Sunday, September 10, 2006

Picture Post, Sunday September 10, 2006

Give these guys a click.

How about a beach picture after sunset? If you follow this blog, it's no big surprise. This was taken on Panama City Beach many moons ago in the summer of 1982. I love my Nikon dSLR, but you just can't top Kodachrome slides. Maybe digital will equal it some day, but it ain't there yet.

This is a night picture I took around 1983. Kinda scary thinking that it has been that long, but, there ya go. That's how it is. This is a night view of Monroe, Louisiana, taken looking across the Ouachita River (WASH-i-taw) from West Monroe, Louisiana. The thing about this photo, which is a scan from a slide, is that it had all sorts of reflections from all of the lights in the photo, which bounced around the elements in the lens. I knew this was a good photo, but the reflections ruined it. But, with the scanning into digital form, and a little Photoshop Elements, I was able to remove the goofy reflections in the sky, and leave just the lights and the 'real' reflections in the water. I love that the whole scanning and software thingy lets me give new life to old photos that just had a problem or two keeping them from being really good photos. Cool.

This scan is something a dear old friend had written on the condensation on his bedroom window one day when I was over for a visit around December of 1982, and had my camera with me. I've always liked this and it was cool to come across it again while scanning my old slides.

North Louisiana doesn't do fall very well. There are mostly pines and not that many hardwoods. So in fall, the leaves turn and fall without much notice. It always seemed as if there was no fall color, only that all of a sudden, many trees were bare, and the only color was in the green of all the pine trees. But in Lovely Wife's (Fee-ON-say back then) back yard there was this little sweetgum sapling that had this one leaf left on it, and it was beautiful and pitiful at the same time. It had a real Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree kinda vibe. I didn't do anything to this photo, and I'm not really sure why the background looks like that. It doesn't really look like the bokeh (out of focus areas) of any of my other photos taken with this camera. It looks like a special effect, but it isn't.


This is a personal favorite of mine of Lovely Wife from the early years. She wasn't that practiced at the 'evil eye' way back then. It just came across as cute instead of intimidating.


This last one is of the big ol' oak tree that is in the front yard of the house in Monroe, Louisiana that I grew up in. Well, ages 12-21 anyway. This was a grand looking tree and the ivy Sainted Mother started on it looked cool too. I tried the gaussian blur thingy, thinking that the slightly blurry look would give it a nostalgic feel, but it and nothing else I tried looked good. So this is just pretty much a straight slide scan.

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