Scary Staircases

After taking this photo of  a downtown staircase way back in April. I used AI to add the cat, raven and ghost, one by one, designating the locations and telling AI what I wanted in each separate case.. Then, I kept it in my blogger folder for a time closer to Halloween, which is now-ish  

Just recently, I decided to try again with these instructions and not specifying the location of each: put a raven, a black cat and a ghost on this staircase.

Somewhat surprisingly, Gemini chose the same order although it varied the locations. I think it did a much better job with the ghost.

I think that AI, at least as it pertains to photos, has improved quite a lot six months, not so much in results but what we can execute with one command.

And now, when I write that ↑ about the one command, I decide to do something that I have never done before and try to have AI create a whole similar image from scratch.

My instructions: 

Make an image with a dark, narrow, outdoor staircase in black and white with about 16 steps and with brick walls on either side and a covered landing at the top. Put a black cat, a raven and a ghost on the stairs.

That last photo (above) was in ChatGPT because I had used up my Gemini photo for the day, or I think I had. It's a female ghost up there, and the cat and raven are very dark, even after trying to lighten them a bit. So, it is not as good IMO, but the staircase looks pretty authentic and fairly similar to the original.

And so, I keep experimenting with the photo editing and dabbling in AI, just a bit. 

Dog Walking and Sleeping

As instructed, we feed Dog at 7pm  and have been thrusting him out into the backyard at 9 to take care of necessities, and it has worked fairly well although we have had a few incident of barking in the night. However, for the last few nights, I have added a walk after Sue goes to bed. She goes to bed at 9, and I will take him out for maybe twenty minutes sometime within the next hour or two.

Somewhat surprisingly, upon our return, he turns up our driveway without prodding, no matter from which direction we are approaching.

On one dark pilgrimage, I appreciated that the house up the street is really well done up well for Halloween.

Then I came to the house way up on the corner that has a lot of yard decorations, but most are hard to see at night, which does miss the point somewhat. The second guy is huge and has his big, fiery head way up in the trees.

As for Dog, he spends too much time in my chair, with or without me. It's not my fav thing either way. He is with me again right now at 7:40am. Sigh. 

I do like this next photo, however. The light caught him nicely on the couch one afternoon.

We still have almost six weeks to go.

On the Trail Bridge

Yesterday morning, I sat in my chair as usual, and among other things, checked your blog posts as usual. Unusually, I saw that I had completely omitted checking the blogs on the previous day. How does that happen? I worked my way through most of them without skipping too many although it was a relief to come across the occasional recipe post, which I don't read, because the list was long. Some of you have many more readers than I do, and I don't know how you manage to keep up with a big blogroll. But good on ya, I guess.

I actually have a few more photos from our Wednesday walk, all taken on the trail bridge.

I thought that placing Sue against the yellow background tree might make a good photo, but I did have to remove the fence to achieve something close to what I wanted.

You can see the fence in a similar photo that she then took of me. I kept the one with the bench for possible use on Flickr, but I was mostly interested in the closer portraits on that day. (The order, below, is reversed from what I want.)

Here are two photos of what we saw on the bridge, first looking west and then east toward the little back bridge.

I came across this image in one of the blogs that I follow. It's a spitting image of Jake and very timely, except in his case it is not 10 minutes but 7 weeks until his owners return.

We May Need to Succumb

Today in 2022, we turned on the furnace, and if you look at the temperatures inside the red (below), you may understand why we might be succumbing soon this year. (Note: the first day in the image was yesterday. Also note: temps are Fahrenheit to make it easy for our American friends as most Canadians, at least those of a certain vintage, can work both systems.)

It's not zactly balmy, eh? Especially this coming Saturday. Sheesh!

Sue completed and submitted the fourth of her seasonal photos of 2026. They are all taken looking downriver along the Mississippi from the downtown bridge with a larger copy of the recent autumn photo included. She is already thinking about next year's location, which may be from the far bridge that you see in the distance below.

Meanwhile, we did take Jakedog for a little walk on the bridge trail. The day was overcast, but the colour was still worth a look, and Jakey loved that trail.

Speaking of Jake, he woofed me awake at 6 for potty and breakfast. We have to go outside with him in the cold to light the steps because he can’t see in the dark. Same at 9pm for his final bathroom break of the day. He’s been on my lap since then, and it is almost 7am. Six weeks to go. 

Yay or Nay

When I posted this photo last week . . . 

. . . someone suggested that it might look good in black and white.

I did try it, but I thought it looked better when I kept the orange leaves on the stone stairs.

I did keep the awning in its original colour at first,  but I thought it looked better in mono with the text coloured orange to match the leaves.

Yay or Nay?

Addendum

As an afterthought, I asked Gemini to replace the windows with ones without reflections. I think it's an improvement, but you can be the judge of that too, if you like. 

It is little jobs like this that would be a stretch to do manually and it is an example of AI being very useful in quickly doing the grunt work in photo editing, assuming that the grunt work would even be possible.

Thanksgiving Remakes

Sue and both experimented with putting our little Thanksgiving group through AI. You might recall that the original was a street scene. I think Sue just asked for an park in autumn on Chat GPT.

Later, I was more specific with my instructions to Gemini with the photo into which I had composited myself.

Put the people and dog on a woodsy trail in autumn with orange and red leaves in both the trees and on the ground.

In addition to the scene, I was able to specify the dimensions of the photo. I chose 16x9.

We Had Our Little Thanksgiving

Sue was greeted with this message on Monday morning, which added a little extra pleasure to Thanksgiving.

It is genuine too, from the outfit that plows our driveway and has done so for a number of years. 

Later in the day, they dropped the prize off and posted this.

We'll have to see how we will use it. I would certainly like to share some with our university student, Danica, to help stock her fridge, but she will be away again until later in the month, and the gift is tied to our local store.

Meanwhile, there is not too much to report about our little Thanksgiving get-together. We ate, went for a walk, and Jake was fussed over.

Before posting, I decided to add me with a straight manual photoshop manipulation.

I might try to AI us into a nicer scene, but I am going to let it go for the time being and post as it is right now.