. . . where I go to get away:

Peaceful, Easy Feeling

Langtry, Tx (pop. 11 or 12 depending on who you ask), a ghost town, is the former home of Judge Roy Bean.  It's an odd mix of about 5 modern houses built among these ruins.

The Torres family owned the land upon which Langtry was built and their store was the town's original shopping center

The Torres Store
Overgorwn Yard
More Overgrown Yard
Abandoned Homestead

This is one of those places of which I don't seem to tire; I assume that one day I'll figure out what I'm seeing here.

Trunk
Branches
Dead Wood
Sandscape

The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest:  If you ever have the chance, it's well worth the visit.

Wood
Parallels
Rough Walk
Storm Coming

I'm rather new here, so I'm slowly building up the gallery.   I'm in a position where I'm really wanting to get as much exposure as possible.  This site seems like it might be a decent way to do that.   Well, for a while, I've done mostly purely through my account at deviantART, but as decent as it is, still not exactly what I want.

Well, the following are some pics of my backlog:

Steak 'n' Shake has been a rather big part of my life for the last few years.   It's a great place to spend several hours, working on just about anything, open 24 hours, so they'll always welcome you.   Though I haven't been there so much during the last couple of years, it still holds a bit of importance to me.  Here's a monoscopic shot I did with my Stereo Realist.   Had some major problems with the camera that night, so this is one of the few shots that came out decent.

Hibernia is where I live.   It's the only apartment complex I've ever seen with its own cemetery right in the middle of the complex.   But that was because Carlisle Cemetery was closely connected to the old town of Hibernia, OH.   Hibernia, though, is now folded in as part of Columbus.  I have some slides of the cemetery.  Maybe I'll post them someday once I get the slides scanned.  

This was a fun shoot...  had my roommate go up and start firing the flash at the building to illuminate it even more.   The ones living there didn't really enjoy it, though.  This is some of my digital photography.

The Hunting Master -- well, Jaegermeister isn't something I actually enjoy, but I love the bottles.  Another Digital photo of mine.

I love infrared photography.  I've only done digital so far, though.   These shots of Lake Hope and Hope Furnace are from my first major experimentation with it and remains two of my favorite shots.

A walk around a tractor barn. . .

Barn
Barn
Barn
Barn

. . .and the fence I forgot.

Fence

Fences: a funny word if you say it over and over.

These were taken near Manville, TX.

Fence
Fence
Fence
Fence
Fence

I spent the day at the beach so I took a few for Surferguy.  Enjoy.

Pilings I
Pilings II
Old Pier I
Old Pier II

Moose asked me to do a "tutorial" on how I did the IR pic yesterday; I'll try, and just pray y'all can understand it.  I apologize in advance for the quality of the pics that will be in this story.  I never realized how hard it is to take close shots of a computer screen until I tried it today.   The program I used is Adobe Photoshop CS2.

First, open the image you want to work with.  Keep in mind, when converting a color image to IR, you get better results if you use an image that has lots of greenery in it.  Once you get the image open, click on the image icon at the top of the page and duplicate the image.  Close the original, and just work with the duplicate.  Once you do this, click on the layer icon and, in the drop down, go to New Adjustment Layer then over to channel mixer.  Once you click here, another box will pop up; click  ok here.  Next, the channel mixer box will pop up.  Be sure to check the Monochrome box in the lower left hand corner; when you do this, the image turns grayscale.  You use the adjustments under red, green and blue to make the image b/w.  If you're doing a landscape, the green needs to be maxed out at 200; for portraits, the red needs to be at 200.  Play with the red and blue (or green and blue) until you have the effect you want.  The constant slider near the bottom of the box changes brightness.

Once this is done, click on the layer icon again, and in the drop down, click on flatten image. From here, click on the filter icon, go down to blur and click on gaussian blur.  Blur the image using the  radius slider; you can watch the change as you do the adjusting.  For images that are 25MB, the slider should be between 5-20 pixels.  For a 5MB image, it should be between 2-10 pixels.

Next, click on the edit icon and in the drop down, go to fade gaussian blur.  Once the box opens up, change the mode to overlay or screen.  Just play with different modes to get the effect you want.  Drag the opacity slider to the left to reduce the effect of the blur.  Where it should be set varies with each image.  

You are done, and ready to save your new image to wherever you choose to save it.  

White Sands is one of my favorite places to wander alone.

I  II  III  IV  V  VI  VII

These badlands are located about 60 miles due north of Alamogordo, NM.  

Malpais
Juniper

IN F R A R ED

Outside the Mission Wall
Entrance to Mission Espada
Tree
Living Quarters (Yes, they're still occupied)

On the way home today. . .
Church Bell
Window
Tree with Benches

White Oaks is a ghost town.  The first governor of New Mexico is buried there and so is one of the deputies killed by Billy the Kid.  And since this is a ghost town, I've joined that disturbing large number of photographica-ites hanging out cemeteries.

cemetery w/ghost cemetery w/ghost2 cemetery

And, after one is done hanging out in a cemetery during the heat of the day..., well, it's time to wet the whistle at the ghost town's only buisness.   No Scum Allowed Saloon

I spent the last week walking around the south eastern corner of New Mexico.  So, guess where I'll be taking you for the next few days!  

Three Rivers is an amazing place because it's open and un-like so many parks, there are no barriers between the visitor and the petroglyphs.  There's no "tour" either, so you can spend as much or as little time as you wish wandering around the boulders.

Circles Face Hand Geometric Pattern Lizard

The Presidio La Bahia is just across the San Antonio River from the Mission Espiritu Santos.  This is the place from which Col. Fannin launched his unsuccessful attempt to aid those trapped at the Alamo.  The Presidio was built in the 1750's and the church still holds weekly worship services.
War and Peace Presidio Well Church Altar and Painting

These are made with a PS plugin which makes a guess at what a photo might look like if it were taken with IR film.
Orig. 1
IR 1

Orig. 2
IR 2

More infrared.
Mission Church Close Up And One for All You Canon Shooters