Post-Post-Christmas Post

The title of today's post is for Sue's sister, Kathy, who mentioned such a thing in her comment following my previous post. You just never know what kinda stuff you can get for the asking, do ya?

Let me back up to last weekend--The first of the year 2010. Suz didn't quite survive our private festivities and was in bed pretty early, so I welcomed in January 1st by myself. There were quite a few booms around the area. (I'm not talking "bangs" either--I'm talking BOOMS!) I'm not sure what kind of stuff people were blowing up, but I was impressed. Suzie made us some Jello shots, but they remained untouched until the following evening when we had a couple in the hot tub. The rest remained until Saturday night when we had a small (but fun!) gathering down the street at Denny & Heather's house.

With the partying behind us, Sunday was our interesting day. We set out towards the little town of Black Diamond (which is really just right up the street) with two purposes in mind: To have lunch at the Black Diamond Bakery, and to find the town cemetery to take some pictures. The Black Diamond Bakery is legendary around these parts. People know the quality of their baked goods, and make it a point to get there early for certain things when they want them knowing they'll be sold out if they don't. They also have a small restaurant attached, and that was our focus. We both had excellent sandwich meals (made with their own bread of course). They were a little pricey, but very good.

The cemetery was just down the street, and with instructions from people at the bakery we found it easily. A lot of folks may not understand our fascination with cemeteries, but we feel they are excellent for photography. They have lots of interesting textures, colors, art, and "feel" to them. There is also the added bonus of being able to "read" the stories of the people buried there. They don't actually have stories of course, but when you read the inscriptions and do the math of their births and deaths, they can tell a story of sorts. This particular cemetery was one of the best we have found to date. It was big (for a small town), it was well kept, and had lots of range to the dates. There were some graves there from the late 1800's! One thing we notice during these visits is the number of young deaths. We forget how a century ago things were very different than they are today, and I guess it was a lot more common for children to die--Maybe from medical reasons, or maybe from working in dangerous places at young ages. At any rate, we both took lots of pictures and had a good time. We're planning on going back because Sarah wants to have a crack at it too. Here's a shot I took (click for full-size). I "massaged" it with my software to try to give it a cold, Gothic look:


CAUTION! The following paragraph contains photo geek terminology that some may find completely illogical and alien to them.

Lately, we have been attempting to stretch our photographic knowledge by dabbling in the area of RAW. What is RAW? Well, most cameras take pictures and automatically convert them to JPG during the act of taking a picture. It all happens behind the scenes and automatically. The data starts out as RAW before the conversion process. Why do we (or should I say "I") want to try out RAW? Well, partly because I can--Our cameras support RAW photography. The advantage of RAW is that all the image information is still in the picture and none of it has been sacrificed during the JPG conversion process. That means that if you screw up a picture, you have an excellent chance of resurrecting it with software, and I have all the right software. The disadvantages are that the files are much bigger, and many may require post-processing. Anyway, like I said--We're learning. Keith is very interested in it, and Suzie has been watching my findings and stumblings with some interest as well.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we found ourselves out taking pictures again this weekend!