Sunday, December 18, 2011

The Last of Autumn

Hailey and Jackie and I spent some time at Summer's Past yesterday. We had warm drinks...Hailey's was hot chocolate with whipped cream on top. The sun was iffy...and it was a little cold. I took a few photos anyway.








Then we went to a great pizza place and had a lovely lunch.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Sunset

Taken the same day as the sunrise photos. I don't have a good view of sunsets here but could see the pink orange sky.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Red Sunrise

We had a lovely sunrise this morning. I saw the red glow through the window it was reflected on the wall and the room was filled with red light. I went to get camera and couldn't remember where I put it down. Found it and then had to put in a card. Usually my camera always has a card. The card I grabbed was full so had to erase the old photos....this all took time and the view of the sunrise did fade a bit. Still I got a couple of photos. The view in the top photo once had a tree that I photographed many times and then one day I noticed it was gone. I miss the tree...


Friday, November 11, 2011

Veterans Day

Armistice Day was important to my great Uncle Burt Clark. He was there at the front when the guns were silenced at the end of World War I. It was on the the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. He always wondered why they waited until the exact hour to stop. He always remembered the silence. I remember when Armistice Day was changed to Veterans Day and my Uncle Burt wasn't all that happy about the change. He thought that they should have chosen a different day for Veterans. For awhile Veterans day was changed to the fourth Monday of October to make a long week end. Uncle Burt was even more unhappy about that change. Later it was changed back to the original day. By then he had passed away. Uncle Burt is buried at Fort Rosecrans on Point Loma in San Diego. He always said that was where he wanted to be buried. The cemetary was long closed but they often had openings on a first come first serve basis and the timing was right and he got his place. It is beautiful there.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Pastel Class

Last week I worked on this picture of my old photo of a rose while in class. The painting is not finished but the instructor wanted me to stop working on the rose and finish up the background and put in the leaves. There is more I want to do to this but now am undecided...what to do?


This is a scan of the original photo.


Back in the mid 1990s when I first got on the internet and made my very first home page I used another rose, the one one the left below, on my web site. I took away the background and put that rose on a pink background. Later I made a gif out of that rose and used a transparent background.


This rose was modified using a paint program similar to Photoshop.  I started a section on my web site with other rose photos that I scanned and modified. I upgraded my computer so I could use the Photoshop program that I had bought. I got the PS as an upgrade when my other photo editing program was bought by PS...lucky I had registered it...that program came free when I bought my first scanner. For some reason this photo was stolen by others and put into many photo collections. I used to get upset at that and write to the collectors asking them to take my rose off their pages. Mostly they did.

I have tried to draw that rose several times and have not been happy with my work on it. URF! Anyway I couldn't go to my class this past Wednesday...E R made plans and I needed to pick up Hailey from school.

Three views of the rose put together into one picture.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Protesting Wall Street

Socialism doesn't work. Communism doesn't work. For some reason a few people have forgotten history. They are protesting Wall Street...whatever they think that represents. The catch phrase is corporate greed. What is a corporation? Do they even know? Corporations are owned by anyone who buys stock in that corporation. Hopefully the stockholders will receive some sort of payout when the corporation makes a profit. If the corporation is successful the stockholders may sell their stock for more than they paid for it. It is a way to invest their money. Corporations pay taxes on profits. Then the owners...stockholders that receive a payout, a dividend, again pay taxes on that income. Our government is right there to take a cut of everything. Corporations are regulated by laws that restrict everything they do as a business.

For years businesses have moved out of the country. Most things we buy these days are made in other countries. That means fewer jobs for the people here. We also make it easy for people from other countries to come here illegally to work for low wages and take entry level jobs that in the past would be given to our young people. They come from countries that encourage a high birth rate that their economy cannot support. They come here for a better life, but they are exploited too. Then taxpayers here must make up for the benefits and taxes illegals don't pay. Our laws also make it easy for employers to hire workers and call them independent contractors. Employers don't keep good records of independent contractors and they don't pay for income taxes and benefits for these workers. Most of these employers are small businesses, such as small contractors, restaurants, landscapers, and housekeeping agencies...to name a few. Our government has enabled illegals to come here and bring their children. The children go to our schools and grow up American. Then our country sends these young people back to places they don't know and don't fit into. They don't know how to live in their birth country. We let that happen. I think we owe these children something. Though many of our tax payers may not agree. We let our own children age out of foster care and give them very little help.

We have built an economy based on inflation. The government likes inflation because when wages and costs go up taxes increase. Even in recession we have inflation. The worst example of inflation is the cost of homes. Our government could have stepped in and put a stop to the artificial increases in home prices. They let the scam continue until our banks and financial institutions had loaned millions...billions...on inflated values. Now we have people that owe more on homes than they are worth. Where did the money go? The banks didn't get that money. They are holding the bag when they have to foreclose on property that is worth less than what they are owed. The money in those banks come from depositors. The real estate profits went to real estate brokers and to the lucky folks that sold property for lots more than they paid for it. And a share of those profits went to the government when all that gain was taxed.

It isn't corporate greed we need to worry about. It is individual greed. It is the government...those in power in our government that want to suck the worth out of our country. People in government are looking at Social Security for some way take it away from the people it was promised to as a pension. Employers and employees have paid into Social Security for years and now there are those in government that want to rob it. Social Security does not belong to the government. It belongs to the people that paid for it.

Protesting against big corporation and big banks is silly. The only people that could win in this situation is the socialists that have wanted to take our country down for years. Our government has made some big mistakes but with some common sense we can put things right again.




Monday, September 26, 2011

Green Spider on Pink Rose

David came and told me about the green spider on the rose. So I grabbed my camera and went out. The sun was still hidden by morning clouds so the lighting was very soft. I planned to shoot the pink roses today anyway. But intended to wait for the sun.



Sunday, September 25, 2011

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Hummingbirds and Roses

These photos have been posted on pbase, but thought I would add them to my blog. It was a nice day out and I put my Minolta mirror f8 500mm lens on my Oly camera. The old Minolta Rokkor lenses work great with the 4/3rd system cameras. My old film cameras were Minolta. I used my second Minolta for over 25 years. Loved the thing. I was happy that I could use my old lenses on my Oly DSLR cameras. Then added to my trove of Rokkor lenses going on ebay. On of my finds was the mirror lens. When I started checking out ebay the Rokkor lenses were a lot less expensive than they seem to be now. Here are the photos.