Results tagged “photography” from jsstudios.com

I harvested my first tomato since I started seedlings way back when. It's just a little one, but I can claim it a success since I've only used a little bit of Miracle Grow every now and then, no pesticides or herbicides. It's all growed up now.

I'm looking forward to adding it to one of my salads in the very near future.

Ha! Ha! Made you look.  Actually it's only one, but it's growing well. Just look how much since the last time I posted.

On the heels of a recent news report that a chemical in watermelon has the same effect as viagra you can imagine my delight when I saw that our watermelon plant is finally budding.

I pledged to grow a garden this year. My kids and I started some seedlings and they were doing really well . . . for a while. Then we moved. With no window to get direct sunlight and warm the soil, they kind of died went to a better place. So we decided to till up an area and start over.

Many of the seeds didn't grow into plants, but I'm pretty satisfied with the one's that did and have already planned my strategy for next year.

One of my tomato plants is already starting to bud. We didn't go out and buy seedlings. We started with seeds for our tomatoes. As far as I'm concerned, it's an accomplishment.



So far we have some carrot, onion, tomato, lettuce and corn plants, and a green pepper and watermelon plant. The green pepper plant is the sole survivor of some seedling transplants that I thought had a chance.

The corn is doing very well
 

My son found this guy next to our front porch over the weekend. I've told you before about the creek running near our house. Evidently, this one decided he'd had enough of the creek and wanted to move in. We sent him back home, however.

I know he's pretty odd looking. He's a soft shell turtle.

What seemed like a perfectly normal evening turned sour pretty fast. I've been battling with them for the past few months since they can't seem to get the details of our family plan quite right. I'm not going to get into the details here, but it's sufficient to state that they keep forgetting that we have a bulk text message plan but they consistently forget. It's time to go into the Verizon store and have a talk with them again.

Anyway I get home and open the bill. As you might expect, it's not right. It's raining outside - kinda hard, but the Jeep's in the garage. I decide that I may as well take the family out to supper and just make a short evening of it. We're headed down the road ( about a mile or so from home ) and the sound of the rain on the top ( it's a soft-top ) of the Jeep is just drowning everything out. My son, however, hears something on the radio . . .

"Dad, turn up the radio!"

So I turn up the radio. It's an interruption by your friendly neighborhood National Weather Service.

"This is an announcement from the National Weather Service. A TORNADO WARNING has been issued for residents of the following counties . . . "

My wife rolls down her window a bit and sure enough, the tornado sirens are blaring. The sound of the rain on the roof of the Jeep had blocked it out.

Needless to say, I wouldn't bee telling you this story if we weren't involved. And yes, the county in which we live ( Shawnee ) was included. As a matter of fact, the location of the tornado was ( on radar anyway ) about 20 minutes from us.

So my wife starts going ballistic. She wants me to turn around and go home - right there in the middle of the street in the pounding rain. Just turn around and go home. Well, I'm not having any of that. Uh-uh. Right down the block is Ace Hardware. So I pull in there and decide to sit it out. They tell us that we can all fit in the women's bathroom. I hang around out front and listen to the weather radio while the kids and the wife go into the restroom.

Fast forward about 20 or 30 minutes. Most of the bad weather has headed south and east of us and there's a break in the rain. I decide that the time's right to make a break for home. I can go to Verizon another day.

We're about 4 blocks from the house and the tornado sirens start going off again. I'm coming up to a stoplight and, as expected, I stop. My wife starts going all ballistic on me again.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? There's a tornado coming and you stop for a red light?" she screams at me.
"What? It's not like there's impending danger here. For all we know if ( in fact ) there is one it could be 10 miles away from us. The other night there was one clear up in northern Shawnee county at about 1 in the morning. Does that make it ok for everyone to start running red lights at the souther edge of Shawnee county?"

There's no winning that argument - so I don't bother to even pursue it. Regardless, as evidence I submit the fact that I am safe and sound writing this post. The fact that I stopped for a red light at an intersection during a tornado warning did not in any way affect the health of my family.

I even managed to take a couple shots of some nice mamata clouds after most of the heavy stuff had moved through.

There's nothing like watching the weather for hours on end. It appears as that will be the case tonight.

Apparently:

The National Weather Service is giving advance warning of a possible tornado outbreak in the Great Plains on Thursday with conditions similar to a deadly day in 1974 when 39 tornadoes touched down.

Our office manager sent us the news story yesterday. Today it's pretty much playing out in my neck of the woods - or at least to the west of us right now. Evidently we're going to our heapin' helpin' of it later on this evening.

Just for the fun of it here's a picture of the tornado that hit Kearney, NE. Somebody was in the perfect spot to get a really great picture.

So he came in late, reeking of whiskey among other things . . .

As I said a few days ago, I started a new job. While I'm still living in cubicle land, at least I have a window that lets in some natural light. It's kind of nice to be able to go stare out the window for a few hours minutes . . .

I've been a bit absent lately. We moved into a new place and I have a new job - starting Monday. So hopefully this picture of a couple of ducks in the creek by our house will be a sufficient bribe for your forgiveness.

Adobe released Photoshop Express to the masses - online as a beta web service. I wandered over there and took a look at it. It has its ups and downs, but for the most part I think it's a pretty good offering. Some initial critiques suggest that it's a pretty decent offering.

You're going to need an email account to sign up. After you've validated the email account you can start working with the service. The first thing I did was upload a picture that I took of the tree in my front yard on a rainy day.


It's your standard picture.

After you've uploaded your picture to your library, you can select from a variety of actions to take with your uploaded image.



I chose to edit the image and use a number of the available edits. Here's a screenshot of the editing screen using the autocorrect feature.



By hovering over the smaller boxes located at the top of the workspace, you can instantly see the effect applied to your image. All told I applied autocorrect, exposure, pop color, and sketch effects to my photo. In the end, this is what I ended up with:



Not bad, as far as I'm concerned. Once you're done, you can email it, embed it, or download it, to name a few options. I chose to download it to my laptop.

Overall, I think this service is a pretty good deal to the average user. It's very simple to use, available wherever there is a connection to the Internet ( I used the wi-fi connection at my local library ) and, of course you can't beat the fact that it is FREE. This is great for those unwilling to shell out $100 - $800 for software belonging to the Photoshop family.

On the downside ( I gotta be fair ) you may only use JPEG images with Photoshop Express. That is a bit of a limitation, but most consumers will upload images taken using their digital cameras, so that shouldn't be a huge problem.

Photoshop Express allows you 2 GB of storage space. I imagine that it won't be long before people will exhaust that allocation. I expect that after a period of time a premium account option will be rolled out so that people will be able to purchase accounts with more storage space and perhaps, other types of effects.

Our seeds are sprouting.

I know there ain't nobody else around so you must be talkin' to me.

Our project for the summer, should we choose to accept it, is to plant a garden. We started this weekend by planting a few seeds . . . tomatoes, green peppers, hot peppers, onions, pumpkins, and watermelon.

According some recent research, owning a cat can reduce your heart attack risk by one third. No idea how or why it works, but here's to a long life . . .

This is just a shot from the office in which I happen to share a cubicle.

No TV? No problem. There are 120 + links to sites on this page in which you can watch a plethora of videos including streams to popular television series like South Park, Lost, The Simpsons, etc . . .

Photoshopping is definitely an art form. Which one of these 40, top photoshpped images do you think is the best?

If you missed all the controversy surrounding Wikileaks and haven't yet checked out the site, here's a link to Wikileaks.

Economy got you down? Need free stuff? Visit ThunderFap.com. There's loads of free samples and other stuff that you might find interesting.

Looking to boost your health by juicing? You'll find 10 juice recipes that will clean your skin, freshen your breath, as well as many other healthy benefits at HealthMad.com.

I was very fortunate to get this shot. Within 30 minutes we had total cloud cover and there was nothing left to see.

to enjoy taking pictures of anything outside . . . It's been a roller coaster of highs and lows lately. Yesterday, between the hours of about 12 and 4 pm, the temperature dropped almost 30 degrees. So, I'd rather shoot indoor photography today. This picture kind of sucks, but it's better than nothing.

After a cold snap and some stormy, winter weather the messy thaw begins . . .

The only thing I love about the snow is that it makes the Jeep I bought a worthwhile investment . . . and a fun vehicle to drive. I love being able to point and laugh at the minivan drivers and dorks in their sports cars who can't seem to manage to make their tires stick to the road.

It snowed last night. The roads are slick and the traffic is backed up.

It turns out that the bird we found in our backyard . . . about a year ago . . . really didn't deserve to be named, "Mr. Bird." We've been calling it that for quite some time. But, after Mr. Bird started laying eggs a couple weeks ago . . . well . . . we decided an appropriate name would be Mamabird. Of course the eggs will never hatch, but that doesn't stop her from being awfully protective of the 6 eggs she laid.

Always looking for excitement she leaves no box unexplored.

 

So I was out doing a little shopping for Christmas and for some odd reason this hurricane of a snowstorm decided to descend over town complete with thunder and slick streets.

 

It's a bit icy outside. Could be a lot worse. The streets aren't that bad, but school's closed and the weather reporters are making a lot more out of it than I'm seeing outside. Admittedly, it's still better to spend the day indoors.

 

since I last posted. Yeah, I know. I've been doing stuff. I also noticed that it's been a real long time since I posted any photos . . . so here goes . . .

I found this guy at the annual, Miracle on Kansas Avenue Christmas Parade on Saturday night. My daughter was in the parade with the rest of her gymnastics team. It was cold, but fun. You can see the rest of these photos in my set at Flickr.

You were expecting . . . a dog maybe? This one doesn't piss on the carpet.
 

A couple weeks ago one of the guys I work with offered me some free tickets to Heartland Park, a raceway here in Topeka, for the NHRA Lucas Oil Championships. First I had to make sure there were no conflicting events like soccer, bmx or birthday parties. It fit conveniently in so I checked with the kids to see if they were interested - and they were. I just hoped that they'd be able to tolerate the intense sounds. I remember, very vaguely, a trip to a race when I was very, very young. I couldn't handle it. The roar of the engines is much louder than you can imagine unless you experience it first-hand. Here's one of the many pictures I took:
  We didn't stay for long - about two or three hours. As someone who isn't incredibly interested in auto racing, ( especially drag racing ) it got kind of boring watching for two long. I was able to buy some earplugs at concessions for me and the kids so the noise wasn't really that big of an issue. I managed to take a few pictures and a couple videos. Follow the link below to see them.

I found this little guy as I was getting the kids' bikes out and ready to go to their BMX races tonight. He's a pretty brave praying mantis that hammed it up a little for the camera but then decided he'd had enough and kept trying to jump on my camera or crawl up my arm.


I tried to take several pictures, but either my camera wanted to focus on my hand or the bug wanted to take off. So I ended up taking a video instead. He cooperated for quite a while and then I decided to let him go up the tree in our front yard so he could go practice his Praying Mantis Kung Fu or something.

I didn't really have much on my mind today so my post tonight is yet another random photo. This one was taken on highway 30 somewhere between Grand Island, NE and North Platte, NE. The wind was blowing so hard that day ( gusts of 60 - 70 mph ) and I was pretty much convinced that driving on the interstate was asking for trouble. The stuff you see, like some kind of cloudy goop or fog, is dust being blown across the highway. It made for interesting driving.

It's been quite a while since I've taken any pictures worth posting, however my good friend Aleah sent me one this morning worth showing off.

I've thrown myself in front of the train this weekend. It's just a metaphor . . . I've decided to change the theme of this blog. So, things are going to break and fall apart over the weekend. Hopefully, I'll have it all done by Sunday night. . . . yes, you got it . . . from the random photo series . . .

Although I wonder who's watching what, they both like looking out the window . . . from the random photo series.

I would never have the patience to be a pet photographer . . . from the random photo series

And on my off days I wrestle bears - from the random photo series

Just in case you're not getting incredibly bored with information from our trip to Nebraska . . . North Platte is rich in railroad history. At the city park, also named after Buffalo Bill Cody, are a couple preserved locomotives. This is one of them - a freight and passenger train built in 1943 and retired in 1961. It's the only one of this class on display in the world and known as "The Challenger 3977" - from the random photo series.

It would appear that authorities from the state of Nebraska have decided to extradite me from Kansas to appear before a judge for a long list of charges. Quite honestly I really don't know what this is all about. But I guarantee I will get to the bottom of it before long.

To add to the disgrace I've been notified that Paris Hilton will be my cellmate. My wife has informed me that, "If that bitch brings a video camera you better keep your clothes on!!"

My good friend and fellow shutterbug Aleah took this picture this weekend. As you can see, Kansas has been getting hit pretty hard with strong storms and torrential rain on ground that's already soaked. What's more, you can clearly see, if you look to the top right of the picture, that this storm is clearly rotating - something we don't like to see. Luckily I didn't run into anything like that during our trip home. Fortunately, we made it back in one piece from North Platte around 7pm last night.

I have discovered that Jeeps are not the most aerodynamic vehicles on the road when facing strong winds on the interstate. The better part of the drive back we faced gusty side and headwinds that made the trip a little stressful. I have a boatload of pictures I want to share with all my readers. I'll probably be posting them, one at a time for a while as I get around to cropping them down. I uploaded them to my desktop computer last night, but haven't done anything with them beyond that. After watching the Sopranos last night, I went to bed with a booming thunderstorm to serenade me in my quest for some well deserved sleep.

I mow them over and they come back. Another installment in the random photo series.

It's been a while since I've posted a random photo. Mostly because I'm not terribly good at remembering to take my camera with me when I go places. I've tried, intermittently, to remind myself to no avail. Today, however, I snapped a few pictures of the rain.

There's bit of a story behind this bird . . . we found it wandering in our backyard and adopted it. We didn't have to chase it down or anything like that. It's exceptionally tame and very friendly. We have yet to name it so I'm throwing it out there. Anyone who would like to suggest a name is more than welcome to do so by simply commenting. My kids will pick the name from the suggestions.

Another installment in the random photo series. This is my son's rat-dog, Precious. She's a Chihuahua mixed with Jack Russell Terrier in there somewhere.

It's been a busy weekend of soccer games - three of them to be exact. My daughter's team won both of their games on Saturday and Sunday. My son's team lost, but they played incredibly against the top ranked team in their league.

Whoever may say that girl's soccer is boring or lacks intensity as compared to boy's soccer hasn't been to one of my daughter's games. My daughter isn't in the picture below, but it does demonstrate that they're not afraid to follow the ball into the goal regardless of the goalie being in the way or not.


So far my daughter's team is undefeated. They're really starting to show that they are beginning to understand the game. Hats off to their coach on the start of a great season.

Note - no little girls were harmed as a result of this play.

I've nothing profound to say today so I thought I would post this photo.

A blogger friend of mine went to Mall of America and took this picture in the underground aquarium. Thanks Aleah!

If it wasn't raining I'd probably break out the mower.

Another installment in the random photo series.

It's actually just one tree - the tree in my front yard. It's old and big.