Sunshine and Mt. Jackson

Well what do you know, there is still a sun in the sky. Finally after a month of rain the sun has returned. Finally we can get out for some hiking, walking, photography, swimming and more. We haven't wasted any time either. Saturday since it was finally sunny and warm Brooke and Jen went over to Jen's parents house to get some sun and use the pool. Brooke had a neat new float complete with sun shield to bob around in and she didn't seem to mind it at all. She loves the water anyhow, she always has. She loves to splash and play in water of all kinds from the tub to the pool to the lakes.

After that on Sunday we went and hiked another of the 4000 footers on Jen's list. Mount Jackson is one of the shorter hikes for a big mountain but the trail was fairly rough. It is 4052 feet high and the trail is only 5.2 miles round trip however it's a rocky, wet trail and that made it a little harder than the numbers would lead you to believe. We were supposed to have a brilliantly sunny day according to the weather man and the first half definitely was. It started clouding up as we neared the top and by the time we headed down around 4 o'clock it was nothing but clouds. While driving to Bill and Bob's we saw a mother and baby moose on the side of the road having dinner. Brooke got really excited to see them and didn't take her eyes off them until they left about ten minutes later. Then we went on our way to enjoy some roast beef sandwiches before heading home. Tonight we took a walk around town and took a few quick family photo's down in Swazey Parkway. Nothing special but the sunset on the town made a nice backdrop so we took a few pictures. There are a bunch of pictures from all that lumped together here so click away.
Also Chris has introduced me to HDR photography. It is really neat stuff and if done right the pictures almost come out 3D. They look like you are there and not looking at a picture. It's a process of combining three pictures of the same scene into one and it ends up giving detail in all the tones of the picture, from the shadows to the highlights. It goes like this. You take the three original pictures at different exposures and then the computer sandwiches them together into one and takes the complete range of tones and colors and turns them into one picture. A tripod and a camera that can bracket exposures are the best way to do it, either that or by manipulating a RAW image file a few stops and then doing the same thing with those. Anyhow before I bore you more with that here's an example from Stonehouse Pond I took while over in Barrington for Joanne's birthday the other night. The three original images and the final product. It's an image I couldn't have gotten without a bunch of filters before this and it was a real pain in the butt so I rarely bothered with it. This is easier and more fun so I'll probably do it a lot if the scene is right. If you thought that was as cool as I do or if you just want to see a few more of them click here and there's about a dozen more I have put together so far. Some are better than others but I'm still getting the hang of it. It doesn't work well with all pictures and sometimes the originals are more interesting anyhow but for the ones it works with it's really cool and a lot of fun to play around with. They can come it looking fake and computer generated occasionally but lots of the time they just look very real to me. I haven't done many yet but the few I have done are right here if you want to check it out for yourself. I can't wait to play around with some more.

Well that about wraps up this edition of the blog but check back soon. Brooke is really off and running now (literally) so I'll try and put up some video soon of her new and improved skills. That's all for now.