Upside Down Feeding....or Not.

This little guy must be hungry because there's obviously nothing in the suet holder and yet there he hangs upside down picking away.  Soon afterwords there was a new cake present but he wasn't around.  This appears to me to be a small or young woodpecker.  It has all the markings on the wings and head of the red headed one that showed up shortly after the new cake went in minus the red head markings, but then I'm not knowledgable all that much on birds.

Spring Time!

It finally bloomed, the Cherry tree that we moved because of the winds beating it to death.  That and the fact that the winter wasn't as bad this year as the last couple made a difference in a lot of plants.  We did have a hard frost and freeze so if I allowed it you would see some of the damage but that's not going to happen so enjoy.

April Snow Showers? Bring May Flowers?

Here we are, 8 days into April in southern Ohio and instead of it being in the 60's we are about 36 degrees below that normal.  A lot of plants got an early start in mid-March and then January hit again.  This is what we awoke to this morning.  Did sleep through the real spring, summer and fall or was March just a dream?

Same Picture...Different Editing...FREE Program

Not too long ago I would always hear people talking about a program for photography editing that was mainly for black and white, or so it seemed.  Recently I received an email newsletter about the program called Nik Collection and it said it was a free download.  You say free and I'm there.

First I had to look it up and I found that Google bought NIK in 2012 for their mobile apps.  Nik was selling the programs for around $500.  There are 7 programs in the collection...Nik's Analog Efex Pro, Color EfexPro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveca, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and Dfine.  Google was selling it for $149.  This program is awesome in that it works with Aperture, Photoshop and Lightroom, Elements and on either Mac's or PC's.  I downloaded both as I have an older PC laptop and a newer MacBook Pro.  The download was fast on both machines and so simple that I thought this must be a loser of a program.  It works great on either machine and in some ways is not only more simple to use but faster as well.  You may stumble through the first 30 minute to an hour, depending on how well you are with editing software but if this is your first experience with editing the hour is all you will need to be really up to speed.  It launches from any other software as a plug-in and gives you tons of options.  I thought ON 1 10 was good but it kind of puts them to shame in speed and options.

 I have two edits of the same image here.  The black and white was my first attempt at editing a color image conversion with Nik and was done in Silver Efex Pro 2,  the color was done in Color Efex Pro 4.  Both had LR edits first and then Nik and then resized to .jpg.

Click on images to enlarge.

Painted Sky

Not Morse Code

No, it's not dot dot dot, dash dash, dot dot dot.  It is southbound however.  I'm guessing 3 to 5 miles out.  The moon was behind it but obscured at this point by clouds....we're getting rain and then snow on Thursday.  Whoopee :-(

It's Been Over A Month

It's been over a month since I last put anything up on this blog.  Why? Well as a retired guy I can say I've been busy but everyone knows that's a lie.  Busy yes, but too busy to put anything up, well, not really.  I just haven't touched the camera.  I have done some reading, read a good book on the American Indians, mainly the Comanche and how they ruled the western lands.  Boy were our forefathers of the west a bunch of a**holes.  Yes, the Indians were cruel and savage but just because your skin is white doesn't make you an angel.  Let anyone walk into your house and lets see how you react if your property is just taken away as well as your way of life.  In some cases the savages were just that but it was on both sides.  

Now I'm reading a book called Frozen In Time.  It's a World War II story about a C-53 (5 crew members), a B-17 (9 crew members) and a Coast Guard plane called a Grumman Duck (3 crew members), all trying to do rescues in Greenland.  The C-53 cargo went down first then the B-17 tried to locate it and they went down and then the Coast Guard.

My next book is Here Lies Hugh Glass but better know today as Reverent the movie.  I want to read the book first, don't know why, just do.

Between reading times I have been reorganizing my workshop.  Bought a new tool, a Joiner / Planer and found it didn't JUST fit in, it needs its own space due to the way the wood flows.  Also I found recently that when I was doing a small project for Cindy that I had to keep moving my shop vac hose from machine to machine.  Not that I don't have time but it takes time and flow away from what you're doing.  I decided to put a central system in.  I found Shop Vac has an inexpensive kit that is about $144.  I also found it on Amazon for $122 and then I found it at Sam's Club online for $82.  I bought it and set things in motion.  I did have to ad some more to this, hose and some fittings and one special hood that I mounted under my table saw.  So the project went like this....get up and eat.  Get caught up on emails, the national news (getting a big kick out of the two circus's in the political arena-scary too) and check the stock market.  Go down to the treadmill and then go into the shop until lunch.  Afternoons are open for errands, more Internet busy crap and whatever.

This is one of the pictures, kind of tells the story of our Ohio weather this year.  Two weeks ago we had temps near 70 degrees and then this past week we were in the negative numbers.  This weekend is back to the 50's and the weather people are calling it a spring feeling.  I'm sorry....there's snow on the ground and ice on the pond....the air will be cold.  Pick how you're feeling, bright and sunny or cloudy and gray.  You know the routine, click them to make them bigger.