Window Views - Abandoned doors

This service station has been closed for a number of years - the bay doors abandoned to random painters.

My World - Snow

Last Wednesday we received our weekly dose of snow, except this time it began with a couple of inches of sleet and was falling about 2 inches/hour. It was also being driven by a strong wind. Total accumulation was just over 8 inches. Offices and schools closed early, allowing people the chance to drive in a snow storm and complicating the snow plow drivers work. The heavy snow snapped tree limbs and caused power outages (but not at our house). Of course there were numerous traffic accidents, cars stuck in the snow and TV reports diligently reporting while standing in the snow! Of course, now there will be investigations into why ice stuff is slippery; cars are not snowmobiles; and power company repair trucks are not deployed before the snow starts (the highway people did get out ahead of the storm). On snow days around here, it is an advantage to be retired!

Canada geese honking loudly and looking for a place to land

Snow at night

The morning after

From my home office

Snow on the north side of trees

PhotoHunt - Standing in snow

I spotted this snow lover standing in the wheat field behind our house. He and a friend were taking turns sliding down the hill he had just climbed.

Sky Watch - PhotoShopped skies

I use Photoshop Elements 2.0 for editing my photos. Most of my posts are resized to 900 or 600 pixels and saved with low resolution. I some times crop, adjust color, contrast, brightness, etc when I believe the straight out of the camera was not exactly what I saw. I do at times go beyond the simple edits to change the visual effects of the original image. The header "Horizontal clouds" posted on January 26 is an example. The above image was taken on January 24 has only been resized. The image below was cropped and I applied auto color enhancement. PhotosShop's algorithm determined that the image should be grayer than my Nikon. I used the Enhance->Adjust Color->Hue & Saturation features to get the colors in the header.

I also like the saturated blue shift below.

Window Views - Gingerbread windows

There are a number of these Victorian styled homes in the area - some original, some restored, some more modern copies. This is one of the more colorful ones. If I remember correctly, this was an old, drab house before a recent major, quite successful, renovation.

My World - Family visit

picture by Marianne

My Colorado son and granddaughter arrived Sunday (after an unscheduled overnight in Chicago due to airline delays). They went to West Virginia to visit family there and will be back with us Thursday, before returning home this weekend.

PhotoHunt - Little hands, big hands

Bryce reaching for Uncle Mike's hands

Little hands, big spoon

Grandpa's soothing hand

With Mommy's helping hand