Edited Landscapes

Well I'm back with more Snow pictures, but these are good pictures, as they show that almost all of our last snow storm is disappearing quickly. The picture of our cat 'BB' I just threw in to transition to the rest of my shots.

This next group of pictures was taken on my way home from town yesterday. This spot is just a few turns below our property and the 'dead' trees are always of interest to me. This time I used my graphics software to 'edit' them to try various colors and shadings. I normally just upload the pictures 'as is', minus reducing the sizes down to a web tolerate size, eh!!

If you will notice, most of the shots have a snow capped mountain area in the background. If any of you viewing this group of pictures and can tell me how to 'bring out' the snow capped peaks when taking these types of shots, I would really appreciate your input. What I've been doing to get these shots you are viewing, is to focus my camera by shooting just above the trees, setting my focus by pushing the shutter button 50% to set it and then re-focusing the shot thru the trees and positioning the snow capped peaks where I want them in my shot, eh!! . . . Till next time, 'Viper'

Our Snow All Gone . . . NOT!!

Well here we go again. I got behind in uploading my pictures, so you're getting a '2 for 1' today. Our snow was all most totally gone as you will see in the one picture. Then Friday the 17th we were having snow 'flurries' all morning long, so Kathy suggested that we shop that afternoon instead of waiting till our normal Satuday shopping day, eh!!

It's a very good thing that we did decide to go in earlier too, because about an hour after we got back home it started snowing heavier and sticking. About 5 pm I took the first shots of the snow starting to stick and then a little over an hour later I checked and we had about 4" of snow!! If you look closely in a couple of the pictures, you will see the snow coming down.

With that much coming down in only 1 hour, I figured that come Saturday morning we'd have 3 or 4 foot of snow, right!! But, when I looked out our front door this morning we only had 3 inches and it was melting quickly. We even still had satellite tv reception, but lost it a bit later because of all the melting snow falling off the trees. Later about 3 pm Kathy and I were in her sewing room, cutting some quilting strips for my sister JoAnn's quilt. The snow was dropping off the trees so much that I tried taking some shots to show that, but didn't time it right I guess. But big clumps were really falling fast. Sorry!!

On picture #6964, while I was taking pictures of the falling snow, something caught my eye that looked like one of the local Ravens perched on top of a tree 'top' that the winds/snow had crashed during a previous snow storm. But when I was editing these pictures I could see that it was only a jagged piece of the tree, eh!! It looks good tho, right!! ;-)) . . . Later, 'Viper'

Illegal Parking?? and a VW 'Lady Bug ;-))

Well folks get ready for some 'unusual' shots?? The first 8 pictures are of the Moon and Stars taken from my deck on Friday the 10th, which just happened to be my 66th birthday, eh!! Kathy says that now I'm now legally an 'Old Fart' for real!! ;-0 Then #6922 is showing you the very last of our snow, #6945 & #6946 were taken at the end of our house to show you our view of the snow capped mountains past the trees. A really nice view of our snow 'over there', eh!! ;-))

If you'll notice, I have 3 pictures called 'Illegal Parking, plus have all three set into one picture at the very last, so you can view all 3 shots a bit easier. This is what we saw this morning about 9:20 am this morning as we turned off Oregon Street to go to our local Post Office to pick up our mail. I'm just guessing because I didn't walk across the street to check, that this car did not go on down into the creek, because of all the trees/saplings on the side, eh!! Poor person that had to get out of the car at that angle, right!!

If you don't want to look at each individual picture, just check out the 'pano' shots. As to the odd looking star pictures, if you'll check out #6919 you will see what the other shots started out as too. By playing with my graphics software I was able to come up with all the other views that you see. Odd, different or unusual ... your choice!!

I just hope you enjoy them all. Later, 'Viper'

Our 'Lost' Deer Came Home!!

In case you don't know, we normally see deer around our property all the time. So it's no biggie, and we do enjoy watching them and taking pictures too. Then today when I was in my office, I saw one deer walking up our driveway, grabbed my camera, and by the time I got outside on our deck, here came 'momma' and her 2 'kids', presumedly.

Momma, stoped just below our car and watched me taking pictures of her, then one of her kids started walking up our lower driveway and the other starting walking up to where momma was standing. All the while I'm whistling, trying to get them to look my way, so I can get some better shots, right.

Then out of the corner of my eye I see some movement and it's our 'BB' cat sneaking up on the deer, but just about the time BB got to the car, momma deer turned and just slowly hopped off back down the driveway, with the young'n that was with her. Our cat, startled by all this movement, turned and bolted away like someone touch her with a red hot poker, eh!! ;-0

Since the deer were mostly in the shade, I did try to brighten 'THEM' up a bit in case you notice. I've also noticed that since my 'original' picture size is 2816 x 2120 and when I edit them I usually resize them to 740 pixels wide, that when I do that the picture sometimes lightens up a bit automatically. Then I do not need to do much myself. Odd??

One other thing in case you don't already know this ... whenever you are viewing a picture that is to big to see 100%, most browser defaults to showing you 100% and when you 'click' on the picture it then shows 'FULL' size, right. Well, I just found out a few days ago that depening on where you click on the picture, like towards the top, middle or bottom, that is the portion that you will be able to view without scrolling. But it doesn't seem to work with 'side to side' viewing. Go figure, eh!!

Anyway, hope you enjoy looking at some of our local deer. Later, 'Viper'

Another Beautiful Day!! ;-))

Well, that big nasty storm dared not show it's face around here this weekend, so we enjoyed a very beautiful day, even tho the temp never topped 40 degrees today. About 1:30 pm I went out to load all of our Christmas stuff into my truck and take it back to our garage till next year. Guess what?? It's a good thing that I'm usually caucious on cold mornings, because we had 'black ice' covering the deck and stairs!! So after skating a bit, I got the old rock salt out and did a good covering, eh!! Until a couple days ago the driveway still had to much snow, for me to back my 2-wheel drive truck all the way back to the garage, eh!!

While I was out and about I naturally had to take a few shots of our views. I had a really clear view of the Trinity Alps and Weaver Bally while I was out at our garages, but when I look out our front door there are way to many trees to get this kind of shot. You'll see more shots like this one above when you go to view the rest on my web site, eh!!

When you view 'Truck_SnowReflection_A', take a couple of minutes to really look at it, ok. It's not what you probably will think it is. Notice the 'light blue' coloring to the left side of the picture?? Can you see anything 'inside' or 'thru' the picture?? Ok, after you view this picture then go check out the 'B' version, eh!! ;-)) Then 'Driveway_View_pano' will show you where the other two shots came from!!

The 'Waterfall' shots were taken at the end of the driveway to our garages. It's snow melt coming down from the top of our mountain. No rain or snow ... no runoff or waterfalls. It took me about an hour unloading the truck, covering the Christmas boxes with a large tarp, fire up my motorcycle and let it run a few minutes while it when to our other garage to get some tools and a few small wood screw. All the while I got to listen to our waterfalls coming down about a 60' foot drop by the side of the garage and on down to the roadway. Nice sounds!! ;-))

The other shots were taken up the hill behind the garage and about 16-20 feet higher elevation. The first picture in a 'panorama' of 2 others 'spliced' together, eh!! Hope you enjoy all!! . . . Later, 'Viper'

High Winds and 6" to 12" of Snow ... NOT!! ;-))

The forecast for Friday evening of the 3rd & Saturday the 4th, was for winds up to 50 mph with a 'fast moving' storm that could leave 6 to 12 inches of snow, right. So Friday morning Kathy suggested that we NOT wait to do our normal Saturday breakfast and shopping just in case, eh!! So about 1:30 pm we headed into town to try out a 'new' BBQ place for lunch, then do our shopping and get the jump on any storm coming our way.

We did get some lite rain and a lot of really nasty looking storm clouds. So I took some pictures at the Tops/Longs parking lot as we started shopping, hoping that the cloud cover would rise even more to show off all the new snow on the mountain tops. But when we finished shopping and we heading out to another spot where I take some of my pictures, the cloud cover was even lower. As you will see I did get a lot of good shots of the dark clouds and a little bit of the lower elevations of snow, eh!!

Then we got up this morning to SUNSHINE!! We did get a few flurries of random snow and some light winds, but sunshine all day long and NO BIG STORM!! Isn't Mother Nature a kick!! ;-)) So of course I had to get some shots of our beautiful sunshine, right.

As for the 2 'panorama' shots of our local Tops Mini-Mart, these are for my ebuddy 'Val' Goodrich. I hope this is what you wanted, eh!! For everyone ... we try to keep our car's gas tank above 50% so we don't have to pay out so much money with the high fuel prices nowdays, but let it get down to about 75% this time, so it took almost 12 gallons at $2.679 for Regular!!

Hope you enjoy all of my pictures, eh!! . . . . Later, 'Viper'