Does it count?

"Scanner  Photography" is kind of fun.  If you place an object on your scanner with the lid open and scan in a slightly darkened room you get an amazingly good image.  I have been playing with the technique recently scanning various items and came up with the following.  The image consists of a single layer of coins (all US, pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters) placed in a hoop on the scanner.  How many coins are there, and what is the total amount of money present?

This is MY squirrel!

I was taking a walk when I saw this Red-Tailed(?) hawk grab a squirrel out of a tree.  He (she?) obviously wanted me to know that this squirrel was taken!

I love the way he is making sure the squirrel doesn't take off (or maybe he is just trying to hide his treasure).

 About an hour later dinner was still in progress.

I love windmills...

Enough said?

Taken in the Potomac State Forest in West Virginia.

A good way to end a vacation!

This was taken this past summer from a Paddle Wheeler on the Connecticut River near East Haddom Connecticut.

You have to take an old steam locomotive to get to the Deep River Landing and then take a cruise up to the large bridge at East Haddom.  It was a wonderful day and a great way to say goodby to the kids!

Another Topaz

Perhaps I should worry that the images produced when using the Topaz filters (http://www.topazlabs.com/) are not photographs at all (even though they start out that way).  I spent some time seeing what the different filters did to different type of photos.  The photo shown below, taken at my sister-in-law's house, struck me as really neat.  The photo was terribly underexposed, taken at sunset, and was not really worth saving (but I seldom delete anything!).  I tried using the "simplify" filters and came up with:

Real? No!  Interesting? Yes! For those wondering, the following is the original photograph.

As always, click on the image for a larger view.

Are you laughing at me?

This has been a strange winter so far. 

This is a shot of the bench in the back yard a few days after the "blizzard of 2012" (December 26th).  I like the way the snow is drooping, making the bench smile at me!  I took the photo of the picnic table just before the snow stopped.  According to the National Weather Service we had 12.5" of snow during the storm.  It took two weeks for the snow to finally melt.

A little more Topaz

I am still trying to see what all I can do with the Topaz programs.  I like the fact that they can be accessed directly from Lightroom, and I can see where it will take a bit of time to really learn their true value.  Here is one that surprised me a bit.  This is a snowflake photo that shows some amazing colors--presumably because of slight color differences that are not visible in the original image.

Keep in mind that the snowflake itself has no color!  As usual, you can click on the image to get the full-scale version.