Testing my Photoshop Skills

This picture is obviously photoshopped (either that or she's holding a piece of plutonium). Kenzie was out catching fireflies the other night, and I thought it would be neat to take a shot of her looking into her hands like she's actually caught something, and the glow is illuminating her face, so I had her pose. It's also very daylight in the photo, so I had to do a lot to darken it.

I never intended the shot to look real, but instead wanted it to have more of a fantasy quality about it.

Down in Greenup County

The Last Butterfly

Kenzie's last butterfly from her habitat she got on her birthday hatched the other day, so we set it free with the others.

Toy Boat

I'm not sure why I found this shot appealing.

Black and Yellow

Kenzie's Butterflies

Kenzie's butterflies she got as part of a kit for her birthday have finally hatched (at least four of five have as of this writing). When they were just caterpillars, she named all of them, and insists she knows which butterfly was which caterpillar. They all look just alike to me.

Black Eyed Susan

Swim Meet

Sorry for the slow posting, but we were out of town all weekend for a swim meet at Miami University (in Ohio that is, so it's not as cool as it sounds). Here's a shot of the blue sky we had that day, and a nice overview of the pool Kenzie got to swim in. It's easily the nicest facility we've been to since we started this sport.

We were actually there last year as well when I grabbed these pics.

Superhero Attire

Reece in his Superman PJs and his Batman hat.

Sunrise

Nice, bright orange sunrise this morning.

Purple flower

Clematis from our front yard.

Project Blue - Part 6

One last project blue post. I happened to see these glass rocks in the bottom of a fish bowl.

Taking A Break

Our phone rings at a little before 7 a.m. this morning, and it's our neighbor telling us to look in our back yard. I was expecting the worst, like a downed tree or our pool had collapsed (after all, why call that early), but it was really because this deer was bedded down. I tried grabbing some quick shots from an upstairs room.

Project Blue - Part 5

Ashland's Central Park shot through infrared filter with red/blue channels swapped to get original sky color back.

One Tired Little Boy

Saturday was our company's annual summer picnic where they rent out a nearby amusement park for the day. So what happens after four or five hours of fun in sweltering upper 90 degree heat? Reece actually fell asleep while eating an ice cream cone on the way home.

The Whip

Imagery from one of the rides at Camden Park in Ceredo, W.Va.

Project Blue - Part 4

Blue Circles.

Project Blue - Part 3

A good blue post for such a hot day.

Dark Clouds

We had some pretty heavy storms here yesterday, and then a second round just missed where we live during the evening, but we got some bizarre looking cloud patterns that rolled by around 7 p.m.

Cicada

Kenzie finally found a live cicada. They're not bad at our house, just some of their shells on one tree in our yard. We can hear them around, but haven't actually seen too many.

Project Blue - Part 2

Blue Church. I cheated on this one, too. It was really overcast out, so I just set the white balance to incandescent to turn the overall hue to a blue color.

My Wife's Cake Blog

I finally got Lisa's cake blog going. Right now, there is just the one post that's the same as the Spiderwick cake below, but we'll be adding more soon.

Check it out by clicking here.

Project Blue - Part 1

Anna from Anna Carson Photography has started another project, this time with a theme of blue. I got kind of a late start, so as the first post, I'm grabbing some of my previously blogged photos that fit the theme. I'll look for some new stuff this week as well.

Birthday Cake

My wife is a multi-talented person. Healthcare professional by day, she cranks out some amazing cakes for our kids' birthdays. And my daughter always pushes her limits by asking for an off-the-wall birthday party theme. Like this year for instance, she wanted a Spiderwick Chronicles birthday based on the Nickelodeon film that came out in February.

Here's the result. It's a three-tiered cake based on the house in the movie. The bottom layer is stacks of Rice Krispie treats covered in icing and fondant. The middle layer is a peanut butter cake, and the top layer chocolate cake.

The big round window is made of rolled fondant that was painted with food coloring, as is the jars that spell out Kenzie.

The book is made of sheets of brownies covered in icing and then fondant, and the pages are edible rice paper that were traced with food coloring markers.

The figures are McDonald's toys.

This is one of her coolest cakes yet. She's actually getting ready to start a cake blog with all of her creations. For some reason, when I set up the blog, but didn't put any activity on it for a couple of days, Google flagged it as a possible spam blog and locked it until I e-mailed them and told them it wasn't. The case is under review and it should be going in up to four business days. Go figure.

I'll post a link when we get that one going.