Eagle Pictures from Our Backyard

Do you love eagles? My husband certainly does! We were all thrilled to see a bald eagle fly into our backyard yesterday to feast on the Thanksgiving turkey carcass along with the turkey buzzards. I thought I'd share some pictures.

 Coming in for a landing - He sat further back in the field for a little while, probably trying to make sure everything was safe.

Looking right at us - We tried to be very still so we wouldn't disturb him. They have terrific eyesight, and I suspect he would have seen our motion through the window.

Defending his rights to this portion of the turkey carcass - apparently the buzzards were getting too close for his liking

  

I wish we could have heard him!

He's coming closer ...

We've had a variety of animals eating at our "slop pile" in the past (skunks, neighborhood dogs, foxes), but an eagle is more than we could have hoped for! 

 

  

Look at that - he's standing right in our yard! For those of you familiar with our backyard, this is amazing!

  

We must have watched him for at least 15 minutes.

  

See the turkey bone in his mouth?

Something spooked him, and he flew off suddenly. It was amazing to watch.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Senior pictures for my nephew

It's been awhile since I posted any of my photography, so I thought I'd share the senior pictures I took for my nephew. The lighting was terrible because

• I don't have professional lighting, 
• it was dark outside the only time I could get together with him, and 
• I only had chandelier light and my camera's built-in flash to work with. 

Even with all of those negative factors, I love how these pictures turned out!

Isn't he handsome? This is his choir suit and bowtie, and it just may end up being his senior picture for the yearbook.

When our Wal-Mart still carried fabric, I picked up the fabric for this backdrop out of their $1-2 fabrics of unknown fiber content. It looks like a shiny satin, but it's washable. It's also matte, almost like velvet, on the other side. I bought a few yards of it and then seamed two pieces together to get a nice-sized backdrop that's big enough to let an adult stand on it for full-body pictures.

This pose was my nephew's idea. I've learned to let people make up their own poses if they want to because it often captures their personality in ways I would have never thought of. This picture is the perfect example. (Of course, I always have pose ideas in mind because I don't meet very many people that are comfortable enough in front of a camera to make up their own.)

I used a plain white sheet as the backdrop for this picture.

Here's that black backdrop again. It looks just as nice with a casual shot as it does with a formal one.

Do you notice his hands? A lot of people try to tell the person they're photographing exactly how to place their hands in a photo like this. Some of my relatives tried to get him to change his hands so that you could see both of them (rather than having the right one tucked into his arm). I took a few pictures like that, but they didn't look natural at all. Then I told him put his hands the way that comes naturally to him, and he looked more relaxed and natural. Of course, if you have someone that looks like they don't know what to do with their hands, you just have to intervene. :)

Well, those are my favorites. I hope he likes them, too!

Vacation Pictures: What we did!

I have lots more things to share with you, but I thought I'd go ahead and finish sharing my vacation pictures before the Christmas season overtakes me and I completely forget. I know several of my family are itching to see these, so here goes ...

We were at Ocean City for the week, so we decided to go to the beach. Let me tell you, November is the perfect time to go to the beach! :) There were no sunbathers, no crowds - we were the only ones on the actual beach, except for a lady walking her dog. It's the perfect time to gather shells, too. We filled a bucket in no time.

Anyway, while we were at the beach, I just stood by the water and enjoyed the sound of the waves coming in. Of course I took pictures of them coming in, too! Check it out:



I thought it was pretty funny that the only tracks other than ours happened to belong to a seagull!



Back at the condo, one of the kids' favorite activities was feeding the seagulls. Our "neighbors" fed them once, and my kids wanted to do it every day thereafter. In fact, we had a loyal seagull that came every day and perched on the post just outside our door. I have a picture of him - he was recognizable from the rest!



Of course we spent a lot of time doing this:



And, in parting, check out the view I had when I stepped off our back porch at dusk and looked left:



We're hoping to get the same condo again for our next bonus week!

New photo software: Paint Shop Pro Ultimate Photo X2

I am totally in love with this program!! It was on sale this week at Staples for $70 after mail-in rebate (regular $100). I'm long overdue for a semi-professional photo editing program, so I treated myself, thanks to a months' worth of personal money.

Why did I need a new, better program? First of all, while Picasa has some great features, I needed more control over my images. Secondly, I needed to be able to fix and then save my images as high-resolution images for printing purposes. Thirdly, I've been wanting to try my hand at digital scrapbooking to see if it's right for me, but I had no program that was compatible with the level of control I wanted.

After seeing this software on sale, I checked several reviews and found that it scored high marks for value and end results. I originally thought I'd buy Photoshop Elements the next time it went on sale, but some reviewers commented that this was even better than PSE.

Anyway, I was not disappointed - not one little bit! Check out two photos I've adjusted just last night to see why I'm so thrilled with this program. (Click on the photos to see them larger. The smaller size doesn't do them justice.)

First of all, this was my favorite smile of all the pictures I took of my son with his new cast on. However, the lighting was terrible, and so was the white balance. I originally thought I'd have to use another shot, but check out the end result of playing with Paint Shop Pro Photo x2:



What I did: adjusted the white balance (Color Balance), removed distractions in the background (Retouch and Restore - Object Remover) and removed digital "noise" (Digital Camera Noise Removal).



Here's another photo I took for artistic purposes, but it didn't turn out the way I had envisioned. Enter PSPPx2 ...



What I did: straightened the photo, added fill flash, removed digital "noise" and adjusted depth of field. The result: exactly the photo I had envisioned!

I'm excited about the possibilities of this software! I'm also excited about the fact that I can finally save my retouched .jpeg images in a large enough file size to develop online. [Save File - Options - Lossless Encoding] The end result is as large as, if not larger than, the original.

As if that were not enough, I got a call today about taking pictures for a January wedding. This was a referral from a friend who had me take her son's senior pictures. The bride can't afford the $5000 (!) price tag of the professionals in our area, so she wondered if I could do it. I'd love to!

I think I got my software just in time. :)

I got my daughter's 2-1/2-year pictures done, too!

I took these at our local free zoo and play park (the same place as my son's) yesterday, so I thought I'd share them, too. This is one of my favorite play outfits of hers. I picked it up at Goodwill for $3. It's some of the best $3 I've ever spent ... That smile reminds me so much of my husband's sister's girl!

Of course, there were plenty of outtakes with this little livewire, but I thought this one was especially cute. It really showcases her personality.

Oh, did you notice the pink shoes with the red outfit? That's just her. She wouldn't wear anything else. Believe me, I tried! I guess it'll make something good to journal about when I do the scrapbook page! :)

I finally took my son's 4-1/2-year pictures.

We took our family day at the local free zoo and play park today, and I finally got my chance to get those 2-month-overdue pictures.

I need a little help choosing, though. Would you choose the first, second or third one? I think they all mirror his personality quite well, so I'm finding it hard to choose.

Of course, he's 4-1/2, so I'm bound to get a few outtakes like this ...

Or this ...
Yep, he's a typical boy! :) But at least he posed for me!

Senior Pictures!

Okay, here are a few of the senior pictures I took last week. I'm so excited to get to share them with you! All of these were taken at her home, so I "made up" props as we went. (Their property is a treasure trove of awesome props!)

First of all, here are the "dressier" ones.



And to show the cowgirl that she is at heart ...

And finally, a picture of her with her English mastiff puppy (who at 10 months is taller than me and weighs more than I do - she's going to be HUGE!) ...

I was very pleased with how these turned out. Of course, you probably guessed that I took over 100 pictures. You have to take a lot of pictures to get enough "keepers."

Pictures from the beach

Beaches aren't necessarily a novelty around here, but they are always beautiful. I always take my camera when we go because you never know what pictures you might get.

There was a small beach near where we held revival last week, and I took these pictures while we were there.

Nothing extraordinary, but they were pretty, so I thought I'd share!

Vacation Photos: Luray Caverns

Tonight I thought I'd share the rest of my vacation pictures with you, before I forget entirely. These were taken at Luray Caverns. I wasn't sure how my camera would function in the lighting, so I took each picture with flash and without flash. (I much preferred the pictures without flash.)

I'm sure it goes without saying that I took more pictures than these (around 90, to be exact), but these are my favorites.



I took this one (above) with the panoramic setting on the camera.




This is the lake that's so clear it appears to have a mirror image instead of water at the bottom. It's rather small here, but closeup it catches all the little details. I was thrilled with how it turned out!





I really like the lighting on this one. It's the part they call the wishing well, if you're familiar with Luray Caverns. I liked how the formations on the bottom right almost look like an alligator. Added to that, the light is casting a greenish tint on it!

So there you have them - my favorite vacation pictures!

More vacation photos: Skyline Drive

I almost forgot to post more pictures from our vacation! This is the perfect day to do so since I had a full day with a funeral, migraine headache and church tonight. (Have you ever tried to play the piano for church while recovering from a migraine? It's not fun.)

These are pictures I took at various overlooks and stops along Skyline Drive in VA. Of course I took more than just these, but these are probably my favorites. The mountains are so beautiful!

The deer are almost tame. We passed several groups of them, and you can see that some were quite close to the road. I'm used to deer running when they see and hear vehicles, but several of them kept eating (or resting) as though they were completely used to traffic. We still slowed down every time we saw some deer, though, just in case.

I'm Back! Pictures are here ...

This first set of pictures was taken last weekend when our fellow pastor friend and his daughter came for a weekend away. We took them to Assateague where we got to see the wild ponies and the beach. It was a pretty cold day to be on the beach, but they enjoyed it nonetheless.

So here are a few pictures I took of the ponies, since I haven't been back to Assateague since I got a good zoom lens ...


This friendly horse would have come right into the van, if we had let her! I saw her coming and quickly shut the side door to the van, where we were eating our homemade subs. Sure enough, she managed to poke her nose through the window we hadn't been able to get up in time! She stayed at our van window for several minutes. Fortunately for us, she didn't try any of her biting tricks. And we got some fun pictures for our friends to take with them! (A note of caution: We never feed or touch the horses and never encourage them to come close to us. They are wild animals and capable of hurting people.)

Sorry about having to "white out" the faces in this photo. I don't have any software (that I know of) that has the blurring feature for faces. But I really wanted to share this photo I took for them on the beach. I wanted to make it like a personalized postcard.

And here is a favorite photo from one of our walks in the marshes ...

All in all, I was very pleased with the photo ops from this trip!