56: From the archives

From the archives. When some friends of mine came and visited this past summer. This is Mont Royal Park. It is affectionately called the Mountain, though it's more of a hill.

55: OMG! Snail killed Kenny! You bastard!

Ahh, this seems to be working now

Well, this is a South Park reference, for those of you who may be unfamiliar. I had a hard time with the white, but enough tweaking in PS and RAW Essentials got me here

In regards to yesterdays pictures - I got the effect by sliding teh shadow contrast and highlight contrast all the way to the right in RAW Essentials, and that's basically it.

The link to the triptych plugin is:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1006&thread=16558217&page=1

Ugly link. To lazy to fix it and make it pretty.

The snail is a Hungarian porcelin snail I picked up when I was there a few years back. It is one of the things they are known for, and I love the sheen it has. They also make some with a cool red sheen to it, besides the green. They also do 'normal' porcelin as well, all very beautiful.

Rant On
So Zoto revamped their website. Which is great. But they didn't give much notice about it, and it included doing things like taking away the blogging feature and making it a feature that needs to be paid for. Thay are also changing the galleries feature, so that we don't get unlimited galleries any more. This is fine, but I can't find any info on how many galleries us non-payers get. Very confusing, and a little dissapointing. I suppose I will go get that smugmug account now. We shall see. I'm waiting to see what all the other tweaks are.
Rant Off

54: Liam

Ok, third time is the charm. I hate how I can't fix the size of the picture after you've uploaded when you are using zoto. ERGH. Hopefully, this time it will publish and be the right size

This is my friend's son, Liam. He just turned two on Friday. Happy birthday, Liam! He is a very sweet kid, and was generous enough to share all his toy cars with me!

I was fiddling in RAW Essentials with the shadow and highlight sliders, and ended up with this. I liked the effect, so I decided to keep it.

I love his expression in this picture. His expression seems much older than he really is.

And so everyone can see how sweet he is without a lot of post processing, you get to look at another picture of him, too!

53: Triptych

My first attempt at a triptych.  I used a Photoshop action that I found, and then it was basically drag and drop into the frames. 

This is at one of the entrances to Jarry Park in Montreal.  I suppose it's a welcoming figure of fun, sprintime, and happiness.  I like the little cardinal on its left hand.  The park is where the Rogers Tennis Cup is played every year.  It brings in the big names, Roddick, Agassi, the Williams, etc. etc.  It alternates every year between the men's and women's.  The other place it is held is in Toronto, I think.  It is also where the Expos used to play many years ago.  The park was so nice.  There was a hill with kids sliding down it, and an ice skating rink.  I really need to strap my ice skates on at some point this season before it's to late!  I wanted to take pictures of the kids sliding down the hill, but I chickened out.  I got a sudden paranoia of crazed parents chasing me through the park yelling at me.  So I took pictures of the scultpure instead.

I had my first paid job as a photographer today.  wOOt!!  I had a lot of fun, and I'm happy with the results.  It was a group shot, so I used the 'everybody close your eyes and open them when I count to three.'  Needless to say it seemed to work.  I have very few where someone has their eyes closed.  I used a fill in flash for the faces, which worked well.  My boyfriend has been kind enough to lend me his flash that he used to use with his 35mm Yashica.  Glad I had it because I don't think the on board flash would have been strong enough.  And no, I won't be posting shots from it.  Sorry!

I got about half way through commenting on PADs yesterday, and am hoping to get through the rest today or tomorrow.

You guys rock.  It's amazing seeing everybody's shots, the little pieces of your lives and how people see things through a camera.  Kudos to everyone!

52: Still Standing

Isn't mother nature neat?

51: Deer

50: Me

1.6 kilometers to 1 mile.  That's the conversion for those asking about yesterdays PAD

So, I finally got the courage to put myself in front of the camera.  You can ask my friends and my boyfriend, I HATE having my picture taken.  I always make a face and make everybody mad.

One thing I realized today: 10 seconds is not a lot of time to run in sit on the chair.  To add to wishlist: remote shutter release for my camera

No worries, I made sure the ice was nice and thick.  Minus 20 C weather helps as well.  So, this is me.

I'm hoping to make this an on again off again series of me sitting in a chair in random places.  We'll see how far I get