Wind Machine

Old fashion maybe but functional nonetheless.  Farmers had it figured out a long, long time ago.

Wind Machine

Can't Decide

It is just hard for some to decide.  Take this leaf for example.  It seems to have started out purple, changed its mind and tried a darker purple and finally decided to blend in with its peers later in life and switched to green.  There are some that go through such stages over many years of life and others who go through them in a matter of minutes.  In any case, is sure spices up life for those around them.

Can' Decide

Painting the Sky

This one is a little deceptive.  It actually is taken inside of a restaurant--not out in the drought stricken farmlands.  While sitting at a window seat waiting for our food to come I noticed some of these wheat staffs (or weeds or whatever--I don't know plants--all I do is kill them if I have to take care of them) in a decorative vase on the table.  I picked up one of these and held it up against the window an captured this image. 

You never know where some images may be lurking.  Keep your eyes open and of course the best camera is the one you have with you.....

Painting the Sky

Stuck....Somewhere in Time

Visiting Eden (a small, mountain community not related to The Garden of Eden although life seems pretty good there) and came across this old truck on the back side of a farmer's barn, close to the street.  It begged to be part of my camera roll.  Looks like it was had a hard working life until one day it just could not go any further.  The farmer must have pulled it off to the side to the road and continued on with his farm duties without a second thought  That must have been back in 1967 according to the license plate on the vehicle.  Now it stands as a memory of a formerly hard working truck not ready for the grave just yet......

Stuck...Somewhere in Time

Bobsled Head

This is the very helmet that cradled my head while hurling down the cement bobsled track in a wheeled 4-man bobsled at almost 70 mph pulling up to 4 G's in the turns.  Summertime at the Olympic Sports Park in Park City, Utah on the bobsled track used in the 2002 winter Olympics.  The summertime run is cheap and slow.  The winter run costs more than 3 times the summer fare, obtains speeds of close to 80 mph and pulls up to 5 G's.....  I'll check this off my bucket list using the summer run.  Too much youth has passed under this bridge to subject myself to more torture than the "calm" summer ride.

Bobsled Head

The Icemeister

At the top of the bobsled run in the Utah Olympic Sports Park is a monument dedicated to The IceMeister--the guy who was master of the ice on the winter bobsled run built for the Park City 2002 Winter Olympic games.  He died of cancer and this monument was built in his honor.  It stands overlooking the valley.  We sat next to this monument a week ago as we received our pre-bobsled, summer ride briefing.  "Rough ride, 4 G's of force, no wimps allowed......"  Man was she ever telling the truth.  That ride was like being strapped into an electric paint can shaker mounted at the end of a 50 foot whirling boom on a centrifugal force machine.  But I digress....  This monument reminded me of a ball and catcher in jai alai.

The Icemeister

Blue Blood

The phrase "blue blood" refers to nobility or social status.  I don't know the origin of that definition but just one look at the leaves on this plant made me think that God must have some special feelings for these in His garden.

Blue Blood

Frozen in Time

Yea it would be great to get a live bird and create this photo opp.  However, this bronze bird poses really well (at least for one pose) and doesn't blink when the shutter fires....

Frozen in Time

Game Table

Every place needs one.  This one is off the beaten path and half surrounded by rocks.  Bring on the chess pieces..... (or checkers if you prefer fast moving play)......

Game Table

The Gathering Place

This hotel lobby is simple and direct.  A single white blossom anchors the neatly arranged furniture group.  This is the place to meet before venturing out to the Rocky Mountain splendor that awaits just outside the doors.

The Gathering Place

Pacifier?

I have been taking elevators all my life.  I still wonder many times if the "Close Door" button even works.  Come on.  Is it really connected?  Does it really work?  Or is it just put there by elevator companies as a pacifier?  If I could place a hidden camera with a direct connection to YouTube, one location I would choose is the elevator to watch reactions of those who think this button really matters......

Pacifier?

Not my grandmother's rocker

I spent a couple of days at a plush mountain resort last week with many of the movers and shakers from our office.  We spent the time doing some serious strategic work and having some serious fun.  Lunch one afternoon was spent in outdoor lounge chairs taking in the Rocky Mountain splendor at 7,000 feet on a nice August afternoon.

Not my grandmother's rocker

Plaque says it all

We recently visited a friend whose home was close to a lake.  A plaque found in the home says it all.

Plaque says it all

Bear Lake Shake

If you ever make it to Bear Lake in Utah and Idaho, be sure to stop and the most important place at the lake.  The lake is beautiful, the scenery gorgeous and it is a great place to visit.  However, my trip is not complete without stopping at LaBeau's in Garden City, Utah for one of their famous milkshakes.  Many like their famous rasberry shakes but give me a fresh banana oreo shake every time.  Oh my gosh, I want to go back there right now for another one......

Bear Lake Shake

Good Morning Bear Lake!

Rise and shine.  Sunrise over Bear Lake, Idaho.  What a start to a day at the lake.

Good Morning Bear Lake!

Indian Summer Pattern

Up until now I did not know that Pendleton actually made towels until one came in the mail to me as an early birthday present.  My first thought was that it was a blanket.  But no, I now have a Pendleton beach towel. Thanks bro......

Indian Summer Pattern

Spider Magnet

Leave the light on.  Attract flying bugs.  Spiders will come.

Spider Magnet

It's a Jungle Out Here

Think you have challenges in your life.  Consider a simple walk in the park....  For some, like Joe, even this takes on a whole new meaning....

Hey guys!  It's a jungle out here!

Please Be Seated

The lobby at my office continues to take shape.  It now even looks like a lobby.

Please Be Seated

Lobby Light Globes - from start to finish

Our office is getting a new lobby.  Every day we watch the progress as the project progresses to completion.  Not only do we watch, but we walk through the area all day long.  It was on one of these walks that I snapped the image that resulted in today's post.

At first I thought to myself, "Should I just delete this image? It looks like a wasted shot."  After giving it some additional thought I began to feel the challenge.  Can I do anything to save this image?  Can I "save" it in any way?  By then I at least had to experiment and see what I could come up with.

This final image emerged from the process and the result, from such a plain start which was almost deleted, even surprised me.  I had to record the process to remember this one and remind myself that there can be potential in the most unlikely images......  Here is the final image.

Lobby Light Globes

So let me back up a bit to give you some perspective of where it all started.  Here is a shot for perspective.  You can see the light globes in the final image, they are hanging down from the ceiling over the red table.  I was walking by this very spot when my curiosity was peaked.

The setting

Then I leaned over the red table and noticed the reflection of the overhead lights.  

Moving in closer

The reflection in the table was what finally caught my eye.  I snapped this image below and went back to work.

  

The source image

Only later that evening did I look at the image above and start thinking, "This will never amount to anything.  I should just delete it."  But wait, I need to add some more images to my blog posting reservoir.  Time for some creative attempts.  

So I went to work.  First I imported the image into my Filterstorm app (my most used app that does most of the heavy lifting for my images).  The first thing I do is to crop the image to square.  That is just my own self-imposed criteria.  All my blog posts are in square format.  Once I zoomed in and cropped the globes to square, I then inverted the image so that the largest gloves were at the bottom instead of the top.  

Still the image of the globes looked like the above reflection in the table, just zoomed in and cropped.  Then the magic begins to happen.  I select my favorite filter in Filterstorm and open the Curves filter.  I love this filter.  I often play around with curves, inserting points on the curve and moving then all over the screen to seen what can happen.  For the final image of the globes, I used several curves layers and painted the effects I liked into the areas of the image I liked.  I darkened the background until it went black.  I painted another Curves layer in so that the reflections around the globes were removed.  I applied the Saturation filter to enhance the red color in the lights.  I applied the Noise filter to remove some of the tabletop fuzziness.  I then applied a little sharpening from the Sharpening filter.  

By now I was happy that I chose not to delete this image.  I really liked the effect.  Sometimes it amazes me what can happen with a little experimentation with many of the photo processing apps available for the iPhone and iPad.  

To complete the final image, I imported it to PhotoStudio and applied my favorite frame effect.  There you have it.......  The magical image that was hidden in the first photo just waiting to be released.....

New Lobby Light

New office, new lobby lights.  This is just one of the new globes hanging over the new reception desk.

New Lobby Light

Let's Play Ball

Baseball season...  Although I am not really a baseball fan I do appreciate the beautiful Spring Mobile ballpark in Salt Lake City--home of the Salt Lake Bees.  There is not another more scenic, family friendly ballpark that I have ever seen.  What great family entertainment.  I end up attending one or two games each season for my wife who loves to watch the game.  This time the scenery was much better than the ball playing home town team which lost miserably.

Let's Play Ball

The Original Mountain Climber

They do it because no one has told them that they can't, that it is too dangerous or that what they do is near impossible.  They do it anyway.

The Original Mountain Climber

Big Rack

Ever have that sibling or peer rivalry comparing what you have with what they have?

"Mine is bigger than yours!"

"No, it isn't.  Mine is actually bigger!"........

Well today's subject has a good claim.  I don't know about his siblings or peers but this guy has a big rack.

Big Rack

The all seeing eye

The US government is building a massive spy center, right in the heart of Mormon country, in Bluffdale, Utah--so massive, in fact, that once finished, the facility will be five times larger than the US Capitol.  The place is huge.  It is not far from my office building and we can see its progress day by day.

According to Wired Magazine:

"Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013.

Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital "pocket litter." It is, in some measure, the realization of the "total information awareness" program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans' privacy.

But "this is more than just a data center," says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes.

And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US.

The upshot, according to this official: "Everybody's a target; everybody with communication is a target."

Bis Sis and the All Seeing Eye

Javelina Hello

Feeling a bit on the wild side this Monday morning?  Getting ready to attack the week ahead?  Fired up about life today?  Or maybe you're just a little grouchy and not a morning person.  Here's to starting off the week with a great big Javelina Hello.....

Javelina Hello

Game On!

Settlers of Catan.  The new game rage in our home.  We even bought an extension kit to allow for additional players.  Seems like it comes out several times a week and we all hunker down into entrepreneurial trading mode and race to the culminating, game winning 10 victory point total.  Every board setup is unique and each game brings a different strategy and hope.  Quality family time or cut-throat, empire building scheming?  You be the judge.  Anyone have two sheep to trade for a brick and a wood.......?

Game On!

Outdoor Cooking

Nothing like being in the great outdoors.  Even the food tastes better--whether prepared over the campfire or prepared in good ol' pots and pans over the camp stove.

Outdoor Cooking

Water, the Solvent for Life

The human body is 66% water by weight. Water is the universal solvent for life. That water serves as the solvent for sodium chloride (salt) and other substances so that the fluids of our bodies are similar to sea water. This leads some to refer jokingly to us as "walking bags of sea water". Water serves to suspend the red blood cells to carry oxygen to the cells. It is the solvent for the electrolytes and nutrients needed by the cells, and also the solvent to carry waste material away from the cells.

With water as the solvent, osmotic pressure acts to transport the needed water into cells. With cells bathed in the interstitial fluid, diffusion contributes to carrying needed molecules into the cells. When more complex mechanisms control the transport of molecules across the membranes into and out of cells, the presence of water as the surrounding medium and solvent is essential.

More than you wanted to know...  Yep, bet I lost you about the third sentence....

Water, the Solvent for Life

Overdose

Joe is back!  It has been awhile and now I know why.  Looks like he has been dealing with a little substance abuse problem.  If we can keep him out of rehab he may be able to visit a little more often....

Overdose

Clock Tower

Watching the time?  Can't miss it when you are close by, the sun is setting and the clock is bathed in golden sunlight.  This one is a little big for a pocket watch though.....

Clock Tower