Old Home Treasures

So when you buy an old home you will not always know what treasures it hold in store for you until you start to clean up and move in. My daughter and son-in-law purchased an older home and in the basement there was a closet. There was an extra closet rod hund across from the wall to the door below basically rendering it unable to be opened. The door is about a 30 in by 30 in door so the hole under the cement is probably about 3 square feet.

Well we removed the rod and opened the door. It led to a hole under the cement porch outside. The hole had obviously not been used for storage for years as there were a lot of spider webs and then one other rather shocking surprise. A small hole through the cement from the outside of the house, looked like a pipe might have been there at one time, allowed the spiders and other things inside. The other things were Hornets. You can get an idea of the size if you look at the small ones to the left of the nest. They are the standard size you see in trees etc of about 2 inches in height. Those hornets had obviously been there for several years and the nest just kept being added onto each year. There were no hornet there now and we were all very glad about that.

I kind of wanted to remove the nest but it is now sealed there forever. The door was removed and the wall made solid.

A Morning Walk

I like to take early morning walks with my camera just before or just after the sun starts to rise. The light is warm and the day is usually calm. Here are a few examples from a walk with my four year old granddaughter recently in Arizona. One of these pictures was taken later in the day. Can you tell which one?

Other silhouettes

A second post with some silhouette examples.

Family Photo Fun

When doing any kind of pictures for families I like to try and add some back lit shot. People don't expect them but when they see them they become pretty excited. Here are a few that I did at my last family photo shoot. I really liked how these turned out mainly because the fence and the theme they had chosen with their hats seemed so perfect a fit for both.

This is another one of the images with variations of sepia toning and black and white renditions. It is always fun to play around in photoshop while completing the shoot and just see what you can come up with. I then give them to the family as well when I give them the cd of all of the images.

Sepia version

B & W version

Here we have just the sons in the picture and this time the youngest one borrowed dad's hat for the shot. Again I included a black and white version.

As I was shooting this I decided to add just a sparkle of the sun coming past the boot. I think it added just a little to the shot since it didn't dominate the scene.

Note:

Next time you go out with your camera try a few shots looking into the sun but not letting it come directly into your lens since it could cause damage to your eye and possibly the camera. 

Safety First and great results last.