I used Photoshop Elements to create my Orbs (also called Amazing Circles or Marbles). I’m very excited with the results, though I will soon have so many of them that I expect the novelty will wear off – for you. I don’t think I will tire of it soon because each one is so unpredictable. I never know what will be inside the orb photo until it is complete!

Here are my first three orbs and the photo I used to create them.

Mayday Tree

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Bergenia

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Willow

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If you would like to try making your own orb photos, here are my simplified directions. If you have any problems, go to the Russel Ray link at the beginning of this post.

1. Open your picture in Photoshop Elements or Photoshop and enhance it as desired. I usually adjust the lighting levels.

2. Crop it to a square, or a ratio of 1:1.

3. Click on Filter – Distort – Polar Coordinates – Polar to Rectangular – OK

4. Click on Image – Rotate – Flip Vertical.

5. Click on Filter – Distort – Polar Coordinates – Rectangular to Polar – OK.

That is it. You are done.

This isn’t a new technique. It has been around for a few years. Click on this link to see a large number of Amazing Circles that have been submitted to flickr.

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For my photo of a warped Jellyfish  see Weekly Photo Challenge: Distorted

Ladybugs all dressed in red
Strolling through the flowerbed.
If I were tiny just like you
I’d creep among the flowers too!
- Maria Fleming -

The Ladybug wears no disguises.
She is just what she advertises.
A speckled spectacle of spring,
A fashion statement on the wing….
A miniature orange kite.
A tiny dot-to-dot delight.
- J. Patrick Lewis, “The Little Buggers” -

The ladybug’s a beetle.
It’s shaped like a pea.
Its color is a bright red
With lots of spots to see.
Although the name is ladybug
Some ladybugs are men.
So why don’t we say “gentleman bug”
Every now and then?
- Author Unknown -

How brave a ladybug must be!
Each drop of rain is big as she.
Can you imagine what you’d do,
If raindrops fell as big as you?
- Aileen Fisher -

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SLIDESHOW: Click on any photo to open a slide show. Press your ‘es-ca-pay’ button to close the slide show.

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COMMENTS are disabled for gallery posts such as this. If you have a ladybug story to share, click on the following link and choose one of the posts: Ladybugs

Dory: [Reading a sign on a door] Hey, look. “Es-ca-pay”! Hey, it’s spelled just like escape.
- Dory the Blue Tang fish in the movie ‘Finding Nemo’ -

I always thought that Ford Motors should have used Dory’s mispronunciation of ‘Escape’ to promote their Ford Escape.  ‘Es-ca-pay’ sounds so much more daring than plain old ‘escape’.

When we were living in the Middle East, I drove a bright red Jeep Cherokee. One day a British women approached me (and my Jeep) and said, “Oh, I just love your Chur-o-key!” It took me a few seconds to realize that she was referring to my car. (Cherokee, to me, starts with a ‘chair’ sound, to her it starts with a ‘chur’ as in church sound.)
The lesson I learned from my years overseas is that there is more than one way to pronounce a great many words, and the sooner you accept that, the more fun language becomes.  I can ‘es-ca-pay in my chur-o-key’ – what words are you willing to liberate?

There is a hill behind the cabin and at the very top is a huge pasture. We often see horses up there, yet we never see them down in our valley. I don’t really understand why they don’t escape from their confines – the fence is down in many places.

I suppose, to the horses, the grass is simply not greener on the other side of the fence. They do not want to ‘es-ca-pay’!

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Other barbed wire photos: Macro Monday – Poked

Surprise in the Ditch

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Other Photos for this Challenge: Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape

He’d always had a quickening of the heart when he crossed into Arizona and beheld the cactus country. This was as the desert should be, this was the desert of the picture books, with the land unrolled to the farthest distant horizon hills, with saguaro standing sentinel in their strange chessboard pattern, towering supinely above the fans of ocotillo and brushy mesquite.”
- Dorothy B. Hughes, The Expendable Man -

We spent part of our winter in Arizona. The landscaping in our yard is more aptly called hardscaping since it is mostly paving stones and rock. There are a number of green plants – most of them of the prickly variety. Here they are, up close in all their spiny glory.

Golden Barrel Cactus

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Fishhook Barrel Cactus

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Possibly a type of Hedgehog Cactus

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Saguaro Cactus

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Prickly Pear Cactus

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There is one animal that is not intimidated by the Prickly Pear Cactus. It is the Javelina. It looks much like a Wild Boar, but it isn’t. (For more information about this animal, here is an article called ‘Do Not Mess with Javelinas‘). I haven’t actually seen Javelinas in our yard, but I do know what they dine on – my Prickly Pear Cactus!

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My recent story about a cactus in bloom: Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense

You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.
- Abraham Lincoln -

1. The facts: This is my 400th Post. I have been blogging for three and a half years. I get about 60 views a day.

2. My Complaint: My popularity expectations are not being met.

3. My Goal: I want to be immensely popular.  I don’t want to put a lot of effort into promoting my blog, nor do I wish to learn how to be a better writer or photographer. No, I just want what popular bloggers have.

4. My Cunning Plan: I’m going to start a new Entitlement Movement. I welcome your suggestions on what I should call it.

5. What my Entitlement Movement will demand:

• I want better wild animal photos for my blog. No one does a nicer job than the Canadian Photographer, Christopher Martin.  Oh sure, I could buy a camera like his, and learn how to use it, and spend days tramping through the wilderness – but I’d rather be sitting at my computer complaining. I think I am entitled to some of Christopher’s photos. He has lots of them.
• I want better wild flower photos. Montucky at Montana Outdoors is very good. He (at least I think he is a he) is American, not Canadian, but I spend enough money in the USA during the winter when I visit there, so I think I am entitled to some of his photos too.
• I want better drawings. I like the work of Doodlemum.  Yes, I suppose I could learn to draw better, but that would take a lot of time and like I said before, I’m better at complaining.
• I want unique and inventive content. Terry Border from Bent Objects, Nicole at The Middlest Sister and Dan at A LEGO a Day are three of my favourites. I admire their creativity. I don’t have that skill set, and I’m not even sure I have that kind of capability – but it is what I want, and someone should give it to me. I’m entitled.
• I want better stories. Most of my fellow bloggers are better writers than I am, so I want them to ghost write for me.
• I want the same viewer stats as that the top 1% of all bloggers. Why should they have so much, and I have so little?

It just dawned on me that I should be demanding better internet service too. I live in a rural area and the nearest internet tower provides “insufficient service” for my needs (“Insufficient service” – that is how my ghost writer would say it, I think). I know, I could move closer to where the services are – but it would be much better if they built a tower closer to my house. Not where I could see it, though. I don’t want my view destroyed.  It is bad enough that I can see power poles behind my property. I want all power poles to be underground so I can’t see them. I want all my power to come from the sun or the wind and I want it to be dirt cheap.

Speaking of my rural aspect, there are 17 pieces of property out my way and we were here long before the developers started to march across the horizon and build warehouses. We were here long before the nearest town became a city and annexed us. We were here first! I demand that all this newly developed land be given to me and that I be made President and CEO of all the enterprises that have replaced the homes of the moose and deer and fox.

I also want to have quicker access to an airport, but I don’t want planes flying over my place. Sometimes they are so loud that I can hear them above the howl of the wind and the buzz of the mosquitoes. (I want the wind and mosquitoes to go away too.)

Now I want to go have a nap. Organizing an Entitlement Movement is hard work. I think I need to find ‘people’ to do this stuff for me. I’m entitled to have someone arrange for my entitlements.

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I am President of the NBFP Club – home of all those bloggers who feel they are under appreciated!

I don’t get it – how could I have ‘Come from a pattern’?

My mom was a sewer and a knitter. One of her earliest projects (after I was born) was a stuffed bunny that I called ‘Baboo’. The pattern in this photo is the one she used over mpffmp years ago. The bunny in this photo is ‘Babo 2′. Baboo1 was a much more interesting creature.  The first time Baboo1 was washed, one of his ears shrank much more than the other one did. For the rest of his life, his short ear stood up at attention, and his long ear flopped down over his eye.

When Baboo1 was about 20 years old, I carefully unstuffed him and gave him a good bath in preparation for his introduction to my first child. Once he was dry, I popped him and his stuffing into a paper bag and set him on a shelf in my mom’s laundry room. When I went to retrieve Baboo1, he was gone. Someone must have seen the old bag of grungy stuffing and threw it out, not realizing that Baboo1 was in there too.

I made a new Baboo, but he was never right. I used felt for his eyes, but I should have embroidered them. His ears were both the same length, and even when I stitched one down so it would flop, it just wasn’t the same.

Childhood has no necessary connection with age.
- Austin O-Malley, Keystones of Thought -

I’m glad I still have the pattern. I think I am old enough now to make Baboo again, only this time I will do all the right things wrong, and all the wrong things right. Baboo3 will be as imperfectly perfect as Baboo1!.

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One of my other craft projects – Sondra the Snow Goddess

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For more photos from this WordPress Challenge, go to Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern

These two trees are on our property. The wide angle capability of my new Canon PowerShot SX50 lets me take an all encompassing photo like this from a relatively close position. This past week-end six Canada Geese landed in the trees in our yard. Can you see two of them  in these trees?

Can you see them now that I’ve cropped the photo?

One tree branch was big enough for two geese. . .

Until one goose muscled the other off the branch.

This is a photo I took with the zoom lens of the SX50. It is hand held, and the photo has not been  cropped or enhanced. The original photo is a much higher resolution, of course.

Zooming in even closer, this photo has a focal length of 215 mm, which is the maximum for the lens. I could have zoomed in even closer, but then I would have been using a digital zoom, not an optical one (digital zoom is in-camera image processing; optical zoom is the image that the lens captures.)

To put this story into perspective,  six 6kg (15 pound) birds took up positions in my back yard and started to squabble over landing rights. It was truly a memorable morning!

That reminds me, a saltwater crocodile, a great white shark and a Canada Goose walk into a bar….
- Author Unknown -

There comes a time when all people break down and do the unthinkable: They read the manual.
- Author Unknown -

In our family – I read the manual before I push any buttons, turn any knobs, plug anything in. The Car Guy doesn’t. (This post, How to Boil Water, is a good example of the way we approach these things.) What about your family? Is Manual Reading a ‘Pink Job – Blue Job‘ thing, or do you think it is non-gender specific?

I have a New Camera (Canon PowerShot SX50 HS).  New buttons, new dials, new printed manual. No, not a big manual. A mini-manual – the one that says ‘Getting Started’. This showed me how to insert the battery and memory card and warned me, in 3 pages of tiny type, of all the safety precautions I should follow. ‘Getting Started” assured me that I could take my first few pictures without knowing what all the buttons and dials will do – so I bravely went where I would not normally go, and I took a few pictures. Then I removed the battery and put it in the charger because it was dead. I took that as a sign – the ‘Getting Started’ Manual didn’t really think I was ready to use this camera.

The real manual is a 286 page document stored in a PDF document that is password protected. A password protected document often severely limits certain useful features of a PDF document, and so it is with this one, as you will see in a moment. The document is set up so you can view two 5.5 X 8.5 inch pages at a time on your computer or a single page on iPad or iPhone like devices. So far, so good (though trying to read the manual on a phone is a chore of immense frustration.)

I wanted to print parts of the document and I believed that each two page spread  would print quite nicely on an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper. The document believed otherwise, insisting that each half a page deserved a full page of paper. End of discussion – for now.

Here is my new camera. The only button that I am very sure about is the one that says ‘ON/OFF’. The rest are a bit of a mystery right now.

Here are the two pages in the manual that explain all the dials and buttons.

This is the same two pages, but edited to show what I understood by the time the battery was charged.

This is one of the more interesting things in my yard right now – dead things from last year. Maybe by the time there are green things and flowers, I’ll have mastered the macro feature!

This was the view from my back door this morning. The neighbour’s farm buildings are near the centre of the photo (you can barely see the red barn), and the moon was in the sky above them. The sun was just coming up.

The PowerShot has a 50X optical zoom lens with Image Stabilizer. In layman terms, a zoom lens makes far away things look closer.

This is the red barn when I zoomed in on it.

This is the moon when I zoomed in on it.

The camera was set to AUTO mode, and I did not use a tripod. I think that bears repeating – I hand held the camera, and used the full AUTO mode. Point – shoot!

This camera does not come with a memory card, so we bought a SanDisk Extreme SDHC UHS-I Card. It is a ‘fast write’ card that allows the camera to record photos almost instantly. Extreme lens – extreme memory card.

The SX50 HS belongs to a group of cameras called ‘Bridge Cameras‘. They are larger and more feature rich than most ‘point and shoot’ cameras, but are not as advanced as an SLR camera. Bridge Cameras have a single fixed lens that is often, as in the case of this camera, a superzoom lens.

As you can see from these photos, I am back in Canada. Brown grass, no green things in the flower beds yet. The last of the snow melted yesterday. Temperatures still below freezing most nights. The robins arrived a few days ago. The tulips have just poked out of the ground. I think it must be spring time!

Spring means yard work, and that means there are never enough hours in a day… unless you can clone yourself.  I tried that once:  Weekly Photo Challenge: Unfocused.

 

“Boy, that was sure scary! I can feel my hair standing right on end!”