Arty Farty Party

Adoring Husband and I attended the opening of this month's art exhibits at Gattakas Artspace in Maryborough, tonight.  The Artist and her husband, The Yachtie, also attended.

It was just to get an idea of what to expect next month for our opening.

It was all very arty farty and wonderful, and we booked the young lad who was providing the entertainment with his guitar in the corner, to entertain at our opening.

We were home by 9pm.

It's now 11.15pm and I am off to bed so that I can be awake early enough to catch a lift into The Bay and see my Chicklet family.

Too many late nights and early mornings and hours in front of the computer screen this week. (three glasses of wine tonight might also be a contributing factor!)

Very tired.

Nite all.  

At Last

I have finally finished the thirty A3 sized photos and put them on a memory stick to send to my friend at the Glasshouse Mountains, so that she can print them.

I have quite a wide variety of photos to display at this size, from birds to landscapes to still life to black & whites.  I think I'm happy with them all.  I just hope that they print well.  I guess if they don't, I can always get them done professionally and quickly if necessary.

'Best Cousin in the World' kindly informed me today that I had 3 weeks til the opening and I began to panic just a touch, but since our phone call, I have calculated that there are still 29 days til 7th September and by my calculations, that's four weeks and one day ... whew!

So, tomorrow's job will be to find all of the photos that I need to print at A4 size and put them into one file (which I should have been doing all along, but you know me, the organisational skills of a gnat).  Then next week, we can take them in to be printed as well.

I also need to figure out which photos I will do at poster size.  Just two or three.

Tomorrow night is our trip to Maryborough for the August artist's exhibit opening, just to get an idea of what to expect at ours.

Adoring Husband and I will drive over early, because I'd like to get a late afternoon shot of the wharf near Muddy Waters Cafe before we go to the gallery.

My lovely artist friend advised me today, that I would be required to speak publicly, albeit ever so briefly, at our opening.  Just one more thing to think about.  Ugh.

I'm excited about two whale watching trips that we are taking.  One will be the Sunday before the the opening and the other will be the Saturday after.

Here is a series of five shots that I took last season of a whale breaching near our boat.

The most beautiful and graceful creatures.  I will be forever in awe of them.

Well, I believe today has been quite productive and I have achieved what I set out to achieve.  Let's hope that tomorrow can be equally so.

I'm feeling pretty calm.

Nite all.

Playing Around

I've been playing around with photoshop today.  Just the basic edits.  I'll work on the more complex and complicated editing later as I begin to feel my way around the program.

I've also been playing with the Bamboo Tablet, which I think might be an even bigger learning curve!

So my poor brain is feeling truly overworked tonight!

Here are a couple of photos that I edited with photoshop.

... and here are a couple of beautiful pelicans that I photographed on the beach at low tide this morning.

Now I am going to rest my brain for a bit before bed.

Nite all.

Falling into Place

Today has been a good day!

My brother has confirmed that he and his friend will be here for the opening of the exhibit.

My sister and one of her girls will be here too.

My tutor, Andrew Goodall, of Nature's Image Photography, has agreed to be my public speaker and introduce me and my work at the exhibit.  I feel very honoured that he has agreed to do this!

We are all going on a whale watching tour the day after the opening.

I printed out 4 photos today in town, to test the quality of the print and they were so much better than I imagined.

We had printed out some photos here at home on A4 photography paper and the quality was just terrible ... I thought it was my photography and if I had to mount photos of that quality at the gallery, I would have been SO embarrassed!

But these photos looked great, so now I am excited to get the rest done.

I am so relieved!

After that, we went to see my Chicklet family!  It was lovely to see them after more than a week, because they had all come down with the flu after my last visit.  (No, I didn't give them any germs!)

My lovely little Chicklet was in fine form.  Bright and bubbly and happy.  No photos though - another 'too busy enjoying the moment' moment :D

So things seem to be falling into place nicely.  So far so good!

Nite all.

Invitation

So ... if you're not too busy ... and you want to come to the opening night ...

Just a month to go now.

I've been playing with photoshop today, just learning the basics and trying to feel my way around.

The National Bank Building in Tenterfield is architecture of the Art Deco era.  

I have a couple of photos of the Roxy Theatre in Bingara.  One of the front display windows, has a fabulous statue of Marilyn Monroe, but it didn't matter what angle I tried, the light was all wrong and the reflections in the glass are pretty bad.

This is heavily edited and the best I could get it.
(I have others without the silly man in the background!)

I really hoped I could photoshop the glass clean, but it appears to be an impossibility - well it is for somebody at my PS skill level anyway.

Anybody out there brilliant enough to clean this up?

It's been fun playing around with PS anyway.  This week, I might even teach myself to use the tablet that's been sitting in the cupboard for about 2 months now!

This morning I got a lovely photo of Molly, patiently waiting for her owner to continue on their walk.

Isn't she lovely?  Looks can be deceiving - she is a cranky bugger sometimes!

It was another glorious day, and Adoring Husband and I planned on going into The Bay to print some photos, but a delivery that we were waiting for, arrived later than expected, so now we are going in tomorrow instead.

Adoring Husband suggested that we go to the movies, but he's not interested in seeing Magic Mike and there isn't much else to choose from at the moment.  Maybe next time.

That's it for my day.  I didn't get to see if my rat was still on the concrete pad.  Let's all imagine that the beautiful white breasted sea eagle swooped down and grabbed him for breakfast!

Nite all.

Glorious Winter!

So!  I was gunna chain myself to the desk today and learn, through Youtube tutorials, how to photoshop reflections off windows and other interesting stuff.  That was my big Sunday plan.

Then I woke up.

At 7.30am it was 3 degrees!  That's cold for this neck of the woods!  So I donned a jacket (believe it or not) and opened the door to the most glorious, sunny Winter's day.

As I pedalled, I kept one hand in a pocket to keep it warm, and then halfway there, I swapped hands.  When I got to the bakery, I rested my hands on the glass of the pie display cabinet, to warm them up and after that, my coffee cup kept my hands warm.

Within 30 minutes of arriving at the Seat of Knowledge, my jacket was off and tied in a knot around my waist!

It was one of those perfect days when the sun shines brightly and twinkles like diamonds on the water.  When the air is so clean and crisp that the colour of everything is vibrant and beautiful.  When the warmth of the sun hugs every inch of your body and all you want to do is raise your face towards it and close your eyes and think of all the things that make you happy.

It was the kind of morning that makes you wish that time would stand still so that you can feel this perfect wonderfulness forever.

The birds were singing, the water was flowing smoothly with the tide, people were out fishing and rowing, walking their dogs, chatting in groups along the river bank, children were running along the beach or skate boarding on the side roads.

Holiday makers were sitting on the sun decks reading the Sunday papers and eating bacon and eggs.

I was pedalling deliciously slowly all over town and soaking up the perfect day.

Just before I got to the street that leads me home, I decided to ride along a dirt track through some bushland nearby.  I'd walked part way through it before, but today, I discovered that the track went right along the river to a place where we once picnicked with friends.

The picnic area was partly destroyed in the last floods and the Council removed the table because the land was too unstable with heavy erosion.

Anyway, along the track, I came across a dead rat.  I was pretty excited with this find and I stopped the trike to pick it up with a plastic bag that I had in the basket of my trike.

When I related this story to Adoring Husband, he gasped in horror and looked at me like he wanted to trade me in on a 'non picking up dead rats' wife.  Hilarious!  Especially when I told him that it was still warm and soft and that no rigor mortis had set in yet.

I wanted the dead rat so that I could lure a kite or eagle down for a swoop shot with my camera.

So I put it in my trike basket and rode on to Picnic Point, where I immediately spotted this guy.

Collared Kingfisher

He didn't hang around very long, so I only got a couple of photos before he disappeared.

Then a Kite landed atop a tall tree nearby, so I grabbed my plastic bag and took the rat over to the concrete pad where the picnic table had once been and lay the rat in the middle of it.

I hurried back to my trike and grabbed my camera, ready to aim and fire.

The Kite had disappeared.  Ugh.

So I set myself up near the fence so that I could use the fence post as a tripod to steady my aim.

Waiting ...

... waiting ...

Thirty minutes later, my rat was still lying motionless (as dead rats do) on the concrete block.

Even the kookaburra that perched itself on a tree branch nearby, wasn't interested in my rat.

So I figured it was time to leave.

On my way home, I came across a huge flock of Stilts and Curlews making a hell of racket!  Just as I got my camera ready, a dog came running across the sand and scared the birds into flight.

Frightened off

The Culprit (looks a bit like a dingo!)

That topped my morning off very nicely and it was almost 11.30 when I finally pulled into our driveway.

I might take the same route tomorrow and see if my little rat friend is still there!  The forecast is for the same perfect weather, but I'll have to cut the morning short to go into town and print out some of my photos for the exhibit.

Ah well, a little glorious Winter sunshine is better than none at all!

Nite all.