Chicago: Day 2 - Cantigne

Finally! Another Chicago post! School takes up way too much of my time... Someone just needs to pay me to be a blogger already. :p

ANYway...

On our second day in Illinois we were still in Wheaton. We spent the day with family again. Church in the morning, and then grocery shopping, and a trip to an animal sanctuary.

I wanted a good picture of this snake, but it wouldn't hold still, so this was the best I got.

All of the animals here were animals that had been rescued from various unfortunate circumstances in the wild.

The owls were my favorite. :)

This poor fox only had three legs.

After the animal sanctuary, we went back home and joined Uncle Bill. He had a photography job at an estate called Cantigne. (Pronounced Can-Tee-Nee) It's a huge place with gardens, a museum, gardens, war memorials, gardens, a golf course, and more gardens. While Uncle Bill went off to take pictures, Aunt Linda, Shaina, Sasha, and I explored the gardens.

So, apparently we always do this.

We all were taking pictures of everything.

I loved this thing. I wish it was real!

Tiny ornamental peppers. I wonder what they taste like...

These glass bottles were buried to create a border for some of the plants in one of the gardens. I called them the North American Burrowing Bottles. :p

When uncle Bill had finished his job, he came back and started taking more pictures just for fun with the rest of us.

I called this woman a pot-head. I know. I'm so clever.

A giant tic-tac-toe game.

Dinotopia(ry) It's a nerd-joke. Don't worry if you don't get it.

That night we got together with Chris and Becky, and Ethan convinced Shaina to play hide-and-seek with him. He was looking for her for AGES, and he never found her. She had gotten down and crawled under one of the cars. She said he ran right by her so many times. It was the funniest thing that happened all day. :)

And that was our second day. If you liked the pictures of the garden, and would like to see more, I made a separate post on my photo-blog, which you can find by clicking HERE.

No promises as to when day three will be up, but hopefully soon. Day three was The Field Museum! :D

Chicago: Day 1 - The Arboretum

I am FINALLY getting to my posts about Chicago! I can't promise to get to them all right away, but at least I'm getting to this first one.

On our first full day in Illinois, At this point it was just Wheaton, not really Chicago yet, we hung out with the family for the day. The main thing we did was go to an arboretum. It was really nice. It was kind of like a zoo, but for plants.

Here, Shaina defies a sign that clearly forbade standing on the table. Bad Shaina. Bad. Shame. Shame on you.

Okay, I confess. I told her to. I'm the bad one. Mwa ha ha ha ha.... >:D

 
Chris and Shaina examine a tree.

Sasha was enchanted by a flock of tiny mushrooms.

I can't remember what these columns were, but they were kind of cool.

There were a large number of wooden insect sculptures all over the arboretum. Shaina posed with most of them.

Yes, I know this is not an insect. Go away, trolls.

And here is where my camera battery died. We left soon after, so you didn't miss much. The rest of the day was spent shopping, and visiting the library where Aunt Linda works.

I got a new battery in the meantime, but I only ended up taking two pictures.

Her library is huge! It literally had three floors! I could just live there. I love libraries. :)

And that's all for the first day. More to come soon!

County Fair Photos

The fair is almost here, and I am almost ready. The Hy-Vee where I work has a Kodak kiosk for making prints, so I took my jump drive there today to get my photos printed off. It was only $3.00 for all 10 which I thought was a pretty good deal. Until I got home and reread the rules.

“The size of each print is limited to the size of the mat board (11x14), but may not be smaller than 60 square inches.”

4 x 6 is not really gonna cut it with the judges I think. So I went back to get bigger prints. I’m sure that anyone familiar with those machines will probably know what happened next. I was not familiar with them, and next year I’m going to look at online printing options. $40.00!? For 10 pictures?! I was a bit shocked. I was thinking it wouldn’t be more that $15 - $20. Oh well, live and learn. I don’t regret it though because they look so good printed out! The little ones look good, but the big ones look amazing!
A friend at work helped me work the machine and she was amazed at how good they turned out She told me I should hang some in the coffee shop in town. Her daughter and son-in-law own it, and she will be getting it when they move. Nobody has ever offered that high of praise before, so I am pretty happy about that. :)
So I’m sure you’re all wondering, which 10 pictures did I choose? Well, wonder no more, because here they are.
There were 9 categories and I could only enter one picture per category. I am also entering one in the Contemporary/Creative Photography division, as it is the only place where digitally manipulated images are allowed. For that one I chose a shot of some leaves I had taken.

I took the shot from underneath so the light shone through them. The digital manipulation comes from the fact that I really boosted the color saturation. And really, this picture does not do it justice. It looks so much better in print! I’m sure that all my pictures would look better printed out.
OK, now for the main 9 categories. First up is “People”.

I took this at the zoo from far away with my zoom lens. It was a totally lucky shot, but it is one of my favorites.
The second category is “Scenic and Landscape”.

I spotted this pole on a walk once, and I thought it would make a good picture. The lighting and sky were perfect.
The third category is “Life in  Iowa”. If you read last night’s post you’ll remember what I WANTED to enter. If you didn’t see it click HERE. But I do have a great picture that I decided to enter. It doesn’t really scream “IOWA” but it was taken here, so it counts!

I took a whole bunch of pictures that evening, all of this tree with that sunset effect, but this one is still my favorite. I may have to do a post on my photo blog with all the variations so you can see them all.
The fourth category is “Flowers, Plants, and Insects”. I really don’t think that’s fair, because that cuts down three pictures I could have chosen, and limits it to one. I did find one that fit in all three though.

I hadn’t even noticed the ladybug until later, so this picture turned out better than I’d hoped.
The fifth category is another unfair category. “Animals and Birds” really needs to be two separate categories. It’s hard enough to choose one animal and one bird, but then to have to choose only one single picture?! Come on people! I want to show more of my pictures than that! I finally decided on a picture that I just took on Saturday on my most recent trip to the zoo.

I thought it looked like the pink parrot was whispering in the cockatoo’s ear. :)
The sixth category was also hard. “Miscellaneous”. That could be anything! I finally decided on a picture I took of a flamingo’s tail.

I have a bunch that look pretty similar to this, but I chose this one because I thought the fact that the head was in the background added just a little something extra, and made it a little better than the rest.
The seventh category had me stumped for a little bit. “Action Pictures”. I don’t really take action pictures, but I wanted to get a picture in every category. Then I remembered. DUH! The PBR Challenge! *Facepalm* How could I forget that?! I went into my folder of pictures that I am saving for my photography blog.

Since it didn’t allow digital manipulation, I had to take it back into the program and undo the color adjustments I had done to it, and it’s now cropped slightly differently than the one that I will be posting on my photo blog, but it’s essentially the same After it was printed out though, I didn’t care. It looks amazing!
Number eight is “Things/Still Life”, and it was also a bit of a challenge for me to find a good picture. I don’t really do still life photography, so I didn’t know what to enter. I went WAY back to when I first got my camera at the beginning of the year. I had experimented with it the first night I had gotten it, and I had come up with a pretty silly picture.

I figured it may not win any awards, but it might give people a laugh. :)
The last category is “Structures”. I knew instantly which photo I was going to enter.

I just took this one on Saturday as well. It is the inside of the Desert Dome at the zoo. I thought it looked really cool with the clouds outside.
I took the photos to a friend to get them matted for display, so I’ll do another post when I get them back. They’re going to look so good! :)
I am planning a few other entries as well, some artwork, a couple paintings and a drawing for sure. I’ll keep you posted on what I do. :)
By the way, Be sure to check my photo blog later too, I am going to post large versions of all of my entries so you can see the details better.

EDIT: The photos are up on J. North Photography. You can check them out HERE.

Playing With Photoshop

In going through my Wisconsin pictures, I was working on some to use for my photoblog. One in particular I really liked, but I didn’t want to post it there because I thought it could have been a lot better. I really don’t know how to use photoshop very well, but I have figured out a few things I can do in it to make some pictures look better, so I thought I’d see what I could do to this one to improve it.

First of all, here is the original, untouched photo.

I liked the angle of the trees, but as with most pictures I take, I am not happy with the color. I have a program, that I think came with the computer, that I use to fix all the color issues. After I was done with that, this is what I had.

The color is much better, but I was still unhappy with the branches off to the side, and that one stray branch kind of sticking out of the frame on the other side. This is where Photoshop came in. I have found a couple of tools and I used them to the best of my knowledge, which is still very limited, to get rid of all annoyances. This was only possible because it was against the sky. Anything else and I don’t think I could have done this.

Would you have been able to tell if I hadn’t shown you?