The Seasons of Lake Greenwood

A little over a year ago I took my first HDR photo of Lake Greenwood in winter. My friend Ryan introduced me to the process through some of his awesome photographs. For those of you who don't know, HDR (or High Dynamic Range) is a method where you take multiple exposures of the same photo and merge them together to create an image with intensely exaggerated luminance. The process is pretty cool. It's a little complicated for me since I don't have a fancy pants camera with auto exposure bracketing built in! But I really like the effect it gives.

Anyway, after I did the first one I thought it would be a nice experiment to document the changing seasons reflected in Lake Greenwood's landscape. So every few months I went back to this lake and tried to set up the same shot. This is the compilation of those four shoots. Visually, I like the cooler seasons better than the warmer ones. But overall I'm happy with the finished piece. If nothing else, it proves that we do in fact have seasons here in Florida!

Lake Greenwood in January

Forgive me blogland, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last post. That sounds like a really long time as I type it, but it flew by in the blink of an eye. Life has been a bit of a whirlwind since October. But, it seems like it's always that way now. Regardless of the time of year. The older I get, the faster time seems to move. It's not fair, really. Youth is wasted on the young...

Speaking of time, that is a good segue into my first post of this year (which, coincidentally, is the finale of my first post from last year). This is the last in the series of the HDR project I started about the changing seasons reflected in the landscape of Lake Greenwood. I'm pleased with the way this one turned out. I love the reddish-orange colors. Unfortunately, I was supposed to shoot this in November. I'm sure it would've had a lot more color then. Oh well. My next post will be the final project - showing all four seasons together.

Lake Greenwood in January ~ HDR (5 shots - 2 up, 2 down)

Random Act of Kindness in the Jardin des Tuileries

So I've been slacking on the post this week. There are several reasons for this, really. But I would like to place the majority of the blame for my laziness on PHB - Post-Halloween Blues. It's a serious condition and it affects thousands of people worldwide. It's like I blew all my creativity in the frenzy and excitement of my favorite holiday. And now, I'm just blllaaahhhh. Oh well, I'll get over it. In the meantime, I'm going to pick up where I left off before the most awesome month of the year took over, with pics of Paris...

Whilst strolling through the Jardin des Tuileries, we happened upon this lovely little scene that was just waiting to be photographed. There's something special about capturing strangers in random acts of kindness. This sweet gentleman brought a big bag of birdseed to the garden just to feed the sparrows. If that doesn't make you make you tilt your head and sigh, "aw" then, well... I don't know about you.

This last one reminds me of a line from the movie "Roxanne". When Steve Martin's character is coming up with twenty jokes better than "Big Nose" one of them is:

 "Complimentary: You must love the little birdies to give them this to perch on!"

That's a great movie, by the way. If you haven't seen it, you should.

Halloween is the fairest of them all...

Halloween is over. Uggh, it pains me to even type the words. But all good things must come to an end, I suppose. I bid my favorite time of the year adeu and leave you with some of my favorite shots of my best (of the three I wore) costume - courtesy of Photo Booth.

me as the Evil Queen from Snow White

Would you like an apple?

Looks like someone had fun in the photo booth! Yes, I know I'm a dork.

Potion Jars

I have time to squeeze in one more Halloween project post, right?

This one was super easy and fun to make with my daughter. Using whatever glass jars or bottles you have (some of these I bought, some were perrier or pasta sauce bottles), just add some dollar store toys or things you find in your backyard and stick some spooky labels on. You can also add a little pizazz to the tops with some burlap, corks, and twine. Some of the labels were rub on transfers that I bought at Michaels. The other labels came from fabulous designer - Kristine McKay - who shares a pdf of these labels you can download for free! I tweaked a few of mine by changing the labels to reflect what is in the jar, but you can just print them out on sticker paper then cut them out and slap them on! My four year old loved adding the objects and drops of food coloring.  Some of the jars contain those bugs that grow larger in water, so every day we check on how big they're getting. Be creative and have fun!

 

 

Catacombes de Paris

I thought I'd round out Halloween week with some more creepy catacomb photos. Here's a little history of this not-to-be-missed attraction:

The Catacombs in Paris consist of a network of subterranean tunnels and rooms located in what were Roman-era limestone quarries. The portion of the catacombs open to the public is only a small part of an extensive network of underground tunnels, which spans more than 300km. 

These quarries were converted into a mass tomb near the end of the 18th century. At the time, parts of Paris were suffering from disease, which was due to contamination caused by improper burials and mass graves in church graveyards.  So it was decided to remove the bones discreetly and place them in the abandoned quarries. The process was conducted with reverence and discretion – the quarry space was blessed before any bones were moved there, bones were always moved in a quiet parade of carts accompanied by priests, and these movements always took place at night.  

The Catacombs of Paris now contain the bodies of roughly 6-7 million Parisians.

Bubbling Cauldron

Yet another easy/cheap/fun Halloween project to make. Kids can help with this one too!

Recipe for a bubbling cauldron (hee hee):

• 1 medium/large cauldron (mine is about 14" diameter): $7 from Walmart
• 2 cans of insulating foam: about $3/each
• Green paint
• Newspaper

Crumple up some sheets of newspaper and stuff into the bottom of your cauldron. As you can see below, I stuffed it nearly to the top. Then just spray the foam around in different bursts so that it covers the paper and has some texture by giving it that bubbly look. I don't quite know how to explain this part in writing... hopefully you get the idea. I found out the hard way that this project takes more than one can of foam. A smaller cauldron would probably only use 1 can.

This is what it looked like after only one can of the foam! Not quite what I was envisioning.

Day 2. Ah, that's better - one more can did the trick. Just the right amount of bubbling ooziness. Make sure you spray some over the edges so that it has that 'dripping' effect.

Next just paint it green! I used two different shades of green. The second (darker) green supposedly glows in the dark. We shall see. Here's where the kids come in. My 4-year-old loved painting it and picking out the eyeballs and bugs to decorate it with! No gross additions are shown here because I plan on using it for my work Halloween decor sans bugs. But can't you just see some lovely worms, roaches, eyeballs, etc. laying on top?