Oregon Garden

I have been spending the last few days at the National IFYE Conference (International Farm Youth Exchange) that was held in Corvallis. I didn’t take part in the planning but tried to help out, when they needed and extra hand. There are often little things you can do to help out, so that was me, just helping out.
For the daylong tour I choose the Oregon Garden and the Willamette Valley Vineyards. The Oregon Garden is always a nice place to visit and the great flowers gave me a chance to tryout my new camera. Of course the beauty of the garden is not just the flowers. Many of the plants have very beautiful leaves.
So weather it is a close-up of a flower or a larger view of many of the plants and flowers together, you can spend a long times enjoying the view and taking pictures. I only have a small portion of the pictures I took on flickr but tried to put on some of the better ones. Of course some of the view can only be appreciated in person. I did take some panoramic shots where I could use the Photoshop program to join several pictures together and that was great. But you still miss something without being there.
Of course, after a walk around the park and/or a ride on the tram a person can get hungry. The little café at the garden has a very nice place to eat outside and some great sandwiches to get you through the day. This was also a great time to talk with some of the other people attending the conference. Most of them I didn’t know but we all had shared a common experience in the exchange so it was fun to share experiences.

Oregon Coast Pictue Trip

Well the trip to the Oregon Coast was good and bad. I did get a lot of pictures but it was very cloudy and we got caught in rain about the time we where going to head down to the tide pool. We did see whales. At least two probably a mother and baby right next to the shore but all they would show us was a fin and maybe their back as the would blow.
I tried many things since all I was to do was take pictures. Got some reasonable shots of birds flying and many lighthouse shots. I wish I had a bigger zoom as the birds were nesting. Some were on the nest and other were gathering grass for the nest. There was also the rock out in the ocean that was covered with birds. Most of these shots required a higher zoom.
Some very nice flower shots and I do enjoy the close-up shots of the flowers. While I was shooting flowers and just looking around a song sparrow landed on some of the flowers I was observing so that required another eight shot to try to get the perfect shot.
Since this was a trip organized by Rush Hour Photo, there was another couple on the trip and I rode with them. They were new a Corvallis and very nice people. Paul Rentz, President of Rush Hour, and Andy, his friend, where along to help identify animals and flowers. Part of the cost includes processing at Rush Hour and I am looking forward to any input that Paul might have as a professional photographer on the pictures I have taken.
Of course I have been busy with photoshop to see what I can do with the pictures. Since it was cloudy, some adjustment of light and color was done on most of the pictures. Then of course you really don’t want the parking lot and viewing platform in the pictures of the lighthouse so they had to be removed. The last was the combining of the lighthouse with one of the seagulls I caught flying by. All the pictures of the whale were a waste. Even if I had more zoom a fin is not that exciting and then if you really zoom in will you be where the whale decides to surface the next time?

You see a sample of my work here ,more is posted on Flickr, some are in process, and some have been deleted.

Chip Ross Park

Spring and early summer can be a great time to go for a walk through OSU forest property and Chip Ross Park. The wild flowers are in full bloom and if you ignore the pollen in the air you can enjoy yourself. The flowers even make a good excuse to stop and look (rest) after a hard walk up the hill.
Right now the grass pollen is very high so my eyes are paying the price until about July 4th when the pollen could goes down. I did my first walk up over the hill and park and it was great I don’t always take my camera but did this time. I didn’t really do much with the photos except size and cut back the exposure some. In the bright sun it is easy to over-expose the picture and is easiest to just adjust in photoshop.
Since it was my first walk of the summer, I did pay the price the next day in sore legs. I hadn’t used those muscles for a while. I will be back on the hills soon. We aren’t getting much rain so the path through the forest is relatively dry and the views are spectacular.

It's Flower TIme

While on our recent trip to Everett, Washington we had about an hour to wait before we were to attend a service so we headed to the Legion Park. It was raining so not a great day to be in the park but there was a baseball game going on and some people were working in the flower garden. Marilyn grabbed her book and did some reading. I got my umbrella and camera and headed to the flowers garden.
I enjoyed taking close-up pictures of flowers last summer in Colorado so thought this could be fun. In addition to all the beautiful flowers, I had all those drops of water on the petals that you see in many pictures. Well the flowers did not disappoint me. I got a number of great shots of flowers and I will not claim to know the names of all of them. Now that I am back home and have them on my computer the question becomes what to do with them. Since I used the macro setting and the spot focusing, most of the flowers were in focus and the background was out of focus. I will not be showing you the ones where the reverse happened. I will just delete and move on like it never happened. Isn’t that one of the reasons we love digital photography?
Well I really liked a number of the shots but wanted to play with them just a little. After all I had just gotten the Photoshop CS3 and need to see just what it can do. I will be the first to admit that I don’t know how to use many of the features in the program but it does have some interesting filters that can be applied and a new tool for easily selecting part of the photograph. I also had seen a picture in one of the shops or maybe it was at the art fair we visited where they had taken ta picture of the flower and put it on a black background.
So what you see is some of my playing. The rose placed on the black background is a simple but effective presentation. The purple flower is just as it was taken except for sizing. The lilies and clematis where manipulated using some of the filters and artistic effects you can add to the photos.
I have other photos and I will soon get a book on using Photoshop so I may soon have even more fun playing with the pictures I have taken.

Visit to Bavaria

We paid a visit to Bavaria without leaving the Northwest. We spent a day in Leavenworth, Washington. There ware no special events in Leavenworth for the day we were there but we did get to wonder through all the shops, eat sausage, drink beer, and visit the Nutcracker Museum.

Leavenworth is a very beautiful city. All of the downtown has been created to look like a Bavarian village and most of the shops sell tourist items for the area.

Our visit to the Nutcracker Museum was very interesting. The number and variety of nutcrackers could keep you looking for hours if you were to look at each one. It was interesting to see all the different cultural influences that are shown in the various designs. It is not just the Christmas Soldier.

Of course you can’t visit the area without having some traditional beer, sausage, sauerkraut, and music. For dinner we visited a restaurant that had live music and both the band and a number of the people eating at the restaurant were wearing the traditional lederhosen.

Other than food and lodging we didn’t do much to support the local economy. We did buy one pottery rooster that Marilyn was sure would fit right in with her other rooster in the kitchen.

Home Sweet Home

It is good to get home. No matter where you call home it is nice to get back to your own bed and familiar surroundings. Living out of a suitcase can be fun for a while as you discover new people and things but it is always nice to be home.
Getting from Tennessee to Oregon was a major case of hurry up and wait. We got to Knoxville airport and checked in for our flight. About 45 minutes before we were to leave they said that due to mechanical problems the plane was still in Chicago and they would update us as they knew more. So after an extra hour and half wait we were on our way to Chicago. At that point the scheduled four-hour wait in Chicago didn’t look so bad. Others around were missing or hoping to catch connecting flights. One lady with two very small boys had only 30 minutes to catch an international flight. I hope she made it.
Well at least the Chicago flight boarded on time. Then we had to wait about 40 minutes to take off. Only two runways were being used because of weather problems. But we were off to Portland, Oregon. I managed to get a nap on the way and just as I woke up and looked out the window I saw Mt. Hood in the setting sun. It was a nice sight to see.
At least our bags all made it and it was an uneventful drive back home. But now it is back to the yard and garden. The weeds did not take a vacation.