A Day at the Fair

My sister and I took our kids and two of their friends to the Altamont Fair last week, and of course I had to take some photos....and play with them in Photoshop Elements 8.0 and Lightroom 2.0! :) The picture above is a montage of two pics, and the one below was taken from the haunted house and superimposed on that cool concrete texture. In reality, it was painted on the side of a metal trailer.
The next two shots were processed in Lightroom using a weird HDR effect from a preset....and then I desaturated it too. I like the effect....almost looks cartoonish.

I especially love the colors in this one:

The moon was beautiful toward the end of the day, and the clouds were turning pink:

It looked so pretty with the colors of the tents and rides:

I like this shot because niether Kathleen or her friend Emily knew I was taking the shot. Emily looks a little dreamy here. :)

I think I took about ten shots of this ride while it was going. I'm happy with this one:

The fair looked much cleaner, brighter, more colorful, and happy this year. Maybe it was just my perspective? Not sure. But I loved this booth:

...and this ride:

...and of course it's not a fair unless there's a ferris wheel!
(It's the only ride I rode all day. I'm getting too old for this stuff.)

So...since I last wrote, I have read "To Kill a Mockingbird" (and watched the movie), "A Wolf at the Table" by Augusten Burroughs, and another of his, "Dry." I also read "Push," which is what the movie "Precious" was based on. Oy, what a book. It certainly makes me thank God for my many blessings in life. I daresay I should NEVER complain about ANYthing again! Oh, and just for kicks I chewed through James Patterson's "Alex Cross's Trial" in one day.

I have also done a cursory cleaning of my sewing room, which allowed me to finish some projects that had piled up. I have my eye on some storage shelves at Target that are half the price of the ones I saw at IKEA, so as soon as I get some moolah, I'll be grabbing those and getting organized for the busy season ahead. (At least, that's what I'm hoping for! ) I'm off to Cape Cod next week with BF, Kathleen, and hopefully my niece Madeline, so I'm looking forward to that fun ending to my summer of leisure! Then it's back to the grindstone for me! :)

Playing in Photoshop Elements 8.0 Again

You may recognize Kathleen's jump from my post the other day. I played around in Photoshop and put her in this field. Pretty cool, eh?

....oh, and I tied her up (in Photoshop only...lol) on the train tracks and added a freight train too: :)

Riding the Rails

....aka my afternoon photo shoot with Kathleen. I know it's overkill, posting all the pics that I did, but she was a great subject! I wanted to share! All of my post processing on these was done in Lightroom 2.0, so no textures have been added. Click to enlarge.

Everything looks better bigger! (<---my motto) ;)