Weekend Plans

Didn't really do much this weekend. I somehow hurt my back/neck this week, so I wasn't up for too much. It rained for most of today, so I took my niece to A.C. Moore, and we got some crafts. She did some Halloween foam art, and I bought some crochet supplies. I haven't crocheted in a long time, so I bought a book on learning to crochet. It has some stitches I don't know in it, so I thought it might be a good learning experience.

My friend Maryanne and I plan to go to the Long Island Fair next Saturday. Right now the forecast is for rain, but I'm hoping it'll change over the course of the week.

We went a few years ago, and it was a lot of fun. The picture to the right has a little too much light, but it's the only picture I have on the computer from our last visit. I'm pretty sure I used a film camera. I have a disk of pictures somewhere, which I've been looking for most of the week. I found quite a few other photo disks instead, which have been interesting to look over.

Hopefully I'll have some pictures to post Saturday night. :)

Good-bye Summer

So it's fall already, which is my favorite time of year, but I don't have any suitable pictures on my hard drive, so instead I'll post some pictures of a trip to Pennsylvania we took this summer.

In July we went to visit my parents for the July 4th weekend. My mom heard about this restaurant in Wrightsville, PA, called -- go figure -- the John Wrght Restaurant. There's also a store inside that had some unique items. The building is a restored warehouse, and that was pretty cool. They have some nice pictures on the website, but I'm going to post a few of mine. They're not photographic masterpieces, but they're good enough for what they are.

Here's the entrance. We went in through the brown door.



The dining area inside wasn't that large, but we ate outside on the patio. It was a little windy, but it was nice being outside. The dining area is under the green and white striped awnings.



From the patio, we had the view of two bridges that crossed the Susquehanna River. We crossed one coming and went home using the other. My dad, who is a Civil War fanatic, proceeded to give us a history lesson of how the visitble stone abutments date back to the Civil War. He told us that the Union soldiers burned the bridge to stop the invading forces.



Not that I doubted my dad, who could probably teach a history class on the subject, but where I went down to take some pictures, there was a plaque that read, "In 1814, the first bridge connecting Wrightsville and Columbia was completed. It was the longest covered bridge in the world (5,690 feet.) Since then, five additional bridge have spanned the Susquehanna at this site. Of the six, two were destroyed by natural forces, and one was burned in 1863 by Union militiamen and townspeople to prevent Confederate troops from invading Lancaster County and reaching Harrisburg."

Photography lessons

I was looking for some interesting photography blogs today, and I got a little sidetracked by this one: Capturing Moments That Last Forever. On this blog, the author has a "free online photography course" for compact cameras. At the end of each of his lessons, he has a project for the reader. I thought this might be good for me to try in my spare time.

Since this is my photography blog, I thought I'd post a picture that I took at Westbury Gardens last year. It was just such an interesting statue that I had to take a picture. I would really like to go back this fall with my Sony DSLR. There was a part of the grounds that we were just too tired to explore. Even though we went this time last year, it was a little warm out. It's been much cooler the last few weeks, so I'm hoping we can go soon. Next Saturday isn't possible, but I'm hoping the week after that is nice enough to walk around outside.

Experiment

I was fooling around with my Samsung the other day, and I found this interesting special effect. I would like to learn how to do a picture mostly black and white with something (like a flower) in color. I don't have Photoshop, though. I have Paint Shop Pro. I could probably do it with my program. but most tutorials out there are for Photoshop.

I thought this effect that's built into the camera was kind of close. It's interesting, anyway. There's also a feature that will make only a circle in color, but it's a little awkward looking for the pictures that I took. This is one of the pictures I took in the Butterfly House at Hershey Gardens a few weeks ago.

This weekend is supposed to be really nice. I would like to go somewhere and play around with my DSLR. My niece is sleeping over this weekend, so maybe we can take her to the park on Saturday. There's a nice park close to here with boats and a playground. I'm hoping it won't be too crowded, since this is a holiday weekend. If I take anything good, I'll post it here.