Icy Tree and Sun

Icy Tree and Sun
Originally uploaded by oshngrl

I took this picture yesterday as the sun poked it's head through the clouds and made everything sparkle. It then buried itself deeper in the clouds for the rest of the day.

Waiting for Spring

Originally uploaded by bellarosebyliz

I keep seeing pictures of beautiful flowers and it makes me yearn for spring. Today we have cloudy skies and a chance of rain. It looks dreary out. I think I will take my camera and explore a bit. Perhaps I can find beauty in the dreary. Did you capture anything today? Do share!

Terrible Tuesdays

Well, hopefully yours wasn't too bad. I am really glad this is a short week for work.

Here is a link to the $5 albums on Amazon right now.

Who got to go see Avatar last weekend? My hubby is really wanting to see it in IMAX this weekend. We might be able to work it out. Let me know what you think if you saw it.

I want to see the new movie Did You Hear About the Morgans? It looked like it would be funny.
Vince Vaughn is in Couples Retreat. He is pretty funny and that might be worth watching.

Anyone see Coco avant Chanel? I thought that one might be worth seeing as well.

And last, but not least Sherlock Holmes opens this week.

Here's to hoping your week gets better every day.

Monday Musings

Happy Monday everyone!  I have been utilizing my lunch breaks to listen to podcasts this last week and have really been enjoying myself. The one I have been getting a kick out of is called Electric Sheep. That's right. Electric Sheep. Guess what it is about. No, silly. It is about knitting. I know it sounds really boring, but it is a woman from England (Hoxton) so she has a great accent to begin with and she has various subjects each week and also reviews patterns, yarn, etc for knitting. She adds humor and a great deal of history to her podcasts, which I enjoy. The first one I heard was about tea. As you can imagine the English take their tea seriously and it is a cure-all. The last one I heard she had her younger brother as a guest and he had been riding a motorcycle through India and making leather bags. Anyway, I am coming to really enjoy podcasts and hope you have the time in your busy schedule to allow for a short interruption to listen or watch something that interests you.


Here are a few of my favorites:
Electric Sheep
Wine for Newbies 2.0
Chase Jarvis Photography
The Moth
Stuff You Should Know

If you have a favorite podcast, please advise me.  I am always open for new podcasts.
Have a wonderful week!

Bokeh Town

"What is Bokeh?", you ask. Well, let me explain (actually I will let Wiki explain)
In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light."  Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting— "good" or "bad" bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions.
Bokeh is often most visible around small background highlights, such as specular reflections and light sources, which is why it often associated with such areas. However, bokeh is not limited to highlights, as blur occurs in all out-of-focus regions of the image. - Via Wikipedia
I wanted to share a few pictures I took last week around town. I liked the bokeh lights.

 

 

 

I also went up on West Mt and took a few pics down on the town and at the beautiful moon over North Mt. Enjoy and happy Friday! Have an excellent weekend!

 

Photobooth Friday

Ok, so you know how it is so hard to find a good photobooth these days?  Well, Shutterfly has fixed that for us. They created Wink- a site that you can use from your computer (and an app for iPhone/iTouch). You use your photos from Facebook, Flickr and your computer (or iPhone) and create "photobooth strips." (They don't allow access to your Shutterfly photos yet- but they are working on that) They have options of 3 layouts: 3, 4 or 5 pictures a strip.  You can also apply 3 different effects: black/white, sepia or vivid. Once you create and edit you send them off to be printed ($2.50 and shipped anywhere in the world) and they send an email preview of what the photostrips will look like. These strips can be shared immediately on Facebook and Twitter (Yeah!). They arrive in a special photostrip case.

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BTW, they are giving away three free photostrips to the first 50,000 users who download the iPhone app. I got mine loaded and 3 credits I can't wait to use.
(Note: If you don't have the latest version of iPhone 3.1 software, you'll need to plug your device into the computer to be upgraded before you can check out the Wink/Shutterfly app)
Happy Friday and lets have some fun with photobooths this weekend!

TtV Thursday

We went out and braved the cold last week and hubby tried out the TtV photography. I think he would like it more if it wasn't so cold. I think we still had fun. Trying to get the contraption and both cameras in the right order is fun sometimes. Love the look though.

 

 

 

 

 Notice how the parking meters are backwards?  That's what happens in TtV. I forgot to flip it in Photoshop.