New house in the neighborhod…
The resort we stay at with our RV was originally an Airstream Park — they only started letting in other types of motor homes and trailers about 12 years ago. Many people on our block are "old-timers" and it is a big deal when someone gives their Airstream for a park model trailer. Our neighbors across the street have been Airstreamers for a long time. About five years ago they stopped driving the trailer back and forth to Pennsylvania, and this winter they gave it up for a roomier park model. These photos were taken on "moving day.
The Airstream is moved off the lot…
…and the new house is brought in.
One more nest builder…
This last photo of a nest building bird is of a Taveta Golden Weaver. A multitude of nests hung from the trees, and this little creature was working hard on making this the perfect nest.
Nesting family…
Following up on yesterday's post, another nesting photo, this time a pair of African Spoonbills. It appeared that the male was grooming his mate as she sat on the nest. He worked on her for quite some time.
Nesting…
Yesterday, at Disney's Animal Kingdom, we saw birds of several different types building nest and nesting. While it was fascinating to see, we had to wonder why all this mating activity in the middle of winter. Could it be that this unusually warm weather is causing the birds to mate earlier than they normally would? You have to wonder. This photo is of a Roseate Spoonbill building a nest.
Underwater beauty…
A day at Disney's Animal Kingdom. I took lots of photos with the DSLR, but I used the iPhone to capture the underwater hippo.
Mickey says Happy Birthday…
Tonight I captured the fireworks over Cinderella's Castle in the Magic Kingdom with my iPhone . I nice way to spend my birthday. Do you think Mickey Mouse staged them just for me?
Goats on the trail…
We were bike riding on the Withlochoochee Trail today (a Rails-to-Trails path near us in Florida) when, in the small town of Nobleton, we passed a property with goats in a pen. I stopped and took a photo of a mother goat and her twins.
A bit later, on our way back, we came across the twins again. Only this time they had broken out of the pen and were happily nibbling the grass on the side of the trail. The last I saw of them they had crossed trail again and were near their pen, but still on the outside. There wasn't a person in sight, so I hope the youngsters were able to get themselves home.
One more video…
This blog is not about video, but I have one more video to post — to show off my granddaughter Brianna, AND to demonstrate the video editing feature in the new Lightroom 4 Beta. With Lightroom 3, the current version, you can import video, but videos cannot be edited. With version 4, you can actually edit the video to make exposure and color corrections. The program allows you to choose a frame, make adjustments, and apply those adjustments to the entire video. The two images below are of one frame from the video, before and after adjustments.
Before adjustments.
After adjustments.
Lightroom 4 Beta video…
Yesterday I started learning about Lightroom 4 Beta - and today I learned a little more. Lightroom 3 lets you import video files, but you cannot do any editing. The new version allows for low level video editing. You can change your enter and exit points of the video, and you can make adjustments in the exposure, color balance, etc. I was experimenting with this short video, which I shot at the playground of Brianna and Eddie with my Nikon D90 DSLR. Click on the link to see the video: 2012-01-28- Grandpa&Brianna
I have a much better video of Brianna climbing a tall ladder in the playground, but, not being much of a videographer, I was holding the camera in portrait view, which is a no-no. The video is good, but you have to turn your head sideways to view it. I haven't figured out how to change the orientation, but if I do I will post it either here or on Facebook. It is really cute!
Lightroom 4 in Beta…
My go-to program for digital photo processing is Adobe Lightroom. I have been using Lightroom since its inception in 2006, when the first preview (Beta) version was released. During the initial Beta stage I wasn't sure that I really needed Lightroom. It seem pretty neat, but I was a longtime Photoshop user, and it allowed me to do pretty fair job of photo editing. Lightroom was finally released in February 2007, and initially I did not plan to buy it. But when an updated version of Photoshop was released in the spring, I purchased Lightroom as part of an upgrade package — and I have never looked back. Lightroom is an amazing program for processing digital photos, and each version has been better than the last. The current release is version 3, and I used it yesterday to edit the sunset photo of the bus camper. Most often, after editing in Lightroom, I open images in Photoshop for finishing tweaks, but I didn't bother with the sunset camper photo. If I had, I would have toned down the purple color, and maybe lightened the foreground a bit.
Two weeks ago Adobe released Lightroom 4 Beta, which I immediately downloaded. But, since we were visiting family and then traveling, I haven't had time to try it out. Today I had some time to watch an online video about the new features in Lightroom 4, and learned that this version has been designed to eliminate the need to take the majority of photos into Photoshop (there is still a place for Photoshop for heavy duty editing). After learning a little bit about the new features, I processed the same photo as yesterday in Lightroom 4. I think the results are pretty telling.
I thought I was happy with yesterday's image,
but I am much happier with the Lightroom 4 results.
