Image Editing

I am so excited. Thanks to Steve at The Wheel Of  Fortuna I can get my photos processed! Thank you Steve.

After it stopped raining I headed out to the backyard and took a few shots trying to capture the drops.

It has been awhile and compensating for my left eye being off today I think it went ok. I can not get used to using my right eye in the view finder but it is getting easier.

I pulled out the memory card, stuck it in the reader, and started up the GIMP program that Steve gave me the link to. Awesome it handled the conversion from NEF well and I even applied a few filters that I downloaded.

The air has that ozone  smell (can you smell ozone?) with a hind of wet dirt and it lends  the air a fresh feel. I really like the first rains. I friend of ours when near his last days wanted to hear the rain on the window. Unfortunately there was no rain in the forecast in the near future.  A few of us put or heads together and dusted the window outside his room with dirt from the garden beds and the we played with our collection of nozzles until we hit upon a very close emulation of how rain would sound and smell as it hit the window.

He was excited when it rained!  Every time it rains I remember him and how such a simple thing of nature meant so much to him – listening to rain or smelling a flower bloom.

One of my favorite plants in the yard is an aloe vera that has grown quit large.  It is strange to photograph sometimes getting an interesting shot eludes the lens.  The greens are very particular to the correct white balance settings and the spikes make focusing manually a must especially when trying to get the rain drops. I played with different aperture settings and managed to get some interesting (well to me anyway) shots.

You should click on the photos to see the larger view to get a better idea of how they came out – not my best but better than not taking any at all.

That is it for now.