On Reedmere Road.....

The City of Windsor is made up of several smaller areas that seem to meld into each other, not unlike a lot of other cities. Walkerville, LaSalle, Sandwich, and Olde Riverside are a few, and this image was shot a couple of days ago in Olde Riverside. With my camera set to Illustration mode, I made this shot of the Autumn leaves, and it will likely be the last of the season for another year. As I type this, it is snowing outside, and believe it or not, I am not disappointed. The four seasons keeps things interesting in this country, and if I lived in a place where it was mild all year around, and no Winter season, I think I would go crazy....or more so than I already am. At least we do not have the terrible weather events so far here, like what is happening right now in B.C and the Maritimes, and Newfoundland - Labrador. Let's hope the weather gods show a little mercy on them soon.....
 

On Raglan Road.....

Lately, I have tried to make my photography more enjoyable by taking a very simple image, and make something unusual or unique out of it. It keeps the juices flowing, and helps stave off boredom, which is very easy to slip into anymore. This image started out as a very ordinary shot of a single rose, that was clinging to the bush, all by itself. It is fun to take an image, and just play with it, and sometimes surprise myself. Such is the case with this one. When I combined it with one of my own concocted "filters" it looked rather unusual, but in my mind, it needed something more. For what ever reason, the old Irish melody, On Raglan Road, written by Patrick Kavanagh, was running through my head, so I thought that maybe the lyrics added to this image, might add something special to it. When photographs are combined with poetry or lyrics, it seems to place the image into another category, and some folks might enjoy it, while others, not so much....to each his own....Cheers!

P.S. My apologies if the script on this image is too small to read. If you are interested in the lyrics, just look up the song title.....this song also sounds great on my Hohner button accordion, and the first time I heard this song, it was on a Van Morrison LP. 

The Last Rose.....

This image is the last of the roses in our garden for another year. So tonight, I thought I would give it a little attention and posted it on here. The actual size of the blossoms are about the size of a dime, and the bush was just loaded with them this year. I hope it Winters well, as I decided to prune it quite hard, and hopefully did not do it too much harm. Roses are a whole lot more hardy than they look, and it seems that the harder they are pruned, the nicer they are the next year....we shall see. Anyway, the original background was a very drab grey fence, and I decided to "splice" in one of my own concoctions to pick it up a bit....hopefully, you will enjoy this rendition. Cheers!
 

Autumn....In Soft Focus

The leaves on our Japanese Maple turns very red in the Autumn, and I love to sit and look at them backlit by the sun in the early morning while I am enjoying my beverage. Today, I put the 100mm Soft Focus portrait lens on my camera, and ventured out into the crisp morning air to grab this shot. Things take on a very "gentle" mood when I use this old film era lens, and it is nice to have it in my collection. The trend these days is for all images, absolutely must be tear your eyes out, tack sharp. Anything less is not worth any notice and has no merit....I humbly disagree.....the loveliness of soft focus images, whether it is used on people portraits, or flowers etc., has a definite place in my view of things, and makes me smile a little more.....definitely floats my boat! Cheers! 
 

Autumn Transitions.....

This little image is one that was a "happy accident" sort of. I was making some adjustments to the mode selection menu, and the camera fired off a shot without me intending it to. When I eventually loaded the files into the computer, my intent was to delete this one, but the more I got looking at it, the more it grew on me. After a little treatment in Corel Painter Essentials 8, this was the result, and I decided to put it on here, just for the heck of it. It is a view from my front veranda, and I just wanted to get the colours before they are gone for good. Autumn is "tilting" into Winter, and soon we will be scraping and digging our way through the white stuff....Cheers!
 

Beyond Help.....

After the hockey game had ended last evening, I was messing around with my camera, and decided to try a very quick still life of this withered yellow rose that I had not thrown out yet. One flash was triggered remotely off to the left, by the one mounted on the camera. The main light on the left was at full power, and the one on the camera was at 1/4 power which gave it a nice snappy light ratio, or contrast. The black background was the sofa. It also gave me an opportunity to experiment with a trial version of Capture One Pro for Sony that I had downloaded. Between it, and my Corel software, this is the result....Cheers!