The Colour is Draining Away

On a recent walk along the bridge trail, this ↓ was the most colourful section. If this was most colourful, just imagine the rest of the trail. Dog managed to get into the photo. I'll leave him there and give a little update at the end.

You may recall that  I have already posted this park tree twice when it was in its glory, but by October 27, it has lost many leaves although it was still looking pretty wonderful. I shot wide angle which shows how bare most of the surrounding trees were.

Four days later, however, on October 31, it was so bereft of leaves that I could only see a few of them  from one of the angles, and they did not show up at all from the other side. Sigh.

Happily, there was another tree farther down the path that was still resplendent.

Back to Dog: We are halfway there now, and I can report that the nights are finally beginning to be better. We have been feeding him ~8, and he has been quiet until~6. Figuring he wasn't doing well in the dark downstairs, we had been keeping him up here, but as previously reported, it wasn't going well. He prefers to sleep downstairs, but previously had barking spells. Sue figured that a dog with dim vision may require some night light, so we have since kept some lights on down there, and it has gone much better. We shall see how it goes with the time change, but it is after 5am now, and he is still quiet down there.

Help Yourself if You Dare

All Hallows Eve has finally arrived, or at least the daytime part before the actual Eve is here. This will be my final Halloween post, for which Barbara R will be very grateful.

My neighbour finally completed his very busy display, from which I was able to extract two more subjects to set in different scenes. I tried something different with the ghost, and you shall see anon what Gemini gave me. BTW I do a little more processing of my AI results, darkening or lighting them to suit my taste, but AI sets the scene. Some ideas and requests work better than others, but it is really a one-shot deal unless one wishes to pay your way for extra, which I don’t  

In the first image, the ghost and two tombstones are from an original photo, the rest is AI's interpretation of a slummy, industrial area. As slummy as the case may be, it is a sacred site to Mr Ghost, for his corporeal days expired right there many years ago. As usual, I extracted the subject from the original photo and sent it to AI, in this case Gemini.

Place the subject in a bleak and dingy industrial scene at night with several overturned garbage cans and black cats on either side of the subject.

Neighbour also moved the clown to a spot where I could get a photo. I had the top half of the clown to work with. These were my instructions to ChatGPT.

Complete the bottom half of the subject clown and show it standing threateningly over a scared student in an old-fashioned, dimly-lit schoolroom in black and white, but keep the subject in colour. 

Finally, there must be treats on this day, so I ordered AI to fill the container which I found empty in D&D. Of course, in addition to the candy, everything else in the image, aside from the skull-like container itself, is AI-generated.

Take one if you dare, little darling.

For a personal record, I have uploaded to Facebook here most of the images that I have published on this blog in the past month or so.

It's been fun. After tonight, Bleak November begins and finding photos becomes more challenging, but there will still be small pockets of colour for just a little while longer, and, eventually, but hopefully not too soon, there will be snow. Oh yes, there will be snow and cold: much snow and cold.

The Greeter and the Altar

Yesterday, we followed the Lady in Red from one haunt to another. As I mentioned, she is one of the characters in the Dark and Deadly Cafe. There is another character who wanted to get out of the coffee shop for awhile, so I took him to the haunted house that actually exists on the lake just outside of town where he found temporary employment as a greeter.

Yes, both the house  and the character exist; this was not an AI set.

Also from D&D, a sweet lil doll.

I also previously showed you the devilish altar outside of neighbours house, but I did not show this version of it that I relocated to just outside the gates of heck.

Relax. That is most certainly AI, except for the actual altar, of course.

We're almost there to the Eve, folks, and I am afraid that the good times will have to stop after tomorrow.

But we do have tomorrow, and I'll see you then for a final Halloween Hurrah

Lady in Red

The Lady in Red usually looms inside the Dark & Deadly Cafe, but she likes to get out every now and then, and I like to help her 

Sometime ago, I took her to an old residence to meet her former friends, and I got a shot of her standing by the door and looking very pretty. Apparently, there was a lot more red inside before the night was over.

On one recent night, and I went for a walk with Dog. Red Lady met us outside her cafe in her usual, cheerful and friendly manner. She invited us inside but Dog had more bushes to visit, so we demurred.

On another late walk with Dog, the lady was strolling along the path in the park. She waved for us to join her, but Dog turned tail, and I don't understand why. I was certainly ready to meet her and maybe even have a little dance.

I could have brought her forward in that last photo, but it wasn't worth the extra effort.

Three Weeks In

We are completing our third week with Dog Jake with four more weeks to go. It is time to report on how it’s going  

We are doing lots of walkies with him. We usually take him our mid-morning for a longish walk. By that, I don't mean that we trudge for miles, but we go a little farther than up street and back. The photos in this post are from the day that we walked around to the near park where Sue took more bench photos  

Daytime goes well enough, at least it does once we all up after feeding the beast at 6 or earlier  

The thing is that Dog wants both of us up. So, even if Sue is up first and trying to let me sleep, or vice versa, he will usually find a way to bark the other human awake. After that job is done, he'll go to sleep leaving both humans bright-eyed and bushy-tailed dragging their sorry and bewildered selves about. 

It's to the point where sleeping in until 6 is the goal that eludes us. He is supposed to have his breakfast then, but he's generally up earlier. I take him downstairs and open the back door, but he reneges. So, I lift him up and carry him down the deck into the back yard. I have flashlight in hand and use it to try to highlight the stairs so that he navigate his way back to the house, for doggy doesn't see well.

You get the fact that I (or Sue) have been outside and carrying Dog before 6 in the morning when it is dark and sometimes below freezing and sometimes wet?!

He comes in and gets fed. It takes about three seconds for him to inhale his food. Then, he expects treat rewards for being such a wonderful and clever boy. I give him one treat downstairs, and then he wants another upstairs (they're very small). Unfortunately, he wants more, which he doesn't usually get, and also, he then wants the second human up assuming that second human is still abed, which isn’t always the case as I have previously mentioned. It is difficult for second human to continue to sleep given dog's piercing bark.

As for walkies, we are still working them out. We have a pre-supper walk, usually up the street and back. We eat at 6, and Jake gets fed at 7. Sue goes to bed around 9, and sometime after that I been taking Jake to walk #3. It is pretty late on some nights, and we have gone long on some of those nights.

It's all to tire him out, so we can all sleep during the night. But as I compose this, I have not even managed my meagre 5 hours for 5 consecutive nights. It seems like the night walk may be having the reverse effect of waking him up and is getting him revved up.

The night after he woke up poor Sue at 4 in the morning, I decided to set an alarm on my watch for 5am. Sue needs her sleep more that I, and she was kind of burning the candle at both ends. Recently, he has been sleeping until a little after 5, and I have been awake enough to take him down to at least give Sue another hour. we had only one morning when I was able to keep him quiet, and let Sue sleep until 7. That was good, but it was only one day.

So, that is how it is going, three weeks into this gig.

I will leave you with a composite that Sue made combining both bench photoshoots with a third bench added for good measure.

 

happiness is a walk in the park

I posted this photo last week. It was taken on a dull day, but I still liked how the colour sat in the frame  

Our Sunday morning walk took us back to the park. It was a brighter day, and the tree called to me again although it was also evident that the tree had lost more leaves. I never know which focal distance I will like best once I see them on the big screen, so I often take several photos at different focal lengths. 

My focal preference changes from one shoot to another, but in this case, I like the 4x zoom the best although I probably should have taken another 4x shot from the spot where I took the 2x shot, without the other tree trunk in the way, but somehow I like it better with the tree in front. Go figure.

I do like the other two, though, but I wonder what dear reader may think. 

normal focal length

4x zoom
my fave of the three
among other things I think the orange leaves are highlighted best in this one

2x zoom

On the same walk, Sue was looking for bench photos for a prompt and took a few of Jake and me on a nearby bench.

Then, she took a selfie.

I guess, happiness is a walk in the park on an autumn day.

More Halloween Spookiness

We are getting closer to that Hallowed Eve, so it is time for AC to post some more spooky photos  

You might remember the two ghoulish motorcycle riders that began as a daytime photo that I converted into fun but scary night scenes with AI. Well, I have imagined two more from neighbours' display.

I followed the same procedure: extracting the subject from the original photo and then describing to AI the scene that I wanted.

The Original Daytime Photo

Using the above photo (with only the subject remaining in what I sent to Gemini), I wrote the following instruction: Put the grim reaper subject in front of a spooky house within a dark woodsy area but keep some spooky red light on the subject itself.

The Result

Next

The skeletal dog subject is facing a black cat with raised hackles plus a nasty witch behind the cat. There is a Frankenstein monster behind the skeletal dog subject. This all takes place on a dark path on a moonlit night with a full moon in the frame.

I had some fun, and there will be more, but I don't foresee too much of an AI future for me.But it is interesting for now and especially in this particular season.