Rust Never Sleeps

Rest in peace my old friend ...

Salvador "Buzz" Douglass
January, 20, 2010

Sparrow under glass

I've been experimenting with the sparrows whom frequent the bird feeder on my apartment balcony. They've become so accustomed to being fed that on most morning I find them waiting patiently waiting for me to fill it. As a result they are becoming quite tame and tolerate my close proximity because they know it means a free meal.

I've been experimenting a tad - by removing the feeder and putting in its place different (and I'm sure to them) odd shaped containers holding their bird seed, just to see how they will react and also hoping for different and unique photo opportunities.

In this example I replaced their feeder with a wine goblet hoping to catch a photo of a bird inside it, but have yet to do so. Instead they stand just outside it - pecking at the seed through the glass, sometimes furiously. To them it must seem like some kind of alien force-field - tempting them with food so close yet unreachable.

In this shot the lighting was just about perfect as this female came up and lifting one leg tried to peck through the glass. Looking at it all I can think it's too bad sparrows don't wear top hats and sing "Putting on the Ritz."

Mountain biking is fun ...

Taken during then Palo Duro Panhandle Marathon.

(C) Steve Douglass

SEE MORE AND BUY YOUR PHOTO HERE.

How do they know?

In the fall and winter I put out a bird feeder. It's on my back patio and about ten feet from where I sit at my computer, working on web sites, writing, etc. My camera sits on my desk, always ready and that's how I've been able to get such great shots of the sparrows and finches.

When it is warm, Salvador, my twenty-three year old blind and almost deaf cat likes to sit right under the bird feeder. He soaks up the sun and is oblivious to the birds feeding just a couple feet over his head.

But what is amazing is that the birds seem to know that Salvador can't harm them. Sometimes they even fly down and take a close look at him, face to face. I've never been able to catch it with my camera until today. I was taking some photos of Salvador on the balcony (for the first time in a few days due to my cat-hating neighbor) and along came this male sparrow to check him out. I got two frames before he left and flew back up to the feeder.

Good thing he did. Right after these photos were taken, Salvador felt the air being disturbed by the air and became alert- either that or he smelled the bird, which is the only keen sense he has left.

But the bird didn't come back down, I guess satisfied that my cat was no threat and continued to feed.

The shots are a tad out of focus, and a bit grainy, but it was one of those quick events that gave me little time to react. Still, I think its a cool slice of life captured.

Only processing I did was to sharpen it a bit and work with the exposure to enhance and lighten the details in both Salvador and the bird.

I hope it happens tomorrow so I can get a better shot - one that is focus and lit better.

- Steve Douglass

This shot gives you a better idea of what Salvador sees.

Solar Sparrow

On the wing ...

Pain On The Plains

Just a few shots from the "Pain On The Plains" mountain bike race in Palo Duro Canyon on Sunday. ALl the photos will be published for purchase on wrongwayphoto.com soon.

Click to enlarge.





(C) Steve Douglass

Good Gavin - Evil Gavin.

Click to enlarge:



Having some Halloween fun in Photoshop tonight.

Still life with pumpkins.

Little does it know ...

Little does it know, resting in my grandson's dirty palm, that the being who holds it could easily end its life.

It's so small - so vulnerable - and blissfully unaware. My grandson found it as it jumped out from under a small pumpkin he had found in a farmer's patch near Etter, Texas.

"Can I keep it?" Gavin asked his grandfather.

Looking at the little toad I couldn't help but be reminded of the many times when I had seen my grandson throw a fit when he was denied something.

I knew the toad's fate was dependent on my reply.

I bent down and put my hand on his shoulder, making sure to look him in the eye, with my eyes filled sincerely with concern for both little ones.

"Would you like a giant to keep you?" I replied.

"A giant?" he asked confused.

"To the toad - you must look like a giant monster!" I said. "You could easily squish him and he knows that."

"He does?" Gavin replied suddenly realizing he must seem very big indeed to the little creature in his hand - something my little grandson had never experienced.

Gavin isn't very tall. Everyone in his class is taller - even his sister is taller - and that's something that bothers him.

"It's up to you. You could keep him in a jar -away from his toad family and friends and he would never be happy - and then one day he would die and you'd be sad ...

... or you could let him go now and both of you go on with your day - both happy."

"You got to catch a cool little toad - and he saw a giant and lived to tell about it! You'll be famous among the toads as the giant who was nice!"

That's a much better story," Gavin said.

He bent down, parted some reeds and let the little toad hop out of his hand.

-Steve Douglass

Adobe Moon

(C) Steve Douglass

Variations on a theme.

CLICK TO VIEW IMAGES FULL SIZE


I shot this photo (a Kodachrome slide) many years ago when I worked at a local newspaper. It was a photo-illustration for a story on women and handguns.

Back then (late 1980s) once it came out of the developer, there wasn't much one could do to manipulate the image, but now, with Photoshop & NIK filters it is possible to take an old image and drop it into the computer machine and change it to one's heart's content.

Sure, that is hardly news, that photos can be manipulated in Photoshop, but most amateur photographers either don't know how or are reluctant to take an image they like and experiment with it to the extreme.

With that in mind, I scanned in the slide (via a Canon "Canoscan 8400F scanner) and began to work on it tosee what I could do - in just a few minutes.

The first thing I did was to use the cloning tool to clean up a few blemishes, then I applied a NIK Coloe Effex Pr0 3.0 "glamour glow" and "blur vignette" filters.

I liked the result - giving it a kind of mysterious film noir quality, but I didn't like the way it blurred the gun, so I carefully erased parts of the top layer to show the sharper bottom layer below it. This put the emphasis on the gun and also toned down her hand which (in my opinion) looked to big and almost man-ish.



Better - but I wanted to take the image further. I decided I wanted it to have a more illustrated look so I used the posterization filter built-in to any version of Photoshop.



Here it is colorized with the NIK "Bleach By-Pass" plus the addition of a orange graduated filter.



I also cropped it a bit.




Last but not least, I took it to the extreme - wanting it to not have any photographic look at all and applied the NIK filter "Old Paper."



This gave it the look I was looking for, like a pulp fiction cover.

So as you can see, there's a lot of experimenting you can do using Photoshop filters that can literally transform any photo from blah to ha!

Just make sure you save a copy of your original images and only work on a copy!

As always your comments are welcome.

-Steve Douglass

My blind cat.

I have a cat. His name is Salvador. He is twenty-three years old. He has been blind for the last five of those.

It's genetic the vet says- something about an Abyssinian gene.

It doesn't seem (blindness) to bother him that much. He knows my apartment well and the only time he has problems is when something changes, like when I leave the vacuum out or a door that is normally open is closed - then he bonks his head.

Once in awhile, when he can't find me he yowls, kind of like a momma cat for her kittens.

I pick him up and pet him and reassure him I'm here and he's happy.

In the late evenings he likes to go out on the 2nd story deck of my apartment and do (what I call) a "stroll and sniff."

He walks down the deck, sniffing the air and from what I can tell his nose still tells him more about his world then I can ever deduce.


There was a day when he ruled this apartment complex, kept the strays away and lived to torture my neighbors dog.

But Salvador is retired now and is living out his last days, eating, purring, strolling and sniffing.



Some people say I should have him put down, but as long as he isn't in any pain and can still extract some joy out of life (like curling up on my lap, using his paw to scrape the sides of his bowl to get that last bit of tuna) I'll let him be.

I know some day, I'll have to set his kitty-soul free of its' blind and earthly entrapment, but until that day, Salvador will be my cat.

-Steve

The Beatles & my daughter .. an early Photoshop experiment.

I thought this post might be relevant today in light that the release of the remastered Beatles catalog (not to mention Beatles Rock band) and (quite possibly) the expected announcement from Apple that Itunes was going to offer the entire Beatles catalog.

I did this many years ago (too many to count) when I was learning Photoshop and trying out a new scanner. Pretty simple technique, I did a head-replacement and put my daughters (then a teen) head on one of the Beatles.

She liked it so much I made a print of it and it hangs in her home today. He kids all think she really knew the fab four.

So where's Paul?

I think he was dead man.

-Steve Douglass