Iris Festival

Today was the Iris Festival at Swan Lake. We had a great time and I took loads of pictures.
All I bought was a cd to add to my collection of Native American music - "The Indian Soul: Quilla" - Richard Maldonado. I love native flute. It's so calming and relaxing to listen to. Besides it makes me feel closer to my roots. Exposure: f/7.1 at 1/320 second
I removed the color from this photo to emphasis the constrast between the black swan and the water fountain. I love how this one turned out. I wasn't sure since it was the first time I had tried to create a certain effect with moving water. The resulting image is very close to the what I was aiming for. A smaller aperature was used in order to focus the individual droplets of water creating a nice effect. Exposure: f/4.0 at 1/640 second
This shot was a complete accident. I was focusing on the bird beside this couple when he ran her off into the pond.Exposure: f/4.0 at 1/320 second
The parade consisted of quite a few horses. This was a particularly hyper creature who was quite spooked by all the people and noise.

thread scarf and poncho

I started a scarf to match the poncho I am currently crocheting out of Aunt Lydia's Classic Crochet thread color # 250 Mexican.

Scarf

The idea for the Poncho I got from a Faded Glory one that I bought at Walmart last year. I changed a few things but the basic form and the stitches are the same. The Scarf design was my own idea. Since I didn't add the yoke to the poncho as in the origial design, I wanted to have something extra to dress up the neckline of the poncho. And so the scarf was born :)
The scarf was easy enough. I finished it in 4 days worth of spare time. (May 22-25) I'm glad I finished it in time to wear Saturday to the Iris Festival. I would have liked to wear the poncho too but I don't think I'm going to make it in time. Oh well. The poncho is taking a little longer than I first thought it would. Mostly because I keep getting sidetracked by other crochet projects. And getting my camera didn't help with my spare time either :)
I have way too many crochet books full of patterns that I want to try. And still every time I go to a bookstore or craft store I always find at least one more that I just have to have. I'm never going to be able to actually find the time to make all the things I want to. But I'm going to keep on trying anyway :)

Twilight

Over the weekend I read another good book recomended to me by a coworker - Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. The storyline is basically about a teenager who inadvertantly falls in love with a boy in her high school biology class. He (as well as his whole family) turns out to be a vampire. The characters and story are very well developed. It was a very enjoyable read.

Button, button, who's got the button?

I've been working on some buttons for my sites. Here are a few that I've completed so far:

Sites Dedicated to my Photography HobbyMy Photography Website

I have my own photograpy website - Jaime's Photography - which is dedicated to my photography hobby. This interest of mine was recently jumpstarted when I bought a Canon 20D, a camera I have wanted for quite a few years.

My Photo Gallery at DPForums

I'm a member of the DPForum (Digital Photography Forum) and therefore I have a gallery of images to be critiqued on their server.

Sites Dedicated to my Life and Friends

My Personal Photo Scrapbook

The scrapbook started as an offshoot of my wedding website. I'm considering replacing it at some point with a photo hosting server (I'm leaning toward smugmug.com). For now though my personal photos will be located at My Scrapbook.

My collection of slides at Slide

The slide of photos on my profile page is from my collection at slide.com - Pics4Isabel.

My profile at MySpace

My profile at myspace.com and the location of my blog Isabel's Thoughts. This is not frequently updated but is a good compliation site for my interests and hobbies.

My profile at the Sims2.com

My profile for the Sims 2 PC game site. This is the best computer game! Occasionally, I'll add a snippet from one of my numerous families' lives to my blog on this site. Recently I started a new challenge for one of my neighborhoods (I'm calling it the "Real-Life Challenge"). Also wanted to try my hand at uploading some of my lots and sims.

My blog at Blogger.com

And last but not least, the button for my main blog - My Creative Outlet - a compliation of my thoughts and my creative hobbies. This blog will be updated more frequently than any other of my sites so check here for what I'm currently up to.

Sites Dedicated to my Crochet Hobby

I've decided to start work on the website for my crochet business. It will be a while before it's completed, but it's coming along nicely. The crochet website - Crochet by Isabel - will be the future site of my crochet business. The main items for sale will be baby things: baby afghans, layette sets, etc. Eventually I will also sale other creations designed by myself such as scarfs and ponchos. This is not currently functional but plans for it's completion are for the near future.

Crochetville - Another forum I enjoy perusing is Crochetville.org

I also noticed that the menu bar I coded for my photography site acts sort of weird in Internet Explorer if the browser text size is set to medium or larger. It works OK if you shrink your browser's font to the smaller sizes. I haven't decided how I want to go about fixing this yet. It works just fine in Firefox so I will probably leave it as is for the moment. At least until I have time to recode the menu. I guess I'll have to go back to menu buttons afterall :(

the secret supper

Lately, I've been reading The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra . It's set during the time period of Leonardo da Vinci. If you enjoy historical fiction and mysteries you should really check it out. It's a great book. I'm only about a third of the way through but I can barely stand to put the book down :) The book is full of puzzles the characters are trying to solve as well as a murder of the Don's wife that they are trying to solve.
The writing style is different than most modern books since the story is told by an Inquisitor of the Roman Church and therefore is written using a higher vocabulary in order to reflect the time period. In spite this the words flow together and make the book easy reading. I'm really enjoying it.

shades of purple

This past weekend didn't pan out like I expected. There was not much time for myself since we had out-of-town family drop in for the weekend unexpectedly. But I did manage to find time to take a few pics during my Mother's Day visit to my mom's.

These photos were color manipulated in Photoshop in order to give them all a bluish-purple tint. This was done in order to accent the texture of the subject of each image rather than to emphasize the ordinary aspect of each image, i.e. they are merely a close up view of the various rocks in my mom's flower garden. I also wanted an underlying color theme for the portfolio - shades of purple.

MySpace

I created myself a myspace account - mostly so I can keep up with my friends at work. It seems to be all the craze now and I was beginning to feel left out. :) I also created a slide.com account so I could add some pics to myspace.
I also added the cascading attribute to the menus in my photography site today. It wasn't as difficult to do as I first thought it would be. It was extremely aggravating to make it compatible with the graphics already in the web pages, but it looks OK now. Haven't decided whether to add the cascading menu to every page or just the main pages, but either way I have the html to add whenever I like, which is a great relief.

the house

I was playing around with photoshop last night. Trying some of the features that I haven't used before and learning what effect some of the functions have on various aspects of each image. This was the best outcome I had. Just wanted to share :)
Also, as an update, I finally figured out how to add a horizontal menu bar to the top of each page of my photography website. It doesn't cascade yet like I want it to, but at least the menu now takes up much less space since it's not a vertical column of buttons. The html code had an added bonus of automatically doing away with the annoying blue border around the photos in the slideshow. Yah!

Abstract Photos

I wanted to try my hand at some abstract images. Here are a few of my first attempts. Any comments are appreciated.

I removed the color with photoshop in order to accent the shapes and lines present in each photo and so the coloring would not distract the viewer from what I wanted the main focus of each image to be- the abstract nature of each of the objects. The black and white format also helps to accent the light and shadows, giving each image more of an abstract feel. Pots
Exposure: f/5.6 at 1/800 second Hinge
Exposure: f/13 at 1/50 second Harrow
Exposure: f/11 at 1/100 second Tractor
Exposure: f/9 at 1/160 Gourds
Exposure: f/6.5 at 1/800 secondScrew
Exposure: f/9 at 1/200 second

Children

The children are the best part about my job. They have such a fresh perspective on things that adults take for granted. It's so much fun to watch their reactions when they discover something new. One little girl is so cute; she entertains herself every week by trying to catch the light reflecting in the linoleum floor while her mother checks out her books.
I had someone ask me today "When's the baby due?". It just stung a bit since I know there is a good possibility that I can never have children and I do so want them. Evidentially when I told her that I was getting married she naturally assumed that was the reason why. Go figure. Not that I would get married simply because I was pregnant. In my opinion that is not a good reason to get married. Life and marriage is hard enough even when you do love the person you are spending your life with.
That was a little off topic :) The children's storytimes are about to start for the summer so we have a lot more babies and small children being brought to the library. One little boy, he's only a year old, loves the big stuffed Clifford in the children's department. The first thing he wants to do everytime he comes in is to see Clifford. If his mother goes anywhere else first, he screams until he gets a glimpse of Clifford, then he's ginning from ear to ear again. It's amazing how they remember things like that but he never forgets to visit Clifford.

New Homepage Layout

I finally got around to adding the links to the slideshow on my photography site. Now you can click on the photos in the slide and be linked to the appropriate webpage. Much more convenient. And I've added a section for the newest photos uploaded to the site so everyone can see what's been recently added without searching through the entire site.

window to the soul
This gorgeous horse belongs to my sister. Sequoyah Slew is an appendix-bred Paint, that is, she is a quarter horse/ thoroughbred cross.
The subject of the image is the eye of the horse and the expression held in the her eye. The eyes are often referred to as windows of the soul and looking into the eyes of a horse can often determine their moods and feelings just as it can with humans.
Using the rule of thirds, the focus of the image is concentrated on the lower right point which rests directly over the pupil. The image could be improved by increasing the depth of focus. The eyelashes are not as sharp as they could have been. However, the hairs on the forehead are very sharp and help to create the intended overall outcome for the image.
The close cropping and depth of focus simplify this photo of the horse's eye without any other manipulation needed.
The reflections in the depths of the pupil of the eye draws the viewer into the photograph and holds their attention.
Canon EOS 20D Camera; Exposure: f/11 at 1/80 second
To view a larger version of this image, click here.

Updates

The Easter photos are posted to the scrapbook.

I've also finished uploading the photos from Easter to my photography site. I haven't analyzed all of them yet but they can at least be viewed now. Just click on the links for each theme to go to the thumbnail pages. From there, the larger photos can be viewed. Since this is a learning process, I've decided to add the aperture and shutter speed to the photos posted on my photography site in order to enable better critiquing of each individual image. This is an ongoing learning experience for me so any comments or constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.