Last weekend J and I spend a few days “away” in Winthrop WA. It was a nice chance to relax and spend some down time with each other.

Friday afternoon was hot and dry when we left Seattle. The long route through the mountains (up to Hwy 20.)

The canyon below Diablo dam was completely dry.

looking back up the river to the dam

Sign vandalism is a popular pastime. This one is a bit more clever than many.

dude, that’s gonna hurt

We stayed at the Rio Vista Hotel right in the middle of the kitschiest part of town ;-) It was great.

lots of bikes in town — you can barely see my car :-)

Saturday was Hot. We walked around some in the morning taking picture and peeping at the little town.

If you get out early enough in the day you can see the deer moving around.

early in the morning the deer make their rounds

We also saw this early Saturday morning. It did not follow us home. I’m not sure if I’m grateful or sad about that.

yes it’s real ’72

Yes, it’s also kick-start only, and yes it was priced realistically at $6k. (I can read the phone number in the original photo is you really need to know.)

This is just one of the Old West style building on the tourist route.

one of many false front buildings in town

It was a great weekend and now we’re starting on year 20.

The art photos of Diablo Dam.

More pics from around town.

The final version of my photo essay on our chickens is up.

Click on this running chicken for more pictures!

two quick galleries without any editing work -

Mine:
http://blackdogandmagpie.net/galleries/index.php?album=laras-rough-cut

Jim’s:
http://blackdogandmagpie.net/galleries/index.php?album=puerto-vallarta-1

Two galleries of pictures from last week’s day-trip to the Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands for the purpose of picking up the pig. (Yummy fresh pork!)

First a general gallery — mostly shots that Jim took.

docking at Anacortes

And a collection, mostly mine — a few of Jim’s, taken at the ferry dock at Lopez Island on the way to Friday Harbor.

detail of a bumper (jim’s photo)

I have a desktop widget that acts as a sideshows photo frame on my development machine. Having something pleasant to stare at when my mind goes blank on a problem is nice.

This morning, during a particularly intense “now how the hell is that supposed to work” spell the photo below came up.

fish fountain in Oaxaca

Click on the photo to see a much bigger version of the original.

I like the photo but it was taken with my little point and shoot and has way too much depth of field. I really don’t need to be able to identify the make and model of the cars in the back ground. So I loaded it into Photoshop and spent half and hour or so making a quick and dirty improvement. A little selective selecting and copying. Then a couple of rounds with the blur filter and I got this.

a nicer version of the Fish Fountain photo

Again click on the photo for a much larger version. Don’t look too closely though. The illusion of shallower depth of field works fine in the 400 X 300 pixel version above but you can see the seams between the layers and some other artifacts in the larger version. Still for half an hour of futzing around I ended up with a much nicer photo to use on a web page.

I have added an instance of Zen Photo for Ms. Shoes.

The first album is a set of photos that I took this morning of birds visiting our bird feeders. (yes that is snow, again.)

sparrow on the tube feeder

Click on the picture to go to the gallery!