Sunday 20 December 2015

167: Merry Christmas from Alex and Rusty


166: Behind the scenes of our Christmas card

Yesterday Alex Thaub and I finally got down to work on our Christmas card for 2015. As usual, the dogs were curious about what the foolish humans were up to; I saw them in the window keeping an eye on us -- just in case there was food involved, in the case of the bassets. Tiger is not as greedy and bores easily, and I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye, which made me wonder why he was so curious. But I was
trying to set up a photograph.
   When we were nearly finished, Alex nudged me and whispered, "Don't make any sudden moves, but look over towards the garage and see what the dogs were keeping an eye on." Sure enough, a little family of deer had wandered in, searching for food. Tiger wanted to protect the property, of course, and was anxious to chase them away; Porky and Petunia were merely curious. The deer could apparently tell we meant them no harm, but we didn't get any
closer ... Alex found some oatmeal in the cupboard and we scattered that for them; they disposed of it quickly as we watched. And Tiger sulked for a few hours that we hadn't let him tear the deer to shreds ;-)
   It felt like Christmas, to be able to feed some hungry strangers who don't have the same easy life that we do. Alex and I hope you have the opportunity to make your Christmas meaningful by making life better for someone else.  And I'll post our Christmas card later today!



Sunday 13 December 2015

165: Lazy Sunday afternoon

Alex Thaub and I were at home on Sunday afternoon; we did some chores, swept and dusted, tidied up around the Christmas tree, and were just about to have an impromptu nap when the dogs started to indicate that they needed to go out for a few minutes.  That's the way it is when you have dogs, so we tried to get sufficiently awake to run the dogs. Of course Porky and Petunia decided that it was time for grand adventure and a long
hike ... luckily for us, a long hike for these two is all the way to the garage and back. We got in and dried them off, and Alex was just saying that he felt a little more energetic and maybe we should go down to the gym and work out ourselves, and he was bringing me a protein shake ... and he has the pictures to prove I fell back asleep with the exhausted dogs.  So he let me sleep and went and made dinner, bless his heart.






Friday 11 December 2015

164: Too cold and windy!


Originally this was going to be a post about my nice new sweater -- taking a few pictures out back by the garage. Unfortunately the weather decided not to cooperate; a cold and stiff breeze sprang up and turned my hair into a wind sock. And since I'd just washed my damn hair, it felt like I was immediately getting a cold. I quickly headed back into the house for a Scotch and as my hair thaws, it's dripping cold water down my neck.
If this weather keeps up, I'm going to cut my hair...

163: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas


It's been really nice to get ready for Christmas in Second Life with Alex Thaub; this is our first Christmas together and we're going a lot further than ... well, than anyone has in real life, I bet. We increased our land holdings, stripped the land down to nothing, and started from scratch with a new log cabin and associated landscaping, all to have more fun with Christmas preparations. And we are having a lot of fun
with it, making sure we get the details the way we want them.
   Last night it was trimming the big tree in the living room and I couldn't resist taking a few pictures. I have a couple of Christmas photo shoots in mind, of a more formal nature, but I thought you might relate to us at home in comfortable clothes, decorating the tree and trying to keep the dogs out of the hot chocolate. We didn't have time to start until later in the day -- the days are shorter this time of year and the darkness kind of crept up
on us. So we decided to do the last few decorations only by the light of the tree and the fireplace, which was a nice homey feeling.
   One of the bassets, Petunia, is always curious about anything humans do, especially if it even remotely involves the potential of food, and sat on the window seat looking curiously at us throughout the process.  Tiger was prowling the grounds looking for squirrels, and the other basset, Porky -- well, if you look carefully, you can see Porky fast asleep
on the sectional, oblivious to everything. He'll take more of an interest in life later at dinnertime.



Wednesday 2 December 2015

162: Who let the dogs out?

Porky and Petunia need an evening run so I took them out while I was waiting for Alex to get home ... they don't like the snow, lazy buggers. Petunia just has a quick pee and then parks her lazy butt, while Porky tried to whiz on the brand-new Christmas tree.  Lucky I caught him in time. They do their business and then sit by the door begging to be let back in to the warm house. Oh well, I suppose if I'd wanted active dogs I should
have chosen something other than basset hounds.

Saturday 28 November 2015

161: Cupric Router's surprise ALL-GINGER 5th Rezday Party

I'm not sure how much of a surprise it was for Cupric Router, but it was certainly a surprise to me -- Coop has a LOT of friends and a bunch of them worked together to arrange a surprise party to celebrate his 5th Rezday.
   The theme of the party was -- everyone came with red hair to celebrate Coop's ginger-ness. Not a problem for me, I just showed up with my regular hair, but a lot of people went to a lot of trouble to go ginger for the
day to honour Coop.
   It was so crowded, I couldn't manage more than a couple of pictures at Ginger Holler, the party site, before I crashed; that's just a testament to his popularity. Happy Rezday, Coop, and we all wish you many, many more!



Saturday 7 November 2015

160: Serendipity and emotion

I took these pictures a while back; actually this is a location that I've used before. It's a kinetic sculpture of shifting planes of colour on the public grounds of 3Bears sim; my husband and I live not too far away.
   I think what fascinates me about this sculpture is that it offers a chance to do a kind of photography that I think is the most interesting, and perhaps the most difficult, in Second Life. The keyword
for this is serendipity -- I use what I find at the moment. Essentially I stood in the middle of the sculpture and snapped photographs, and looked them over later. None have been altered. I don't use Photoshop, and in this case I didn't change the Windlight settings. I didn't even change the daylight settings! I let my av move according to my AO, and every once in a while, *snap*, just like photographers used to do, and then find out what you've got when you develop the pictures. Well, okay, I didn't develop
these! Too old-fashioned. But the surprise you sometimes get when you look at the picture after the shoot is wonderful; a great feeling.
   The picture at the top is the most serendipitous one of all. The little grin is the reflex that Second Life produces when someone takes a photograph -- a kind of "cheese!" reaction. All I had to do to get that was take a shot and then quickly refresh and take another. That brings in the other most interesting and difficult thing to get into SL photographs:
emotion. We all look wonderfully handsome or beautiful, but finding a way to get emotion into a picture is really difficult. Most often I try to show emotion in the way I place things and people in the picture, but a serendipitous little grin -- hell, yeah, I'll use that.
   I know that my friends have a lot -- a LOT -- to teach me about SL photography, technically and every other way. But don't you find that the best photographs have serendipity and emotion?









159: Park and ride

Alex Thaub was a little sad last night that he had to put his Corvette away for the winter. So I tried to make him feel better with a hug and a kiss ... then we went for one last ride. I think the car will be in the garage until spring, but we had one last bit of fun.