A recent visit home to the parents this past weekend produced a few more pictures.
Archive for the 'Images' Category
I’m not sure what reaction those shoes would have garnered in the 19th century. Rather simple grunge edit: Separate highlight/shadow and contrast adjustments for figure and background, gaussian blur to upper half of background, film grain, and free brushes from the Adobe exchange. See (almost) original image, after exposure fix.
Taking advantage of the above-freezing temps, Stephanie and I did photos of a couple of new outfits she has made. Unfortunately the sun disappeared just before we started and created a bit of a challenge with the snow and contrast.
I am getting incredibly impatient for spring; so many pictures to take!
Here are some pretty and clichéd pictures of snow in trees from this morning. Now it’s just…raining or something.
Stephanie and I recently attended the annual Shades of Blue tattoo show in La Crosse. I should say I attended, and Stephanie participated, at least in the Vatican PX fashion show portion. No tattoos.
The tattoos come in all manner of horrible - from obese pale legs covered in a random menagerie of clip-art quality pieces, to obese pale legs covered in cliched tattoos of dream catchers, eagles and wolves. It’s like going to an art exhibit of shitty colored pencil drawings all done on terrible yellowed paper. And you could veritably smell the hepatitis in the air.
Fortunately the show does offer other attractions, including the VPX fashion show. The VPX is a small clothing store that is part of the closest thing La Crosse has to a club, The Warehouse - home to dozens of mopey 14 year old shoe-gazers. VPX is where you need to go if you have a desire to take on an edgy urban look, or perhaps some PVC for the next time you go dry-humping on the dance floor of your favorite club. More on the fashion show and Stephanie’s participation in Part 2.
Before the fashion show, however, are the belly-dancers; always entertaining to watch multiple generations of Midwestern women gyrating simultaneously. The gastric undulations and blaring eastern-Mediterranean pop music certainly sets the mood for the fashion show.
The other event that makes pushing your way around leather skinned bar floozies worthwhile is the suspension show. This year it opened with several mediocre side show acts, including hammering a nail into ones head (via nasal sinuses), walking and later jumping into broken glass and needles through cheeks and hands. The actual suspension then follows, with two people hoisted up where they swing, fight, and later give rides to the ladies.
Of course, see the gallery for all the images. Naturally there is video as well:
Join Miss Spooky as she explores the squalid accommodations of an elderly gentleman with a hoarding problem. These were the lived-in conditions before he moved out a year ago.
There is also three refrigerators, one of which had lost power at some point during the summer. For weeks the odor of corpses filled the stairs to the apartments. We found the culprit(s).
Check out the gallery for all the images.
Just a few quick pictures; many more to come.
While reading what Wikipedia had to say on the subject of High Dynamic Range Imaging, I found a link to a photoshop tutorial on how to fake it without the bother of technology and money.
The results were… interesting. I think with more time spent tweaking the outcome it could be fairly impressive. My results included this bizarrely illuminated house:
Also the Casino Bar on Pearl Street, in La Crosse:
Posted in the gallery are pictures from our recent overnight trip to visit my parents last weekend.
This last weekend Stephanie’s parents and two youngest siblings came from Racine to visit. It went well, and we covered the required destinations, i.e. the La Crosse Queen boat ride, the Hixon House, and St. Rose Convent. The Hixon House didn’t allow photos inside, unfortunately, but there are some from the river and the outside of the house.
