The (little) Magician

Henry and Miles were both entranced by The Magician, the photo I took of our friend Dale a few weeks ago. I asked them who they thought was in the photo, and Henry tentatively asked, “Santa?”.  When I told them that it was someone they knew, they both realized it was Dale. They were curious about how the magic got into the photo, so this morning we re-created the photo with Henry as the magician. I think he enjoyed being dressed up and posing more than seeing how the magic got into the photo.

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After viewing the print, he said there was one thing he didn’t like about the photo- his FACE. Caitlin says he doesn’t like mad or sad faces in books. He certainly enjoyed making all sorts of faces for the camera!

Melinda3 Comments

They’re Here!

Life is busy and fun right now, because our daughter and sweet grand-boys are here! They are moving from Yellowstone to Anchorage, Alaska, and are visiting with us for two weeks while they are in between houses. They arrived Friday evening, and we spent most of Saturday at the new Legoland Discovery Center and Aquarium in Phoenix- a fun way to begin our visit together. We will be busy keeping them entertained over the next two weeks, so my blog posts will be intermittent.

There were LOTS of Legos to play with.

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Miles LOVED building structures and testing them out on the earthquake table.

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Assembling Lego cars and sending them down a ramp was a lot of fun.

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Yup- life is good!

Melinda3 Comments

The Dark Side

I’ve been experimenting with some new (to me) Photoshop techniques which are a departure from my usual style- if I indeed have a style. No textures, more obvious textures, frames, and now this:

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What? A black background? Drama? Not my usual thing, but I like the effect on this photo.

And now this:

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Holy Cow! If you use Photoshop, you probably recognize the Topaz Glow filter (a new purchase), which I used almost full strength on this photo. A little over the top- but FUN!

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Made for Climbing

After we picked up our friends, Joan and Rudy at the airport in Mesa a couple weeks ago, we had an al fresco diner dinner under the trees at Joe’s Farm Grill in Gilbert-what a delightful place! We fell in love with the HUGE trees that seemed to be made for climbing- in fact, NO CLIMBING signs were everywhere.

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Wouldn’t you love to sit in the fork of this tree?

 

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Spirit Room

When we had visited Jerome in the past, we’d always taken note of the Spirit Room, a bar on the corner of the main drag. We had never been actually able to get inside, but always paused outside to listen to the band inside and to observe the scene- motorcycles pulling up out front and the crowd spilling out onto the sidewalk. I guess we had never been there early in the day before, because when we went in to get some water (yes, water) last Saturday, it was basically empty. While we sat and drank our waters, the motorcycles began to pull up, and by the time we left, it was getting full.

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Silliness in Jerome

Our friends of 45 years plus, Joan and Rudy, came for the weekend to celebrate Joan and my birthdays- just 5 days apart. It was a quick visit, but we managed to have an outing to the old mining town of Jerome, just over the mountain from us. Joan had been there before with us, but it was Rudy’s first trip there.

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Jerome is a funky and fun town, which inspired a bit of silliness in us.

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The photos were edited with some HDR-ish effects in On1 for an over-the-top look which I think is fitting for Jerome.

Melinda2 Comments

Golden Morning

I guess it does pay to get up early, even though you’re retired. It’s a rare day that I don’t wake up before the sun comes up; however actually getting dressed and out of the house is more challenging. The golden light backlighting the flowers after sunrise caused me to dash outside with the camera- it seems like Spring is here at last!

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