October Sunrise

I am so lucky that where I live I am able to see the sun RISE over the prairie to the East and SET behind the Rocky Mountains to the West - I have a fabulous view of both!   It was such a huge ball coming up this morning!

Playing in the leaves!

Once again, I cajoled Payton into being my "model" to experiment with my camera!  I was trying to take pictures of her throwing leaves in the air and see what I could come up with - they turned out okay. I like how the portraits of her and black kitty turned out though!  I played with some photoshop actions on a few of them.  Thanks for looking!!

I had to post all these ones to show the action!!

Straight out of the camera:

Cropped and photoshopped:

The Barn as my Studio!

Went out to the barn with the intention of taking some pictures of the kittens I have to give away and ended up playing a little bit. I think I got some neat shots!  You tell me!

One of the adult cats sitting in the sun shining through the barn door opening.

A shot from inside the barn showing the sun coming in..

A creative take on the "self portrait"!

I'd love to play a little more with this type of subject - peeling paint, old hardware..this isn't as sharp as I'd like it, but I was shooting hand held..



thanks for looking!

The View from My Bathroom Window

This is the sunrise I see from my upstairs bathroom window.  Not the most technically or artistic photos, but they capture the beauty of the sun coming up in the east!

Toronto Zoo

While Russell warmed up for his race and while I waited for him to finish, I took the opportunity to enjoy my photography hobby. Here are some of my favorites.  I played with some of them in Photoshop using some actions I downloaded from a blog.  Which do you like the best???

 straight out of the camera (SOOC):

a little photoshop help:

 SOOC:

Photoshopped:

Photoshopped:

Blue Heron on lagoon at zoo (SOOC):

Photoshopped:

I should mention that I didn't have my SLR with me - I was using my Canon point and shoot which has manual settings.  A good zoom lens would have been nice for this blue heron.

Weekend in Toronto

Hubby and I took a quick trip to Toronto - specifically Scarborough, I guess, so he could run in the Canadian 10 km Championships.  We were up bright and early on the Saturday morning to get to the race site.  The race was held at the Toronto Zoo.  The weather was good, a little crisp, especially before the sun got up high in the sky!

Toronto traffic SUCKS!

I think hubby ended up 29th overall in the race, which I think is fantastic!  We are so proud of him!

City Championships

By placing in the top 10 at the cross country qualifying meet the week before, Cole had the opportunity to run in the city championships against other grade 9 boys in the Catholic school system.  He placed 7th of all those boys!  We are very proud of him - again.  This is his 3rd time running in the city championships and his best placement.  The great thing this year is that he had 4 other students from his school competing that day as well - the last 2 years he was the only student from his school who made it to the city's.
Warming up.

 Mental preparation..

 They're off!....

 Love this - he reaches back to shake the hand of the racer behind him..

Cross Country Run

Some pictures while watching the kids run at their Cross Country meet.  It was a great day for it, finally - the last 2 years have been less than ideal running situations.  The poor kids froze last year.  Cole placed 4th in his heat, qualifying for city championships the next week.  The facility where they run is basically a farm that the owner opened up for cross country running and skiing - hence the cows in the background!

I love the look of determination on his face!

 Cows in the background!

 Great finish!

I love fall colors!

Just some more fall colors!

A weekend in the mountains

I was lucky enough to get away for a couple nights with a friend for a scrapbooking retreat in Canmore.  The weather was so beautiful that I had to get outside for some of that weekend - a typical scrapbooking retreat means that you put your head down and scrapbook for hours on end.  But with such beautiful fall weather there was no way I was going to stay inside and miss some of that!  Three times that weekend we ate outside on the patio!!  That's more than I did all summer!!