On the Trail

I have about 3 more days of India pictures to go through. I have been putting it off because I think I took more pictures the last 3 days than I did the rest of the trip combined. Stay tuned!

Until then, look at these beautiful horses. They head off tomorrow to pull a wagon about 75 miles from the north, through town, and then into Houston. This week long event is a tradition around here that I hope to be involved in some day. For now I will just take pictures for them.

The Girls are Back in Town!

After 2 weeks without horses, the girls are finally coming home today. I will show you in pictures why they were gone for so long, but I can tell you they were putting their amazing Percheron muscles to work.

Renters

One of the features that was on my house "must have" list was room for horses. This was actually a fairly easy thing to find since horses are a big deal in Texas. It seems like every lot that has room for horses has horses. They are everywhere. So, all of the houses we looked at with acreage had a pasture with a barn. Yes!! Of course we ended up buying one of those houses, and were left with a pasture, no horses and grass that needed to be mowed.

I figured it would be a few years until I would find a horse I wanted to adopt, and possibly a few more years until the husband actually let me. The husband, I fear, is possibly a little afraid of horses. Something about them being big, with big feat, and uncontrollable.

We entertained the idea of renting out our back pasture. The conversation usually arose when it was time for the husband to mow the grass back there, and usually just in passing. We have absolutely no idea how to go about renting out land. It's not like we could just put up a sign on the fence that says, "For Rent". No one would see it but our neighbors.

Which brings me to our neighbors. I was sitting outside one morning eating some breakfast when our neighbors rode their bikes by the house. I waved, they waved back. Then they turned around and came up to the fence. I thought, cool, they must want to meet me. Which they did, but they also wanted to know if they could rent our pasture. Yes! No sign needed.

It turns out their horses ate all of the grass in their pasture. Due to the drought the grass isn't growing back. The husband hasn't mowed our pasture for a couple of months, so there is plenty of grass at our house. Which means, free horses for me!

Meet Sunny and Star, both black Percherons. I have to say, they look amazing in the pasture. I may have to kidnap them. Although, it would be really hard to hide them. I wonder if they will fit in my bedroom?

Star

Sunny

Science and Engineering Art Fair

Last week I entered 4 of my photos in the Science and Engineering Art Fair at Northwestern.  The fair was set up to show the creative minds of scientists and engineers.  Most of the time I think my creative brain wins out over my logical brain.  Anyways, I was so excited to find out that I won 2nd place for the photography section of the fair.  I am so excited because it is my first time winning anything, or entering anything, for my photography.  It makes me think that I may actually have a chance to start a photography business someday.  Below are the 4 pieces I chose to enter.  The sunset photo was the one that won!

A Horse of a Diffferent Color

Smokey

Smokey is such a ham. He is the only horse I have met that will pose for a picture. He loves it, and I love him for it. Now, if I can only get him to turn his head with the rest of his body so that he doesn't trip over his own feet while I am on his back. That battle has yet to be won.

Sugar

I have been trying to talk my grandma into getting miniature horses for a long time. They are just so darn cute how can you resist. Well, she finally gave into her desire and got four of them. Sugar, Gracie, Lily, and Bubbles (who I call Little Red). Four little girls who are as cute as can be. Little Red is my favorite, with her soft hair and her shy nature she is the littlest one. She loves to chill by herself, eating grass in the front yard. One of these days I'll show you how we took them for a walk down the street. The neighbors love them!

One Picture: Several Ways

I have this picture of my cousin M that I really liked. The only problem is that the background is way too busy. So, I tried several different techniques to try to downplay the background.

Here is the original, with some sharpening and lightening.



First I cropped the photo to get rid of some of that distracting background, no one likes a distracting background. In some of the images I blurred part of the background, and in some I didn't.

The first thing I tried was the selective sepia technique I tried awhile back. In this one I took out all of the yellow and green. It looks ok, but let's try something else.



This one I used the half sepia technique, plus I blurred the background. It looks pretty good. I kind of like how it looks a little old school.



This one is a half black and white technique. I duplicated the image and used my favorite black and white technique. Then I overlayed the two images and messed with the opacity until I was happy. I think it may be a little dark though, maybe if I lighten it up more I may like it better.



Finally, this is a combination of some black and white techniques, which I will talk about later. Again, it is a little dark.


Overall, I'm not all that happy with any one photo. I'll keep trying. Which one do you like? Do you have any suggestions?

ABC Wednesday: "S"

Sorry I haven't participated in forever. This quarter has been super busy, add to that buying a new house, and there is little time for fun.

Smokey is my cousin's horse. He is a pain in the behind, but if you push him he will actually listen, if he feels like it, sometimes. He is also a photo hog. He posed for every single picture I was taking of him and his brother and sister.



Northwestern has a sailing center. I contemplated taking sailing lessons, but it is super expensive, and I would rather spend the money on horseback riding. I have actually never been sailing, and it is something I have always wanted to try. Feeling the wind blow through your hair, being out on the water, it all sounds like a bunch of fun.



For more wonderful "S" posts head over to Mrs. Nesbitt's

ABC Wednesday: "H"

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I am out of town and have limited internet access. I should be up and running again next week. I apologize in advance to anyone I don't respond to in a descent amount of time. I'll make sure to visit everyone when I get back.

Here is my H for the week. I love horseback riding. If I could do it all day, everyday I would. Unfortunately, I can't afford my own horse, yet, and lessons in Chicago are outrageous. This means I only get the chance to ride when I am at home in Ohio and can make it over to my Aunt's house. She just recently brought into the family a mustang from Colorado named Takota. He is as stubborn as can be, but is the cutest thing ever. She also has a stubborn little pony named Cappy (Caprianna), and a mixed bread named Smokey. On Christmas day the sun was just right so I thought I would take some pictures of the pretty (muddy) horses for my aunt. Here are some of the shots I got.

Playing with Texture

I have been playing a little bit with texture in photoshop. Here is a very easy one that I did today. I get my textures from www.mayang.com/textures/. This is a picture of Smoky and Takota I took this winter. The picture was a little washed out so I messed with curves in lab color mode to bring out some color and contrast (Make sure you switch back to RGB mode when you are done). I then took a texture of some gouged dirt and made it the same size as my photo. Then I used the move tool (upper right hand corner of the tools) to move the texture into the photo. If you don't like the colors of the texture you can change it to grayscale to delete the color information. I then set the layer to overlay in the layers box and set the opacity to about 67%. Smokey's face didn't show up very well so I used the burn tool at about 19% to bring it out a bit. Not too compicated, but I like how it kind of makes the photo look old.

Takota is my aunt's new horse. He is a six year old mustang that can be very stubborn. He is also not very fond of having his picture taken. Smokey, on the other hand, was always posing for a shot. He would stop, look at me, and wait for me to take the picture before going back to chewing his grass.

Soulful Eyes

I have always loved looking into a horses eyes. I feel so connected to them at that moment. It is as if I can see their soul, or they can see mine. Here is Smokey's soul.