Virginia City and the Tetons

We took one day to visit Virginia City, Montana. It was a drive through ranch country to a town that is both old and new. Virgina City was a gold mining town in the 1860's and has a colorful history with all the violence, gold, and politics of any great Ghost Town, but it is not Ghost Town it is the county seat in the present time. We toured the town looking at all the old buildings that look much as they did 100 years ago. We ended the day by going to the Opera House to see the Drunkard. We also visited Nevada City three miles down the road to visit the Music Hall and play a few of the old musical machines.
One other day was spent going to Jackson Hole and Jackson, WY. The weather did not cooperate for us on this day. We were plagued with rain and clouds covering the mountains so picture taking was poor. Then to end the day I went to the gallery of Keith Fay my favorite artist of the area and his gallery was closed. I am not sure why. I left a note and hope to stop by on the way home. Would be good to see him again. He is not 86 and broke a hip last winter. When we say him nine years ago he said he wasn't going to die so his artwork was not going to go up in value.
I did recover some of the picture taking on the way to Riverton, WY when I got a great shot of MT. Moran reflecting in the water. I also hope to get some pictures as we return to Oregon.

Yellowstone Vacation

Well we are now at the Lake condo at Big Sky, Montana. The first two days we spent short days going to West Yellowstone and the uper loop of Yellowstone. We have had some rain most days but not for any long period of time. At least it doesn't interfere with the touring. After not being back here for nine years my first impression of Yellowstone would have to be a amount of growth that has happened since the 1988 fire. I was in Yellowstone during the fire and know all the cries from people about how they should have not let it burn at first and the Rangers saying the fire was part of the natural process. Well the trees don't grow as fast as they do in Oregon but the number of trees in the burn area is much more than I expected. The problem is that trees live longer than we do and the time it takes a long time for the new forest to grow and it does not fit into our lifetime.
The the Lake Condos are same as always and we do see a lot of animals right our our window. The moose is still around. We have yet to see the cow but did see a yearling. Both have been around we just missed the cow. The beaver are in the lake and a pair of cormorant are almost always in the tree or nearby. The say there have been bear around but not this week.
The Sunday trip around the upper loop was good for animals but also presented the first disappointment. They are repairing the road to the Artist Point, the best place to see the lower falls of the Yellowstone so we could not drive there. Looking for animals is always interesting the first time you see something you are all excited because you don't know if you will see them again then after awhile you say. “Just another elk.” Of course you are always looking to get a better picture of that great bull elk or bison but I think we have done well with those two. The coyote we saw was by the luck of stopping a view point and it just walked by. I was also surprised that we did not see any elk at Mammoth usually there is a large herd around town.
On Monday we made the short trip to West Yellowstone so I could get some pictures of the painted bison and visit the wolf and grizzly center. I was surprised when I loaded the painted bison on flickr they got 30 views in three days. The live bison pictures don't do as well. The visit to the wlfk and grizzly center should be our only chance to see the wolf or grizzly bear. At this time of year most of the grizzly are at higher altitudes and wolves just don't stand by the road.
The Tuesday drive around the lower loop allowed us to see Old Faithful and drive the north side of the Yellowstone canyon to get a picture of the lower falls. As bad as the road was along the north side of the canyon, I would think that next year it may be closed so they can repair it. Of course there a many other waterfalls to see and I got pictures of many but Old Faithful and Lower Falls are just two things you have to visit if you are going to be in Yellowstone. The last time we were in Yellowstone we did not see many bison. This year elk and bison are plentiful. If fact nothing gets your attention more that a herd of about 30 bison coming down the highway toward you. The people behind them had to wait and when they are coming toward you want the picture and then I don't want them to think my car is challenging them in anyway. So it did take a little time to get through that bison jam.

Photoshop CS3

My big adventure this summer has been learning Photoshop CS3 and how to use it to improve or modify my photographs. Oh yes, there is the basic how to change exposure or highlights or even put two photographs together, but now I am working with a big step up from the old Photoshop 6 and gaining a little understanding of what happens and when is it best to use a function.
I will admit that working through the lessons that came with the program and the book I bought gets confusing and sometime a little boring. Yet the lessons do show me how the different functions that change the photo but I am sometimes not sure just what function would do the best job on a given photo. All of the basics are great and now I can merge several pictures together without using the stitch function in my camera. This gives a little more freedom of shooting several shots and merging as long as you keep the camera in about the same place for all the shots.
I have been looking at many of the pictures on Flickr and getting some ideas of things to do. Two functions that I am really excited about are the merging of two or three pictures with different exposures to produce a picture with a wider range of light values. I have yet to get much for pictures that will work but basic experimentation has been interesting. The second is OOB (Out Of Bounds) that produces a photo with some 3-D effect. A search of Flickr gives 6,600+ examples of this procedure and is my biggest work right now. I have used this on a number of pictures and look at the examples to try to get new ideas. The tutorial on OOB provides some basic steps in the process but looking at the pictures you can see that it is only the beginning. You also need to look at the picture in a different way to see how to make it OOB. You see a couple of my examples in this blog and more on Flickr.

Block Party

We had our neighborhood block party. For the third year we have made it an Ice Cream Social. Since Tony next door is the local Tilamook Ice cream man for the local fairs it is a logical thing to do. He has his wagon that he sets up at most activities in the area. We didn’t get the wagon because it is fair time but we did get a discount on ice cream, free cups, and people bring toppings.
We had about 75 people show up and a few forgot about the party. Everyone had a good time. Marilyn played the roll of teacher again and had a number of games for kids of all ages to play, like garbage can races and water balloon toss.
Again this year the fire truck came and gave rides to kids of all ages. This was a big hit with everyone.
In addition we collected food for the food bank and got 50 pounds of canned food and $29 for the food bank.
More pictures on Flickr.