Son and I went on a walk around Tulsa’s Lafortune Park last week and as usual I took three cameras with me. A Nikon point and shoot, an Apple Ipod Touch, and my generic Android cell phone. I took this with my cell phone and then filtered the photo through an app on the phone with a “Noir” app that provided the ghostly reflections above.
It is kind of hard to see where photography is going, the cell phone apps are getting ever more sophisticated and both my point and shoot Nikon and my “big” Nikon have wifi capability where I can move photos from the cameras to either the Ipod or the cell phone for processing and posting. I’m really enjoying see how things are changing. I don’t know where they are going though.
So where are you on the App revolution? Do you use them or not?
During an evening dog walk we found this 1960’s model Chevy pickup parked down the street from us. I had not seen it before and with Tennessee plates I don’t know if it is going to be here permanently or not. I think it is a beauty.
I used the Abstract I filter of Topaz Impressions backed off to 56 pct.
Monday, after work I took Logan to his voice lessons. The studio is in an old strip shopping center and I like to walk around rather than sit in the waiting space. Last week I featured a recently abandoned Shell Station at the center. Well guess what, there is another abandoned Gas Station a couple hundred yards south of the Shell Station. I think it has been boarded up ten years or so. I forget what chain had the site.
They left their old sign up and I always get a chuckle out of it.
Since the station went out of business the prices listed have sometimes seemed like a huge bargain or a big ripoff. Right now they are just a moderately good deal.
Heather and I went downtown Saturday night to attend Wildbrew 2015, a beer tasting event benefitting The Sutton Center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The Sutton Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to funding cooperative conservation solutions for birds and the natural world through science and education. They were instrumental in reestablishing bald eagles in Oklahoma.
The place was buzzing when we got there. There were lots and lots of craft breweries represented and many of the restaurants in town were handling out samples (good size samples) of their food. Heather and I kind of alternated between the beer and the food. Plus the Midlife Crisis Band was playing.
There were so many breweries represented that the lines never got long for any of them. And don’t worry, it was not a drunken brawl. We had little sample glasses. We’d sample it and then dump the rest to go try more. It was fun. Lots of unusual beers out that night.
And the hipsters were out in force although I didn’t see any of the Hipster Nation’s favorite beer, Pabst Blue Ribbon. or “PBR” as the hipsters call it. The thing about hipsters is that not a one of them will admit to it. Sorry dudes, rolled up cuffs are a dead giveaway.
One guy showed up in a kilt. Hey dude, wrong party!!! But stay and have a beer anyway.
Everybody had a great time. There was one attendee who was committed fully to the event.
Ashley Sisk of Rambling and Photos provides five prompts every week for Scavenger Hunt Sunday. This week’s prompts and my interpretation are as follows:
1. Silly
I love the sense of humor that went into this decoration of a VW I found downtown.
2. Spin
I found this lady spinning wool at a local craft show. I asked if I could take a photo of her and she said to have at it. Spinning is quite an interesting process.
3. Four
Four, four, whatever can I find for four. I know!!!! How about Four oil tanks at this well in located in the Colony Wash field in western Oklahoma.
4. Guilty Pleasure
My guilty pleasure is Geocaching. A sort of high tech treasure hunt where people hide “Caches” out in world and post the coordinates on the internet. And then other people go find them using their GPS receivers. I have been doing for over ten years and have all sorts of fun. There is a cache hidden between the two small trees above. The trees are located in the median of a freeway here in Tulsa. Geocaches are everywhere. I have found about 1300 of them, most of them in the Tulsa area. Check the link to find out more about it.
I took this photo of the sun setting down the street in front of the house. I tried to put the little dot of sun poking through the trees in the upper and left 1/3 of the photograph.
This is Logan riding Cisco. Often Logan rides outside but it was raining today so Logan rode in the arena at All-star Therapy Group in Ramona, Oklahoma. Logan has been doing Therapeutic Horseback Riding there for some time. The folks that run the center really have a heart for their clients.
I ran this photo through Topaz Impressions with their “Cezanne I” filter and then faded it a little bit so it is about 75% filter and 25% original photo.
I get every other Friday off and this week after dropping the kid off at school, going to eat breakfast, and a bit of shopping, we went to see “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” a spy flick with a wry sense of humor.
It features two bon vivant spies, Napolean Solo, a smooth talking thief who now works for the CIA and Illya Kuryakin a brutish, strong, hot tempered KGB spy. These two guys are balanced by the luscious Alicia Vikander playing Gaby, a car mechanic from East Berlin.
All I am going to tell you about the movie is that it is set in the early 1960’s when the Cold War could turn hot any second. An evil worldwide criminal organization has kidnapped Gaby’s father, a renown nuclear physicist, to make the most powerful atomic bomb ever known! So the two spies, who don’t like each other by the way, must work with the beautiful Gaby to find her father, and disable the bomb. I bet you couldn’t see that coming could you?
So why did I like this movie? The plot was good, the actors were good, lots of action, good cinematography, and all that? All that was great but what I liked about this movie was the 1960’s vibe. You know the early 1960’s elegant movie style. The two spies were bon vivants who got into a hilarious argument about proper accessories while in a high fashion salon when Gaby was dress shopping. The spies wore smart suits with ties and had sterling manners and nothing fazes them (except sometimes for Kuryakin). I loved the Jaguars and other vintage sports cars, the 1960’s soundtrack, the elegant hotels, and restaurants and the proper crystal glassware. Gaby’s fashions. Plus she looks pretty darn good in just regular old pajamas. she kind of acts like a princess but also offers to clean out the jets on the carburetor of a race car. (And the 1960’s race cars are so much more elegant than what we now have, in my opinion.) The movie is set in Rome with the classical background. The bad guys getaway boat is an elegant teak speedboat. Yep, it was the vibe that hooked me on this movie.
There is some suggestiveness in parts of the movie but everybody keeps their clothes on and of course gentlemen watch their language.
I remember vaguely the original Man from U.N.C.L.E from the 1960’s. I liked it fine I think but it was not on my “A” list shows. Shows you like “Combat”, “Twelve O’Clock High,” “The Flintstones”, “Johnny Quest” and others. The Man from Uncle was on my B list.
Anyways I highly recommend this movie! Check out The Man from U.N.C.L.E web site. Lots of good stuff there. Movie web sites are the little secret of movies. Nobody I talk to goes to them. I love them and almost all movies have their own sites. Check out the IMDB site for the movie also. They have encyclopedic information on the cast, guidelines for parents, lists of goofs, and links to trailers and lots of photos.
This is Pepsi Lake on Turkey Mountain from back in May. Great year on the mountain with all the rain that we got plus it got saved from an outlet mall that was proposed and then cancelled. There was a huge surge in popularity that resulted with all sorts of new people tromping all over the place. Things have died down quite a bit with the heat of the summer and school starting so I’m back to seeing very few people during my weekly run.
Last week’s post on Turkey Mountain was taken from across the lake from this photo and a little to the right.
We had a cold front come through Wednesday and the temperatures hung around the mid 60’s all day. It was wonderful!! It made for a great afternoon running.
