Category: Travel

Day 24 – Fenway Park

RedSox2w

Along Came Ruth

You step up to the platter
And you gaze with flaming hate
At the poor benighted pitcher
As you dig in at the plate.
You watch him cut his fast ball loose,
Then swing your trusty bat
And you park one in the bleachers-
Nothing’s simpler than that!

– Ford Frick

I made it home last night about 1:30 eastern time and woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 5:30 Pacific time. Now jet lag is starting to set in in earnest so I thought a newly created image from the New England files would fit the bill. And of course Baseball is also an important part of Autumn.

Day 19 – Waterfall

LowerFallsBW

Waterfall

The magical sound,
of the cascading water,
natural beauty,

-Alice Morris

I haven’t completely given up on finding fall color in New England but it is starting to look doubtful. There was actually a little yellow in this scene but I could not get the rocks to look the right color so I finally gave up and tried it in black and white and I like it much better.

Day 16 – Sailboat

Sailboat

“To reach a port we must set sail –
Sail, not tie at anchor
Sail, not drift.” 

― Franklin D. Roosevelt

We’ve been enjoying “wicked good” weather here on the coast of Maine. This put me in mind of a conclusion I came to while working as a weather forecaster. There really is no such thing as fall or spring weather. It’s just winter and summer duking it out. Summer has certainly been winning but it looks like winter may get in a few good licks soon, at least in terms of cooler temperatures.

Day 11 – Bright Lights Big City

Paramountw

Bright Lights, Big City

Bright lights
Big City
She’s wearing hope around her neck tonight
In golden letters on a string
To make up for the darkness
To make up for the void within

Bright lights 
Big City
This girl could always sing you the blues
This girl is always passing through

Bright lights 
Big City
Don’t stay up
Don’t go waiting for her

Bright lights
Big City
This girl 
She’s always going somewhere

Bright lights
Big City
And when she goes away
She’s leaving you here

– Natascha Kracheel

Not exactly an autumn theme but it was this or the airplanes on the tarmac at SFO and I like this so much better. And this is my life on this day. And I love the poem, just a little edgy and something I can relate to. I love that I live in a small town where life is quiet and peaceful but I do like having a big city experience now and then. More often than I do now really…but I’m working on that. So, I am really stoked that I have two days to explore Boston on my own and one more with the tour group. This scene was about a block from my hotel. I had this vision that when I arrived at 8 pm on a Saturday everything would be dead and dark. So wrong, vibrant neighborhood, people everywhere. I even had trouble finding a restaurant where I didn’t have to wait for an hour to get some food.

Montefioralle

Montefiorallew

OK, one more from Italy. I just loved the way this one turned out. I had processed it in Topaz restyle some time ago. But I added a suitable background and used watercolor brushes on the edges. I think I may have to get this on printed for MY wall.

Italian Alleyway

Alleyway

As I am learning new skills in Photoshop Artistry I have been going back through old files to look for things that would benefit from a different treatment. This image is from a 2010 trip to Italy. It was quite dark and required some serious levels adjustment to be usable. From there I just gave the edges a watercolor treatment, added some textures and an Italian stamp.

Red Chevy Cuba

redchevyI started working with my Cuba pictures again this week. I decided it was such a special trip it need a scrapbook all it’s own. And I had to leave a lot out to keep it down to 12 pages in my 2016 book. So This is one of the photos I loved but the colors of the woman’s clothing and the buildings were distracting so I decided to do a selective black and white.

In Photoshop, just go to Select, color range, and use the eyedropper to select the color you want and use the fuzziness slider to make sure you get all of that color. Then hit control J to make a copy of the color selection. Now you can apply a black and white layer to the main photo and let the color layer sit on top. In this case, there was some red on one of the building so I had to do a selection on the building the apply another black and white adjustment layer to that selection. Yep, it’s really that simple.

Rock Art

RockArtw

I’ve been trolling through old images looking for things to include in digital art pieces. I came across this one and just went WOW. It has been over saturated to bring out the colors but I love the contrast of the natural rock and the petroglyphs. Sending it out for printing on metal right away. I may have to order two because I know I want one hanging on My wall.

I’m seeing a series here. I’m seeing a show on the walls of some winery.

Surfer

Surfer

I stopped by Wrightsville Beach near Wilmington, N.C. yesterday and there were hundreds of surfers in wet suits. Not to many of them were actually getting up but the fellow did pretty well. I was challenged to photograph them as the sun was behind them. Then I thought to get up on the pier and had a great view from there. I added saturation and denoised this one and then sharpened it.