Maju’s Neighborhood

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I am scared of squirrels.   Irrational I know and I'm annoyed at myself for being afraid of such a cute looking little thing. 
I'd never seen a "real" squirrel until my first day here and when I saw them I raved over their sweet little faces and bushy twitching tails. 

My second day here I met a kamikaze squirrel.  Instead of running away from me it ran straight at me and stamping feet and noise did not deter it.    It only stopped when I ran away and then, looking over my shoulder,  I swear I saw it smile. 

This fear is especially pathetic as I come from the land of more than a few of the world's top 10 deadliest snakes, the small Funnel Web Spider and the Blue Ringed Octopus. I have a healthy respect for these but am not particularly terrified of them.

But squirrels...  I give way to even if it means walking onto the roadway; I give wide berth to trees where I spot a squirrel and I never stand still in a park!

We don't have any squirrels in our little yard;  I suspect because of all the pepper (chili) plants we have around but yesterday I noticed a neighbour is actively encouraging them ....   I would never be able to leave the house if this was at my front door!

This little girl was having a feast.  Of course this was taken from well back on the sidewalk! 

I was going through some photos I took at Tumacacri Mission a few weeks back and I saw a lot of photo with diagonal lines.  So I'm just going to post a couple for this quest.  For this one I changed it to black and white added some noise and artistic stuff and lighting.  The diagonal lines are the stones on the grave site.

 

 

 

I played a little more with the next photo.  I selected the church and didn't select the brick tower.  Then I changed the church to black and white, worked some on the contrast and brightness, added an artistic filter and erased the black and white from the top arch and the two diagonal columns.  By added color to the the diagonal lines I wanted to push the viewers eye up to the arch and the cross on top of the church. 

 

 

In this photo the main subject the pots are in a diagonal line.  In the original photo the pots where in a dark shadow.  I cropped the photo then selected the shadow and lightened it and added saturation.  Then I selected the light wall that was too light, added contrast, darked the highlights and added saturation.  Now the shadow looks more like a stain or paint on the all and less like a shadow. 

 

The last photos is of the columns supporting the covered over the walkway for the visitor's center.  In this photo the diagonal line formed by the columns draws the eye to the door. 

 

Gees can you believe this is the 78th Photo Quest?  Seems like I started this just a few months ago.  I thank all the loyal members for all their great photos and for teaching me more about photography.

For this weeks quest lets look at diagonal lines and how they contribute to a photo.  You can use diagonal lines to draw to eye to your subject or the lines can be your subject.  The human eye natural views an image by going from left to right.  By placing a diagonal line from left to right you are using that natural view to your advantage by now drawing the eye to your subject.  Make it easy for the viewed to know what your subject is.

Can you look at your photos and know what the subject is?  Do you look for the subject of your photo in your view finder or LCD before you click the shutter?  Do you remember the rule of thirds?

Now that I've filled you with questions....here is this week's quest.  Take some photos using diagonal lines.  Photos can be any that you have taken in the last year.  If you can't find a photo with diagonal lines or can't find a subject with diagonal lines around use a photo software to make some lines.  No excuses this time. 

Here is a great article on diagonal lines  http://digital-photography-school.com/using-diagonal-lines-in-photography.  Any questions...please ask!  Take care and  have a wonderful week.

Yikes there were some very scary photos this week!  Thanks to all the folks that send in photos, it was so much fun to see what you were doing for Halloween.  I miss Halloween so much.  The department I worked the for last 9 years didn't do much of anything for Halloween.  Now that I'm retired well, it was even less.  We are too far out in the country to get trick-a-treaters so it was like any other day here.  Darn it...I did get to see some cute photos of my grandsons dressed up.

Back to the quest I didn't see a bad photo in the group and we had tons of photos this time.  Darcy made my job easy by posting only one photo, thanks so much girl.  Her photo of her daughter as Wednesday Adams showed tons of creativity.  Darcy's daughter played with the photo in photoshop to make it spookier!  Great work there.

Then along came Cap'n wow frozen pumpkin fields and a great jack-o-latern...amazing work on that.  My favorite was the jack-o-latern photo. Taking the photo at night gave it a real Halloween glow.

Next was Yan with his great photos of Halloween in Japan.  My favorite was the friend dressed as an alien...great capture in a dark bar.

Now it was Amy Sue...boy she made my job very hard with all her great photos!  Thanks for the great photos of the kids trick-or-treating downtown.  What a great place she lives that the merchants give out candy..keeping it safe for the kids...very nice!  It was so hard to pick a favorite...so I picked two.  I loved the pumpkin and  hunted house photo.  The low light gives the photo a very nice Halloween spooky feeling.  Then I really like the Halloween old photo of the two kids under the movie poster.  Nice work there with making the whole photo feel very old.

Wow then there was Metz....so many, many photos my friend.  I felt like I was there with you enjoying seeing how your children had so much fun. Of couse it helps that her kids are so cute!  So my favorite of all the photos was Halloween 048 with the red tree behind your daughter!  That was an amazing photo, loved the red leaves that matched your daughters outfit.  Nice work there!

 

 

Suck suck suck.

Unless I'm just being stupid and can't find it, Lands End apparently has discontinued their custom ordering for ladies jeans and pants.

Boo, Lands End! Women still aren't all your standard sizes, you know!

Continuing on from Lincoln's Cottage we wandered into an area that we might not have been authorized to enter given we did not have visitors passes....    The Old Soldiers' Home. Written under the clock is SHERMAN

The Old Soldier's Home was founded in 1851 when it was called the Armed Forces Retirement Home.  At that time the US Congress legislated a "military asylum"  for invalid and disabled soldiers of the US army.   The Soldiers' Home was officially recognized as being of historic significance in 1974 when four buildings built before the Civil War were designated National Historic Landmarks.    The Soldiers' Home is the last remaining example of three original military asylums established in 1851.

The entrance to the Home is guarded by miniature cannons:  

    We saw things we might not meant to have been photographing (Yes, it was fully operational).   The grounds are really lovely:    We found an amazing tree propped up on one side     A WWII  vet out for his morning stroll asked where we were from (this is when an Australian accent comes in handy) and talked to us at length about this tree which he called a Missouri Hedge Tree (though I couldn't find such a tree in a quick Google search).  After telling us it was the largest hedge tree around he wandered off:    We found an interesting tower:   -  the sign says DO NOT USE LADDER We then left the grounds and walked to the nearby US National Cemetery which will be the final resting place of many of the men in the Old Soldiers' Home:     So many graves: 

Jo brought me flowers for my birthday party on Saturday. I bet she knew I'd be shooting them. :)

Go forth and fill your libraries with media.

Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.

~daisy

Our weekend walk was a little damp as we wandered along Rock Creek Church Road: 

to President Lincoln's Cottage at the Old Soldiers' Home.
The site is 3 miles north of the White House and Lincoln used this as his summer retreat from June-November in 1862-64. I have to say that living fairly close to this cottage I have not noticed a noticeable difference in temperature between downtown and home but still Lincoln enjoyed the "cool breezes" on the hill.  He "commuted" from the cottage to the White House daily and enjoyed the relative peace of the cottage during the Civil War.    Lincoln's route took him right past our street: 
On July 7, 2000, President Clinton declared the Lincoln Cottage, and 2.3 acres of surrounding land, the President Lincoln and Soldiers' Home National Monument.  This was in honor of the site's notable role in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

The recently restored Lincoln's Cottage with the beautiful Old Soldiers' Home in the background: 

There is a tour of the interior of the cottage -  we intend to go back and do that -  but this time we went through the small but interesting museum.  

Next I need to sort my Old Soldiers' Home photos and its history......