I’m much too lazy with the landscaping to create a driveway experience like this. Also, I’m too cheap to hire someone to make something so lavish. However, whenever I do see someone else’s driveway that looks so awesome, I think, wow, I should really upgrade my driveway a little bit.
Watching a lemur get high! 🙂
I thought these guys were pretty cute. Zoboomafoo! As cute as I thought they were, Japanese people thought they were even cuter. They would watch them for hours and hours and just giggle. Hearing them giggle and watching them point were just as entertaining as the actual mammal itself!
The reason it is rare is because I only spent about half a day there! So I tried to get out and see how many photos I could possibly pack into a day. I was already exhausted from being on the road so much, but I was a real photo trooper and got out there anyway. What an awesome city… I could easily see myself spending several weeks there!
This is the amazing place where we had the Dallas Photo Walk! Man, I was so tired that morning; I almost didn’t make it. We had just driven in from New Orleans where we partied a little too hard… then slept on the bus all the way to Dallas. We woke up, and there was a Rolls Royce Ghost outside the bus that was sent by the Ritz-Carlton to ferry us over to their location. The GM was there and everything. We stumbled out of bed and got dressed, but I tell ya what – the whole thing was VERY confusing, but awesome!
Here’s one of the last cruises I took before the whole pandemic thang. That’s a view of Miami from the water just as we left. It was kind of funny… this cruise was with the Summit people, which are a lot like the TED people. In other words, lots of politically active and passionate people mostly on the left. Anyway, on the night we left, Trump got elected… so then everyone on the boat was just so upset and crying for days and days… it was a wild scene!
Nothing to see here… just one out of 10 million scenes from across New Zealand. I did have to wait a little bit for the wind to get just right, but here ya go! After all the travel restrictions are lifted, I have a pretty good feeling that people will be flocking here.
Wow, now THIS was a great pool! The kids always like a good pool, and so does their big-kid dad! 🙂 This hotel was extra special because they gave us our own butler! He would follow us around and bring snacks and wine and one time he even bought a camel named Camilla for the girls to play with… Man, I wanted to take that butler home with me… what a week!
For this Christmas, I will turn you on to my favorite podcast! It’s called Off Book and it’s an improvised musical comedy. Sounds weird eh? It is! Try this episode on for size and tell me what you think! The two people that run it, Jessica McKenna and Zach Reino are just amazing… In fact, I have a little crush on that Jessica!
I don’t know if the title is factually correct, but it was definitely the only one that I saw! I had a very similar experience during my four trips to Ukraine. It’s just not a smiley culture. It’s kind of the opposite of Japan where everyone is smiley to the point of being giggly. I figure a lot of the severeness comes from leftover Communist angst where you just don’t trust anyone around you, ever.
As you can see, this isn’t exactly the sharpest photo in the world, but I still think it’s cool. The shutter was plenty fast enough at 1/250th of a second, but I had to get the ISO up super high to 12800. That’s why you see all the grain. It’s not the end of the world, and most non-photographers would even notice… I probably should not have even pointed it out!
I’ve been using Luminar for a while now, along with Aurora HDR, as my main software for processing images. It’s just so powerful and feature packed which makes editing images even more fun than normal. Recently I got hold of the new Luminar AI which replaces Luminar 4 and it’s great. There is a bunch of AI based stuff on the front end which helps you select templates (think presets) which is great for beginners or to inspire some ideas for processing. For those of us who want to get hands on that is still an option and there are a bunch of new sliders to play around with. Check out the vid below where I process a landscape image and if you’re interested in grabbing the software you can do so here. 🙂
I can see why Florida has a huge appeal to people who are the beachy sorts. I don’t actually think I am the beachy sort… I’m more the mountainy sort. But I’d do that split about 70/30. I certainly don’t hate the beach and I’ve been having a great time exploring all the beaches on the North Island of NZ. Nothing against Florida or anything, but I think I like the beaches here a bit more because they are so remote you hardly see anyone else… makes it easy for a fun skinny dip or two.
