Lightroom

While I love photography and technology, I have to admit that I’m lagging behind when it comes to my photo editing software. I use Photoshop 7 and I honestly cannot tell you how long it’s been since it was released (I quickly checked online but couldn’t find an answer). It’s served me well over the years, but it is starting to become a pain because I know there are inexpensive and even free programs available today that make editing photos much quicker and easier.

I’ve been browsing around and decided that I wanted to upgrade to Adobe Lightroom 2. Photoshop CS4 is too much money to spend considering that I don’t use most of the capabilities in 7. I downloaded a trial version of Lightroom last night to try out and I think it’s too much for me! I feel like an old fuddy duddy, but it seems like too much information to absorb. The thing I liked about the advertising for it was their tagline of spending more time behind the camera and less time at the computer, but I think the learning curve is going to be so high that I’ll be spending a lot of time at the computer. Just about all of my photos benefit from a little editing, but I don’t want to spend a ton of time with photo editing software. I know some people really enjoy that, but I'm not one of those people.

The basics like cropping and adjusting colors are fairly intuitive, but they have this whole cataloguing system for saving your photos that I’m not really interested in. I was reading about it online today and there’s a >20 minute video tutorial about it! I’m someone who hates reading instructions and I don’t have any desire to spend that much time learning about a cataloguing system. I have a very easy system of putting original files in one folder, saving duplicates that I edit in another and that’s it. Takes me all of a few seconds to put things where I want them. I couldn't even figure out where my photos were saving last night. I have this new Lightroom folder that has half a bajillion subfolders and I still couldn't find a jpeg amongst them. Granted, I didn't try that hard, but I don't want to!

I also don't like that a large portion of my screen is filled up with various toolbars, bridges and boxes. You can minimize them, but it’s kind of a hassle. I’m sure it wouldn’t be a big deal if I was using a big fancy monitor, but I have a laptop with a 17” widescreen and I don’t want to look at a tiny version of my photo. I’ll give it a little more time but I'm not a fan.

Has anyone use and loved it and thinks I'm crazy for not wanting to deal with it? Or do you use something else that you love and suggest?

Happy Halloween!

Birthday Hat

My dear friend Nakira's birthday was on Monday and since she seems to want one of everything I make these days, I made her a knitted hat, toboggan, tuque, beanie, whathaveyou. I also made one for myself because, to be completely honest, I totally forgot I already made her one! I blame it on selling our old house, moving and basically living in a state of mild chaos for a few months. I had just finished what I thought was going to be her hat and, as I was going through my crafted items, found the one I'd already made. I decided to keep the second one for myself because it's wool and, let's be honest, it gets a lot colder in central Ohio than it does in central NC. Plus the first hat is rusty red, the second one is orange and she just told me she wants a scarf like I made in red, black and white, so VOILA, red hat it is. Nak, that doesn't mean you will get a red, white and black scarf for Christmas!

On that note, it's bon voyage to Chris and me (well, it will be tomorrow) as we head to Kentucky to celebrate our one year anniversary! I can't believe it's already been a year!

You decide...

This is a story that there’s really no way of telling without making it sound like Chris and I are either morons, gluttons for punishment or both. Kate, I hope you enjoy it!

A month or so ago I got some bulbs (tulips, crocuses, spring blooming pretties) that I had ordered and was all set to them plant along our front sidewalk. Unfortunately, one of the areas was near a beehive in the ground by the foundation of our house. If you're thinking this where the story goes downhill, you're right.

Despite the hive, we decided to plant the bulbs in the area near it. We had reasons though! The most important reason being there were only a couple of bees and they were minding their own business. I carefully started working in that area and they didn’t seem bothered at all. I raked the mulch to the side, started digging and was minding my own business when all of sudden, *#%@!, a freaking bee stung my head! To make matters worse, it was stuck in my hair and as I was trying to get it out, it stung my finger too. Apparently the bees didn’t like the earthquake I created in their homeland as I was breaking up the dirt with a shovel.

By this time I had a hole in the ground, a pile of mulch, a pile of dirt and a slew of bulbs on the ground so I wanted to persevere. I waited for the bees to settle back down and then gently began planting my bulbs. Chris moved on to another area farther from the hive to start digging. Sadly, I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing, how hard he was slamming the shovel into the ground, until it was too late. Mini earthquake, attack of the bees, take two! Chris started running, I started running, but it was all for naught. The bees were on a mission and halfway out into the yard I got stung in the butt and Chris got stung in the nipple! Seriously, these bees couldn’t go for somewhere normal like an arm or a leg??? I’m sure our neighbors thought we were completely insane while we running around our front yard, waving our arms.

We ran inside to make sure no stingers were left in our skin (didn’t really want to give my neighbors that kind of show) and heard more buzzing. &!^%)$#!, another freaking bee in my hair! Fortunately that one flew out before stinging me and we got it out the front door without any more injuries.

Despite round two of bee stings, I persevered. Chris stayed inside, but I went back out to finish the job. I very gently finished planting my bulbs and covering the ground with chicken wire before the rotten squirrels could dig them up. I probably would have thrown in the towel much earlier if it wasn’t for the stupid squirrels but I didn’t want them snacking on my new bulbs!

And look, the cold then warm weather confused the bulbs so much they already think it’s spring!

Rising Sun

Today was an absolutely beautiful fall day in central Ohio and Chris and I made the most of it by making a visit to Rising Park in Lancaster which is a small city a short drive east of us. There were still a lot of leaves left on the trees and it was gorgeous. And for once I feel like I came close to capturing in photographs just how beautiful it was. I think I'm a decent photographer but there are countless times when I'm out, see something gorgeous and the photos just don't do it justice. Usually it's that the colors are lacking, but today the stars must have been aligned because I'm really happy with how they turned out.

There's a little pond at the entrance to the park and the reflections off of it today were amazingly colorful.

The park has a big hill that you can climb and see all of Lancaster. I guess that's where the "rising" part comes from.

We wound around through the trees on our way back down the hill and saw a family of deer! There were a couple of guys who pointed them out to us and one of the guys said he turned around one of the deer was about 4 feet away from him! They let me get pretty close although a zoon lens would have been awesome.

A lot of the trees were still full of leaves and there were a ton of beautiful yellowish ones.

I'll spare you and not post anymore of the tree photos I took :)

All in all, a fabulous day!

Infested

Tonight I went out to water my ornamental cabbage and noticed a bright green caterpillar on it. I'm not a big bug fan, but I thought it was really pretty so I grabbed my camera and started snapping.

See? So vibrant and pretty. I almost didn't notice it at first because it was lined up right at the edge of one of the leaves.

Then I noticed another one. And then I showed Chris and he found about 6 more. Um, not so cute anymore because they're trying to devour my pretty cabbage! We were on our way out to dinner so I didn't have time to wage war against them, but I guess I'll have to go to battle tomorrow night. Stupid bugs, eating my plants...

Freakin' Freezing

I don't know what the hell happened but we haven't had much of a segue from summer to winter. It's been ridiculously cold for this time of year although I guess I'll be thankful that I don't live in one of the places where it's already snowing.

Earlier this week we had our first fire of the year. First fire period in our new house. We had a decorative fireplace in our old house and it taunted me so in the winter. No more taunting in our new house with not one, but two functioning fireplaces!

The cold weather also motivated me to get off my booty and finish the scarf I started...ummm...a long time ago. We'll leave it at that. I used a bulky yarn which would have worked up really quickly but I did a seed stitch which isn't the fastest of stitches. I love how it turned out though and it was worth the extra time. It's super warm and I know I'll get a lot of use out of it on my ~5 minute walks from the parking lot into my office.

Happy weekend!