a couple of reasons. One is, I haven't been able to come up with a clever, entertaining topic. Another is, I haven't been out getting any wonderful photographs of anything. The good news is, I am only going to be working 1 day a week for the next month or two or three or four so I'll have a lot of time to go out searching for that perfect photo opportunity so stay tuned!

In the mean time, I'll entertain you with this cute picture of Mr. Piggelsworth and his buddy Doctor Doodle Duck.

Snow, EEKS!

2009-01-05T21:46:00.000-08:00

I don't think I'll ever wish for a white Christmas again. EVER. We got burried in the snow, nearly 4 feet of it. Our power went out and didn't come back on until a couple of days after Christmas, it was out for six days. I didn't get to work for 3 weeks but I sure stayed busy trying to keep up with this place and all of the animals here.

To give you an idea of just how deep it got here is a picture of one of my fences, just the tops are showing and that is not a drift, it's that deep everywhere.

You can't even see Marlboro Man's junkers! Okay, that can be a good thing!

Toby kept getting covered in this annoying snow balls!

Before it got too deep the horses enjoyed the snow too.

Barns all around us were caving in including 6 indoor arenas just in my area. Of course that really made me nervous but luckily we were smart and had our barn fully engineered rather then just putting up an ag building. That meant that the building was engineered to withstand a 4 foot snow load. At the time I thought that was crazy, we'd never get that kind of snow, YEAH RIGHT! We had to spend over $6000.00 upgrading the trusses, perlins and beams to meet the county standards and boy was I ever glad that we did, it sure paid off this winter.

I tried to photograph the snow but when I was faced with endless white everywhere I had a really rad time capturing anything worthwhile. So here are a few weak attempts at being creative.

I Love to Cook

2008-12-17T20:14:00.000-08:00

I love cooking, I'm constantly looking for new recipies to try and I have tons of cookbooks that I pour over looking for yummy stuff to make for dinner but most of the dishes I make don't have a written recipie, it's all in my head. I spend a lot of time thinking up different ways to make dishes, most of the time it turns out pretty good but sometimes they are a flop.

Since I haven't had much to say here on my blog these past few days I decided to tell you what was for dinner tonight. All of these items were very easy and great for a quick, good dinner after a long day at work.

First on the menu, fresh salmon cooked on the grill with lemon pepper

Mmmmm, you can see the steam wafting into the air. Wash and dry the salmon thoroughly, sprinkle it with lemmon pepper and let sit for several minutes. Pre heat the George Forman grill (George is one of my best freinds in the kitchen) spray a good coat of olive oil PAM all over the grill, place on the salmon and let that cook until done, usually about 10-15 minutes depending on how thick your salmon is.

Oven Roasted Asparagus

This is amazingling fast, easy and delicious. Just wash the asparagus, cut off the ends, dry with paper towell and place on a cookie sheet. Spray a generous coating of olive oil PAM, don't be shy, olive oil is good for you. Sprinkly on some kosher salt (don't use table salt, it's a sin) and fresh ground pepper, you can use the powered pepper if you want, I won't tell anyone. Place into preheated 450 oven and cook for 10 minutes. Dont try to cheat and put it in the oven before it's hot, it'll ruin this dish.

Texas Toast

You can use any kind of bread for this, tonight's was french bread. Just heat up a non stick frying pan, melt some butter into the pan, place the bread on top of the butter and cook until brown. If you want you can melt more butter, flip it over and cook both sides. If you're feeling frisky you can sprinkle on some kosher salt or grated cheese.

Baked potatoe, I'll spare you the details on this because honestly, who doesn't know how to make a baked potatoe?

Put this all together and you've got a quick, easy hearty meal. Enjoy.

Momma's Hands

2008-12-05T19:05:00.000-08:00

My poor mother must have been sleeping when they were handing (no pun intended) out hands. Her hands have been badly deformed from arthritis for the past several years. She finally decided it was time to have something done about this so she had surgery to repair a lot of the damage that was done by the hands (again, no pun intended) of time. The surgery went well and she's doing great but get a look at the contraption she has to wear around!

Never mind the mule or the horse in the background, they don't know how to mind their own business.

Happy Thanksgiving - the day after

2008-11-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

We had an awsome Thanksgiving dinner, it was nice and quiet with just John, Me, Luke Trish and Riley. Of course I still made a big dinner with all of the trimmimgs and we got to enjoy each others company.

Of course what would Thanksgiving be without PICTURES!

Yesterday (Thanksgiving) I learned that in order to take a good indoor portrait in low light with no flash I need to use a very high ISO (1600), a wide open aperature (1.8) and find the appropriate shutter speed to go with that combination. Unfortunately I didn't learn that until after they left.

But, not for the lack of trying, I did manage to get one or two decent shots.

Every Day I Shall Learn Somthing New

2008-11-25T22:14:00.000-08:00

I'm obsessed with learning about photography and Photoshop, sometimes I think there is no stopping me. Many times I lay awake at night thinking about all of the different angles I should shoot a portrait at, how I can achieve better light effects behind my subjects, different ways to enhance my photos in Photoshop and making a mental list of all of the photography accessories I'll buy if I ever win the lottery. I doubt I'll ever win the lottery or be rich enough to buy the lens of my dreams since it costs well over $8000.00 so at this point I'll just keep myself happy with learning all I can about photography and Photoshop because other than the electricity to run my laptop, it's free.

I did buy a new lens for my camera today but I swear, I NEEDED IT! I've gotten to the point where I'm just not happy with the quality of photos I get out of the kit lens, the portraits are too soft and the colors just are not as vibrant as I want them to be. This new lense was inexpensive but wow oh wow does it ever make my heart go pitter pat every time I view a photo I took with it, the quality is outstanding.

Here is an example:

Just compare the quality of this photo to the ones in yesterdays entry and you can see the difference, there is just no comparison.

And then of course I had to spend my allotted time for the day learning something new and the Pioneer Woman didn't post a new tutorial for me so I found the COOLEST website that has Photoshop effects step by step for FREE and learned out to do this:

When I was researching actions last week I found one that does this effect for sale for over $70.00!!!!! I wanted it BAD, but not that bad. Now I can do it myself, step by step anytime I want for free. I love that word, free free free free.

How to Make your Christmas Cactus Bloom

2008-11-24T18:11:00.000-08:00

First off I think I need to begin today's entry with a quick disclaimer. I love plants, really I do. I fully enjoy looking at and smelling flowers and appreciate their beauty just as much as the next person. The problem I have is simply taking care of them. I cannot be held responsible for any plant that is brought to this house.

Right now I have two house plants a jade and a Christmas cactus. Both of these plants were brought here and abandoned by my mother. I had no choice in the matter, she brought them to my house one at a time and insisted that I needed them, quite honestly I think she just wanted to be rid of them and I was the closest unsuspecting victim. This would be one of the hazards of having your mother living on your property. The fact that both of these plants have managed to stay alive is a miracle in itself but for some reason these two plants seem to love it here in my house. The jade actually BLOOMS, yes you read that right, it blooms, how or why....I have no idea. Not only has it survived my lack of plant care skills, but it also survived an attack from a crazy cat(Read the story here). Other then the one time the jade did bloom, it just sits there collecting dust, shedding leaves and begging for water every now and then. After it's leaves look shriveled and pathetic I'm guilted into giving it some water so it doesn't croak.

The Christmas cactus, now that is a different story. That plant and I have a very unique relationship. Since as I've mentioned already, I am not good at taking care of plants in fact you would safely assume that I seriously SUCK, this plant is just flat out lucky to be alive. The first couple of weeks that I had it I of course did not water it at all, the only attention I ever gave it was to grimace at it and complain about the mess it makes and the space it occupies. I finally was guilted into watering the danged thing by my husband who was complaining about all of the brown leaves on it. Of course since it hadn't been watered in several days I watered it a LOT, one week later the plant was completely covered with hundreds of blooms. Every year, about 4 times each year that plant puts out more blooms then the Oregon Rose Garden and I get thousands of compliments on the plant and praised for my flowering skills. Bwwahahahaha, little do they know! Anyway, they always ask me the same question - How do you get that plant to bloom so heavily so many times per year? My answer is simple; I have it on the shock and awe program. I shock it with water, it awes me with flowers. HA!

So, all of the photos in today's entry are courtesy of me (of course) and my Christmas Cactus that is currently in the awe stage. Actually, I was watching an educational DVD on my camera, photography and photoshop and picked on the plant while trying to learn how to get macro shots. Although the photos are nice, they are not at all what I was after, I was trying to focus solely on the stamen of the plant and have everything else blurred out. Obviously I still have a lot to learn about spot focusing and metering. **sigh**

Never fear though, I still learned some new tricks.

I think I'm Stuck in Black and White

2008-11-20T19:48:00.000-08:00

I never have been one to follow the crowd with anything that I do. These days it seems that everyone is putting out bright, colorful photographs and here I can barely resist the urge to desaturate or sepia almost every photo I take lately. I just love the depth that a black and white picture has and the way it makes me feel when I see one that really looks good.

Here's an example of one that I did recently.

This house is across the street from my Dad's place. It was a very bright, sunny day and I still didn't have a complete grip on what ISO setting was the best for each situation. I mistakingly thought that since I had plenty of light I could get away with the fastest ISO my camera offered - 1600. Most of the pictures were sadely overexposed, noisy and too soft. :( In reality, it was the perfect opportunity to use the slowest ISO setting - 100 and have a more crisp, clear photograph. Fortunately, I am definately someone who learns from my mistakes and I'm not always one to accept defeat easily.

I spent a lot of time in Photoshop trying to salvage this photo. I had to use several different layers and play with the opacity of each and every one of them until the picture finally had the effect I was looking for. I'm happy with the result, what I'm not happy with is the fact that I can't remember exactly how I did it.

F stops and F bombs and the Man in the Moon

2008-11-15T20:49:00.000-08:00

I've come to refer to F stops as F bombs. Why? Because they are beginning to drive me crazy so I occasionally drop several F bombs while trying to get that oh so perfect shot that always seems to be just out of my reach. Trying to master the perfect ISO, aperature value, white balance, distance, angle etc etc etc is begining to turn me into a mad woman. Of course I have a few select family members that are rolling their eyes saying to their computer screen, "I don't think you're a mad woman, I KNOW you're a mad woman!"

Anyway, I've been trying to shoot our full moon for 3 days now and today I finally figured out that I've been going about it all wrong. I've been setting my camera up to shoot night shots and the moon is a big fat bright light (reflection from the sun). Duh. First, I set my camera to single focus and took it out to infinety. What that means is whatever I focus the tiny dot in the center of the lense on and anything else that is exactly the same distance away is the only thing that focuses in the picture. Next, I set my 75x300 lense on the longest focal length it had, basically I got as close to the moon as I could. I could only see the moon, the whole moon and nothing but the moon. Now, since my hand is not as steady as it used to be I set my camera up on the tripot and set my timer to a 10 second delay. This way the camera isn't swaying around while I'm trying to hold it steady and when I push the shutter it won't take the picture until after the camera is stabelized. Brilliant right? Then, here is the tricky part, expose for the moon and not for the black sky. THIS is the main thing that has caused me so much grief lately. All this time I was using my widest aperture setting, the slowest possible shutter speed to let enough light in, and a high ISO setting. All of my shots looked overexposed and the moon was blurry, partely because I was letting way too much light in and partley because believe it or not, my shutter was open for so long that the moon actually MOOVED before it closed.

So, here's what I finally ended up with:

Imagine my sheer and utter delight when I dowloaded this shot, you can see all of the craters and I do believe the man in the moon is winking at me! This is what I had my camera set at shutter speed of 1/500, aperture setting of 4.0, and ISO setting of 800. I tried the ISO at 200, 400 and 600 but in each one the moon was either too dark or yellow any higher and it had the over exposed blur effect which although can sometimes be cool, but it just wasn't what I was after, 800 was the magic number. With just a little sharpening in Photoshop I finally jumped over the moon!

An Early Morning Attempt

2008-11-13T08:37:00.000-08:00

I decided to get up early this morning and take advantage of the morning light and how it plays on the landscapes. Once I got outside and saw the moon I was thrilled, I thought "Oh YEAH I can get some great shots of the full moon hanging just above the mountains playing peak-a-boo with the clouds!" After many failed attempts at figuring out what ISO, F stop etc. to use the moon disappeared behind the clouds just before it the "hanging just above the mountains part", yet another failed attempt at getting just what I was looking for, the story of my life.

Yeah great, thanks for nothing. I went back into the barn to finish feeding the horses that were waiting so patiently. Not to be one to accept defeat easily, I kept looking out the door to make sure I wasn't missing anything and spied upon this:

This is straight out of the camera so please excuse the dark foreground. I took a lot of pictures of this while playing with my nemesis, the polarizer filter. I swear some day I WILL conquer that thing! At this point the horses have stopped being patient and began banging on their stalls to let me know that picture time is OVER and food time is REQUIRED.....NOW! So, I got the horses all finished up and happy and shot this picture of Big Mare:

I took this shot in RAW, I've been reading about how wonderful RAW is and that if I start shooting in RAW I'll never go back to jpg. Well, I soon figured out that in order to fully enjoy RAW I need to learn a LOT more about Photoshop and buy Lightroom so I'm back to jpg for awhile. Anyway, I did make some adjustments to this photo, I lightened it up of course, boosted the color, did a glausean blur, and brought back the horse and the mud with the layer mask.

After playing around with all of that I took just one last look at all of the shots I got this morning before hitting the delete button and found THIS ONE!

I did have to do some work to this one too. I did some color matching with another photo I got later in the morning so the trees were greener, sharpened it up a bit, boosted, etc. I cloned the darker clouds from a corner I was going to crop off over next to the moon, did the cropping and sat back to enjoy the result. NICE! At least the morning wasn’t a total loss.

Time to Pick on ME!

2008-11-11T21:13:00.000-08:00

I am having so much fun with Photoshop I could just spit. For those of you who know me and I mean REALLY know me know that is a big statement for me to make! I don't spit, it makes my nauseous to see people spit, I've been known to bawl out strangers for spitting in front of me. Okay, back to Photoshop. Recently I have fallen in love with Actions. Actions are my new lover, (don't tell the old guy I said that.) For those of you who don't know what an action is, in a nutshell it is a command that does a bunch of commands for you to create an excellent final product. I have been spending WAY too much time researching and reviewing different actions on the web and have come up with some really fun ones. Tonight I downloaded a couple of fun actions that I just HAD to try out.

Okay here is the picture that I decided to pick on tonight, yes that's me. Like most women, I rarely see a picture of myself that I like but here is one I like.....well, mostely. HA!

There were some things I didn't like. The background had some things in it that were distracting, my skin has that 44 year old woman (did I just admit my age?) look about it and there are a couple of blemishes I'd like to be rid of. The first thing I did was run an action called "Perfect Skin" this action is wonderful, it does a very slight glausean blur on the photo, stops for you to make any adjustments in the opacity and smoothes out the skin. Okay, now I have smoother skin but it still needs more help. I created a new layer, did a manual glausean blur with a higher opacity that blurred out the background for me. It actually blurs out the entire picture but not to worry, that is what layer masks are for. I did a layer mask and painted over any part of the picture that I didn't want blurred, that of course would be me. :) Okay now I'm almost done but my teeth are a little yellow - that darned coffee that there is no way I'll give up. I dodged my teeth and while I was at it, the whites of my eyes to make them more white. Then I lassoed my eyes and sharped them up a lot to make them pop a bit. My eyes are squinted in the photo making them look small so they needed all the help they could get. Finally, I used the clone tool to get rid of that pesky red dot on my chin and erase that one white hare in my eyebrow. I really liked where this photo was going, it just need a leeeetle more work. I used the "Lovely and Etheral" action to make the colors pop out a bit and then I used the "Slightely Lighten" action because I thought it was a little to dark. Unfortunately, this lightened up my skin a litte more then I wanted, (I've always been proud of my dark skin tones)so luckily for me, before I used the slightely lighten action I had created a new layer (whew) so I did another layer mask and used the brush to bring my skin back to it's original color. Here is what I ended up with.

After adjustments

Before adjustments

At this point I sat back and thought, "Wow,I've done it!" Time to get some chocolate cake and blackberry ice cream.

Fall Colors and Other Silly Stuff

2008-11-10T09:08:00.001-08:00

I love fall. It is when I get to say goodbye to all of the dust on our road, the fields turn green again, I can BURN and all of the rain freshens the air up. My FAVORITE thing about fall is that I get to enjoy all of the wonderful colors that Mother Nature blasts into the leaves of the trees and shrubs.

I have a long drive to work every day and am one of the lucky few in that my drive is 95% out in the country. Every day I get to take in nature’s beauty with a few man made wonders tossed in for good measure, every once in awhile I’ll pull over and take a picture of something that catches my eye. I can’t let myself do this too often or else I would have 100’s of excellent photos but I would never get to work and the bills would not get paid.

Today’s photo is one of the opportunities for a picture that presented itself on my way to work last week. I have been eyeballing this old barn for quite awhile because, well….. I just love old barns and of course also because you just never know when the lighting and colors will be right for that oh so perfect photograph. Once I got home and downloaded the shots I thought they looked great but I did do a few adjustments in Photoshop to make the colors on the leaves pop out a little more and put some definition in the sky and on the barn. That together with a little creative cropping I ended up with a pretty good finished product.

Got to Play with Sophia for Awhile

2008-11-03T15:46:00.001-08:00

John jr. came out Sunday and brought Sophia with him. Sophia and I got to play with all of the toys and the horses while Grandpa and Dad went up into the woods to play with their guns. We don't get to see Sophia very much so I like to enjoy every minute that I have with her. Here is a fun shot I got of Sophia being silly!

John still hasn't found a job yet but not for the lack of looking. I think he looks to hard sometimes and have to kick him out of the house so he can get some fresh air and move around a bit.

Back From Vacation

2008-10-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

We are finally back from our vacation in Hawaii. John and I really enjoyed our trip but we were both very glad to get back home too. It felt so good to go out and visit with all of my critters, my poor dog missed me. Everything went pretty well here while we were gone with many thanks to all of the people that came out every day to feed, clean etc. we could not have enjoyed our trip without their help.

Today's picture is a cool sillouette that I got out at Wikiki Beach while waiting for the sunset

Having fun in Hawaii

2008-10-18T19:07:00.001-07:00

A mongoose at Hanauma Bay

A plover that visited while we sun bathed

Hanauma Bay, we spent all day out there snorkling and sun soaking. We saw millions of amazingly colorful fish and sea turtles

A good sunset we caught at Wikiki Beach

The surfer dudes (John and Tom) comming in

Yes, another bird.

Playing with the boogie boards

Theresa wipes out face first!

Tom Clowing around

The fire dancer

Germain's Luau

Before the Luau

Our first sunrise in Hawaii

Teresa braving the waves

A sea turtle swimming just below our room

A museum we visited, the name of it escapes me.

Looking down at a lighthouse from the top of Diamond Head

The view from the top of Diamond Head

A cute little bird that joined our picnic

An extreme zoom into the sand.

Sunset Friday night

A cute little red bird

Tom playing in the sunset

A little beach crab that visited

The funny things that kids say.

2008-10-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

Last week I had to go out on a follow up cruelty investigation with one of the local Sheriffs. I had to take Riley with me because I didn't have anyone to watch him for me. I tried to drop him off at my mom's but he started bawling and said he didn't want to go to Great Grandma's. When I asked him why not he said, "Because she's too old for me!" Dang it was hard to not fall over laughing!

So, off we go to meet up with the Sheriff and since I had a child in a car seat Riley and I just followed him out to the site. The poor Sheriff got confused on the road and had to turn around 3 different times on the way there. The third time he turned around Riley said, "Grandma, that crazy cop is yost again!" I laughed so hard I just about went off the road.

You've got to love those brutally honest little kids with speech impediments.