2011 blog

Check out my new 2011 blog

Sadness

Doesn't he just break your heart!
Kayla and her best friend were upstairs playing and ignoring him.
The rest of us were downstairs ignoring his begging for treats.
Poor baby!

Thanksgiving

She told her daddy not to cut up the drumstick -- she wanted a whole one.

Halloween pirate

Well, I had this notion that Gregory the pirate ought to be seen on a pirate ship, and it took me more than a week to locate the photograph I wanted to use. Actually, the ship is the Constellation in Baltimore's harbor -- a photo from 5 years ago that had been downloaded to a disc and it took some searching to find it.

But for Halloween it needed a little spooky-ing up, so I added a grunge layer and edging.

Halloween ballerina

Here's my favorite 6 year old dressed up as a ballerina for Halloween -- dirty knees on the tights by the time I snapped her -- no front teeth.

Photoshop is a wonder! This was taken in her living room with toys on the floor and a smaller child in the background. So I cut out Kayla using refine edge to get strands of hair, and put in a background using a modified paper, a star, and a heart from Digital Scrappers. Sorry I didn't pay attention to what issues they came from.

Sunset

As I got on the highway to go home from my daughter's house I saw the most breathtaking sunset -- but there wasn't a safe place to stop and get a good view for a photograph.

Halfway to home the tops of the autumn-colored trees were lit and the trees below were already dark -- another awesome sight that I couldn't just stop to shoot.

So I stopped at the off-ramp near home and took this shot instead. The clouds were still lit from below by the setting sun, but nowhere near as beautiful as the shots I missed.

Sun flare

I've been trying to capture the starry sun flare for quite some time and yesterday morning as I started to drive out of my garage I thought I might just be able to catch it!

This was processed in Lightroom to crop it a little and add a vignette, then in CS5 using content aware fill to cut out the edge of my car window which I wasn't careful enough to spot in the viewfinder -- and add a "frame" and some text as well. Content aware fill also let me cut out the roof of my neighbor's garage. :-)