Money can't buy happiness

I saw this on a sign today and it ticked me off.

I'm gonna call bullshit on that one, money can mean the difference between life or death for a loved one, money can take away the stress of living paycheck to paycheck... Worrying about car/electric/food/blah blah blah, money can mean not having to sit in one town for 50 years never seeing anything past where you live because you work to damn hard to keep your kids fed. I am an extremely content person, I could have few luxury's and be very happy, but I know for a fact that having some of the stress of everyday life(bills)taken care of would improve my demeanor... hah. Whoever said that money doesn't buy happiness needs to be punched right in the throat ;)

The Money Song, Monty Python

Cook Inlet

Some mountain again

In Color

Yep, I'll post a color version of this one later.

Some mountain :)

Rose

This is probably one of the coolest looking rose's I have ever seen, if anyone has read the gunslinger series by stephen king this is what I picture the rose in the book to look like. I've posted this one before but this time I am posting it in high res... just click on it to make it bigger. In IE you have to wait on the picture for a minute with your pointer to get the resize option after you click on it.

Cook Inlet

Another picture I was working on but never posted, still real busy and tired as hell.. so I have ta keep this short.

Otter Lake

Color version of the trees and water picture from below, I still think the B&W looks better. Dunno why.

Otter Lake

One more from otter lake, I'll post the color version of it tomorrow night.

Cook Inlet Duck

I have no idea if this is worth posting or not, I just got tired of working on it. Maybe I'll mess with it again tomorrow... to damn tired for now.

Otter Lake

This one and the one below were taken sometime last may.

Ok i'm back

To all those whom I have not responded to their comments I'm sorry bout that, I was reloading my comp but that's not all. I really did not (don't) feel like taking pictures very much lately.

Underexposed, thanks a ton man. Just had to throw that in.

Wiping Computer

I'm going to wipe my comp and do a fresh Install, it may be a day or 2 before I repost here and get to the comments and other stuff I have been neglecting ;)

Here's a pic I was working on, it's not finished but I figure I'm not going to be working on anything for the next few days so i'll post it anyways.

More Fish

One more, I'll toss in the details tomorrow.

More fish

This one came out a little blurred, still trying to figure how to get a good pic of the fish, the fella in the center is a Rosey Barbed Tetra and the one on the bottom is called a Flying Fish, nope doesn't fly ;)

I'm very tired, I'll edit in a bit more about this tank and these fish tomorrow.

**edit**

Overpass

Sunny Day pt 2

ok since it seems those last one were a bigger hit than I thought they'd be I'm going to post a few more from that same day that I was never planning on posting.


One more.

Sunny Day

Today was abright day, warmed up to about 35... that's damn near a heat wave.

Hazy Day

Another from the set of a a few days ago when the sun was hid behind this odd fog...

Larry the Snail

In one episode of Spongebob (where the names of these snails came from, for those that don't know) Gary the Snail left Spongebob for Patrick because he had candy in his pocket and Spongebob got another snail to make Gary jealous and named him Larry so my boy figured that'd be hilarious in this tank for the 2 snails to be Larry and Gary. Yeah I know all about it, cause I love that show (I'm not ashamed hah). This 10 gallon has these 2 big snails and 5 Ghost shrimp it stays squeaky clean. Since I'm on the subject of Spongebob here's one of my son's favorite songs from that show.

The Fun Song



**Edit** Something I forgot to mention, 2 really good reasons to watch spongebob... 1 it has child as well as adult subject matter(done very tastefully, and spongebob is not a gay man he's more like a child) so both you and your kids can enjoy the show. Number 2 and the very most important reason is The Kurgan (Clancy Brown), from one of the greatest movies of all time The Highlander (Well, right next to Big Trouble in Little China) is the voice of Mr. Eugene H. Krabs one of the main characters in the show.

Mr. Krabs.wav


The Kurgan.wav

Gary the Snail

At the request of Patty (who wanted to see more fishtank stuff and is a great photographer) and ndiginiz (one hell of a cool fella and a great photographer) I'm posting some of my fishtank stuff, this is Gary the Snail (named by my son) from one of my 10 gallon tanks. That's a ghost shrimp riding shotgun and eating algae off of his back. If you have a fresh water aquarium it's probably to your biggest advantage to have snails and shrimp. The snails keep the algae down and the shrimp take care of any small particles that your filters might miss, both are great for taking care of decaying matter if you have live plants (which I have a ton of). I'll try and grab some pics of my fish if I can get them to slow down some ;)

Word Verification

Just passin out the info. I've had my word verification off for several months now and have only had 2 or 3 spam comments and those were typed in by hand. Blogger.com put the hammer down on alot of the exploits people were using to spam comments.

Fort Richardson Sunset

Over at Stuff on Fire

A small video clip done by one of the Hollow Men to the song Torn. I can watch this clip all day and never get sick of it.

About this blog

Originally, I had started this blog simply to be a place to show pictures for family and friends. As the first few months went by I realized that I liked taking pictures a little more than I thought I ever would. Now I still take pictures but have realized that I love to manipulate pictures as much as I like to take them, working on them keeps me distracted I guess ;) My point is, I get a lot of good comments.. But if anyone who visits here see's something they don't like or thinks it looks bad, let me know that as well. I can take the bad as well as the good and it'll help me to know what people like, not just what I happen to like.

Closed Road

Another picture with the same technique as the ones below. What I am doing to these is taking the picture and opening it in corel then turning it into a sketch, moving it over to paintshop and doing touch up to the pic then adding a blur or soft focus, then I return to corel and add the sketch over top of the blurry picture.

One More

Fort Richardson Sun

Applied the same method here as I did on the one below.

The sun as seen on Fort Richardson a few days ago. Used corel to paint it.

Cook Inlet

I'm to damn tired to go into any lengthy explanations, so I'm just gonna say this is Cook Inlet at sunset sometime in the fall and I am learning how to soften pictures :)


One more.

Ft Rich

Tide Pool @ Cook Inlet

Merril field

Tide Pool @ Cook Inlet

The Drive Home

The color version.

The Drive Home

This is what I see everyday on my way home, i've posted this pic before in color... can't remember when. But I think it works really well in black and white.

2 Great PhotoBlogs

I'm not much of a writer nor do I do reviews very well, but both of these guys have stuff that I love to look at.

David Kleinert Photography
Underexposed

Dinner with The Boy

The boy and I stopped at Taco Bell to have dinner (I don't usually eat there but I have recently discovered chalupa's and I like em, plus I had a coupon ;) ) and on the back of the kids meal they always have this word puzzle. He loves to do these puzzles and usually completes them rather quickly. At this point he was looking for the word "tasty" and it was buggin him that he couldn't find it. He was concentrating so hard he was missing it all together, I found it so damn funny I HAD to get a picture of it. Damn thing was right in front of him. hah

Uncropped

An uncropped version of a pic that I did awhile back.