A Photo Process

As you know, Sue follows a photo prompt daily. I do not. I am not clever enough to come up with ideas, so I just follow my own photography nose and click if something catches my interest.

But our local FB group does put out challenges, and I, occasionally, very occasionally, feel a pricking, not in my thumbs but in my conscience, so I partake in some small way.

The current challenge: red and round.

When we passed a store window with red Christmas balls, it was too easy to pass up. I knew that it wouldn't be a commendable photo by any means, but it should show my cooperative spirit. I also wondered what I could do in post.

Here's the original: cropped and straightened a bit because I can't take a level photo to save my life, but that is all. It is banal, as I knew that it would be. Of course, there would be reflections —the passing car and building from across the street, but that is partly why I wanted to take the photo.

I wanted to see how well Lightroom's new reflection removal algorithm would work. The next photo shows the reflections all gone. All you can see, beyond the window display, is the interior. I simply clicked Remove Reflections, and it did just that.

Of course, I didn't want to see the interior either, so I then sent the photo from Lightroom to Photoshop, and I asked Photoshop to remove the background. I thought it would just erase the interior background and that I would need to replace it with something Christmassy, in a subsequent step. Surprisingly, however, the program did that on its own, somehow knowing that a woodsy winter scene would be just dandy. I suppose that I could have asked for a different background, this this one was good enough.

I thought that I was done and so I posted all three ↑ photos, to the group. Later, however, I decided to play a bit more, so I sent the photo along to ON1 Effects where I applied some filters and added a border.

I am not fooled. I didn't start with a great photo, and it is far from great at the end of my process, but it kept me busy for a while, and it's not absolutely terrible.

A Big Bang

A enormous bang sounded somewhere to my left. I wondered if Sue had fallen down or dropped something very heavy. 

When I looked in that direction, I saw that the door of my adjacent pop fridge was ajar.

I soon discovered that the pop can in the freezer had exploded. Indeed, it was ripped asunder with its frozen contents plastered around the interior of the fridge  

That's the sort of thing that can happen when you leave pop in the freezer for 10 hours.

I am sure that inquiring minds would like to know why I had pop in the freezer.

Well, I am going to tell you, even if your mind isn't of an inquiring bent.

Late morning, I saw that I had no pop in the fridge. I put cans on the shelf as one does but also decided that I should cool off a few cans faster in the freezer because I greatly prefer my Diet Coke very cold. In point of fact, if it were to have little ice crystals, that would be hunky dory.

Knowing that I have a mind like a sieve, I asked Alexa to remind me to remove the cans in 90 minutes. I subsequently impressed myself greatly when I remembered to take the pop out about 30 seconds before Alexa's reminder. I thought, what a clever boy am I.

I drank and enjoyed my nice, cold Diet Coke.

Unfortunately, I totally forgot that I had actually placed 2 cans in yon freezer and only taken 1 out.

I am not so clever after all.

Two Lights and Two Pots

Let us begin with a picture of these planters by the garage and from there work backward and then forward again.

First, you must picture the planters a day earlier: bare and frozen. Sue habitually adorns these baskets for the Christmas season as you see in the photo, but you just can't stick things in frozen soil, or at least not soft things.

To thaw them out on the previous day, I had lifted the planters onto a makeshift table, inserted them into plastic garbage bags, and carried them into the warm house. 

It wasn't a hard thing to do, but my back being what it is started to stiffen and spasm by that evening. Of course it did.

That night was also the night of my great fall, as described in yesterday’s post, when I landed rather heavily and bruised my unfortunate rump. 

With me being effectively out of commission the next day, Sue, herself, moved the thawed pots back outside and decorated them as you saw in the photo with nary a concomitant ache. She did this while manly me was nursing my hurts in my easy chair upstairs. It's doesn't actually feed my male ego, I tell ya.

We don't decorate for Christas much outside by stringing lights or erecting ornaments, but addition to the pots, we do insert a light over the garage that makes a rather nice night display.

We have a similar light inside the porch, so the place looks pretty festive without a whole lot of effort — just two lightbulbs and two flowerpots.

Another Nighttime Tumble

Sue heard a crash at 3AM and hurried to the bathroom to find AC lying on the floor with his head on the heater that he had knocked over. 

It was pretty well a repeat of what happened just a few months ago. I had been feeling very unsteady and reached to stabilize myself on the counter, but I toppled over instead.

Like the last time, I was pretty helpless. Sue instructed me to just lie there while she got a pillow, but I wasn't computing very well and, somehow, managed to pull myself up against the counter. But then I was stuck and could barely even lift my head for quite some time. Well, it seemed like a long time, but it probably was no more than 10 or 15 minutes.

We have a walker in the basement for an expected surgery that never eventuated. Sue brought it upstairs, and with supreme care and effort, I made it to the bed. 

I think that this fall occurred because back pain drugs were affecting me. If I had been more coherent in the middle of the night, I would have recognized that as soon as I got up. All I had to do was lie back down and let the dizziness pass.

Instead of using what little brain that the divine has granted me, I proceeded to the bathroom and ended up landing very hard on the left side of my rump. I can tell you that I am pretty sore there in the aftermath in addition to dealing with my already aching back  

Back in bed, I pretty well fell right back to sleep, but poor Sue had quite a time settling down after being well-shaken from her deep slumber  

No, I didn't go to the doctor. I did that last time in August. They checked me out thoroughly and found no cause for alarm. While this sort of thing isn't exactly common, it is not all that unusual either.

I shall have to be more aware and vigilant in my nocturnal ambulating. When I fell, I seemed to come alarmingly close to hitting my head on the corner of a little cabinet. Indeed, my fall actually jarred the cabinet a little, but I managed to avoid severe damage. If I am not more careful, I might not be so lucky next time.

Caturday 85: A Poinsettia for Lacey's Podium

Sue and I are pretty much joined at the hip, but she did run a few errands on her own yesterday whilst I rested my wonky back at home. Among a few other things, including coffee, she returned with a poinsettia for Lacey’s podium.

That one ⬆️ was taken in my iPhone's macro mode. For this one ⬇️ I used one of the special portrait modes. 

The Calandiva plant was still holding up well enough, but the plan has been to place a poinsettia plant there for Christmas. I know that it is early, but the plant was inexpensive, and poinsettias do tend to last for a long time, so there we are.

Point Form: Fragility

• One Halloween blog post that I read awhile ago mentioned how elaborate Halloween costumes had become. That caused me to remember paper costumes. I wore a paper clown costume one year: when I was 7, I think. My paper pants didn't survive long. My mother told me to make the best of it by announcing myself as, "The clown who lost his pants." Paper costumes were definitely of a different era.
  
  
• With Lacey gone and with me eschewing breakfast these days, I have no reason to go downstairs in the morning. Ergo, I tend to forget morning vitamins and pills. I could get Alexa to remind me, but I know that I would tend to put her off and still forget whereas I could only ignore Lacey for so long.
  
  
• I try to prepare a dinner every week or so — one that will supply us with several meals. This one was a chicken casserole that I thought looked good on paper and video. It took some effort, but I managed to assemble it all and put it in the oven. Then I turned on the oven. The wrong oven! The lower oven instead of the upper one. The only thing that I can say about this faux pas is that is that what was required was more of a heating up than a cooking, so we just had to wait an extra half hour after moving the dish to the lower oven. But I was both disappointed and furious with myself over my lapse. I tried so hard and then did something stupid. And it wasn't just my mistake that irritated me, but the whole recipe was a mistake. It just wasn't very good. There is both time and expense involved in cooking a dish like this. I could have kicked myself.
  
  
• That unfortunate dinner does not enthrall me, and nor does my occasional phantosmia generally enthrall me. But while sitting in my chair playing my usual games and such one recent morning, I smelled, or rather I seemed to smell, a most pleasant odour. I asked my beloved if she were wearing a new fragrance. No, she wasn’t. I was not surprised because I had been noticing it when she was not nearby. (Yes spellcheck, phantosmia is word. You say it is so your very own little self here.)
  
  
• I have such a fragile body. Yesterday, I moved two fairly big flowerpots, and by nightfall my back was letting me know all about it. I hadn’t been trying to move mountains eh, just flowerpots, and just two of them, and not too very far. It's a wee bit disconcerting to have such a vulnerable body. It's odd because all of my vital inner organs seem to be in decent shape. Joints and muscle not so much.

Shooting the Shots

What I am going to say to begin this post is that as much as Sue and I seem to like each other, there are times when either of us could, quite literally, shoot the other. 

We feel it so much that sometimes we even shoot one another shooting.

I shot her over coffee and blueberry scone snacks after she neglected to order me a take-away cookie.

Yesterday, we went for breakfast for a little outing to break some of the tedium that goes along with November. Sue wondered why she was served fried eggs instead of poach that she had ordered. I think she was almost ready to shoot someone other than me for a change. But she decided that not to shoot the young server for getting her order wrong.

One day she caught me shooting my beloved tamarcks

I rely on Sue, but I do try to hold up my end of the bargain, especially when she is desperate to shoot her shot of the day.

I was ready to shoot myself after I turned on my phone in the park, and it accidentally switched to selfie mode. Sue can't stand it when I don't smile giddily for the camera, so she made me laugh. I guess it is better this way and much better than shooting myself in the foot, so to speak.

These have been some odds and ends photos that have been languishing in the queue. There will be more to be found there now that the shooting ain't so hot out there in the cold wild.