Tag Archives: photoshop

rad radko’s

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Many years ago, my husband and I started a tradition at the small company we own. We give the employees (and ourselves!) a Christopher Radko ornament for Christmas. We all have a nice collection of them now and I decided to take photos of some of them today and do a post for the You Capture blog meme. The theme this week was “Holiday Decor”.  I used my little Canon G9, hand-held with no flash, and then filtered the images with Topaz Labs Adjust and Totally Rad Dirty Pictures, two plug-ins for Photoshop. It was a lot of fun just “playing” with these photos, especially since so much of my photography is for Getty and iStock, who have pretty strict criteria for what you can upload. Happy holidays everyone, hope you had a fun, peace filled weekend!

teaser tuesdays

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Teaser Tuesdays asks you to : Grab your current read, Open to a random page, Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. I finally finished the Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge. I had started it in April but set it aside unable to get into it, this time it took however, and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. Each chapter is a short story and they are all linked by the main character of Olive, a stern (and not always likable!) retired schoolteacher in the small town of Crosby, Maine. Themes of aging, marriage, and the always messy expectations of how we relate to our friends, spouses, and children are explored through the brutally honest eyes of Olive Kitteridge.

Today I’ve picked up something a bit lighter from my TBR pile, The Next Thing on my List by Jill Smolinski. The reviews say it is a charming summer read and when I opened to my teaser quote I liked what I saw!  This was catching a wave, and – my suspicions had been correct – I’d never done anything like it before. It felt as if the water beneath me had turned into a sea of hands that kept spiriting my board up and forward – gliding and skipping and lifting until I was shrieking with the unexpected thrill of it and wishing that this amazing rush would never, ever have to end.

Surfer girl photo is by Casch52 on Flickr. I tweaked it a little in my photo program:)

dog’s life

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This is Jake. A couple of times each summer, Jake comes over with our friends Ann and Shirley and he goes for a swim in our pool. He has trained us humans to throw a ball into the water and he swims out after it – we repeat this drill over and over again. We love to watch Jake chase his yellow tennis ball because he does it with such complete joy and abandon. When I go in the pool it has to be warm enough. I try not to get my hair wet because I don’t want it to get frizzy and I’m afraid the chlorine will turn my expensive highlights green. I don’t really have a bathing suit I like, you know, that elusive swim suit that makes me look ten pounds slimmer and ten years younger? I want to be like Jake. I want to jump into the pool and enjoy the feeling of the cold refreshing water as it washes over me. I don’t want to worry about my hair or what I’m wearing or how my body looks. I guess what I’m saying is I want to live like a dog, content with the simple delights that each moment brings, unaware of the past and unafraid of the future. Hmm, maybe the next time we’re sitting out by the pool I’ll have Mr. bookbabie toss a jar of Sanders Hot Fudge Topping into the deep end and we’ll see what happens;)

I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren’t certain we knew better. ~George Bird Evans
See other (not quite) Wordless Wednesday participants here.

teaser tuesdays

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Teaser Tuesday asks you to : Grab your current read, Open to a random page, Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. I’m reading The Laws of Harmony by Judith Ryan Hendricks.  I won the book at a giveaway from the book blog Reading with Ti as well as a pretty shawl like the one on the book cover, thanks again Ti! It’s about a woman whose life is turned upside down when her boyfriend dies in a mysterious accident. She takes off in an attempt to reinvent herself and begin a new life. My book club just finished Paul Auster’s, The Book of Illusions, which is a much darker take on the same theme. A character leaving a life of sorrow behind, isolating themselves from their grief and from other people. We had an interesting discussion in book club about this, about how we deal with what life throws at us and about identity, who we would be if you took away our families, jobs, and friends. My two sentences from this book are from page 282, I feel disorientated, one foot in Aromina, the other in Harmony. And the memories will be back soon enough. I did the photo-mainpluation a while ago and thought it illustrated this idea perfectly!

andrew

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Okay, I should be paying bills right now but for the past week I’ve been indulging my spirit and my spirit seems to want to create angel photos. I did this one of a little boy angel but I can’t think of a name for him. If you have any bolts of inspiration as you look into his gorgeous blue eyes, please leave me a comment so I’ll know what to call him. I had two of my other angel photos put on canvas recently by uploading them to Canvas on Demand. They came out great and I highly recommend the company. You can choose to have your photos given a light painterly look, which I did with both and they really do look like oil paintings. Very cool! I suppose I should log off now and go pay those bills, unfortunately feeding my spirit will not keep the bill collectors at bay or the lights on 🙂