Susan Ewart

Beautiful Mary. It's like you can just step right into that autumnal path. beautiful color choices, did you pic them from the photo itself?

We'll make it a surprise....400 people showing up on her doorstep. SURPRISE! Where's the bathroom?

You got that right about retail therapy. I appreciate all opinions because if that ever happened that bird did get stuck I'd be devastated and I do think about what can happen (I'm can be a chronic worrier) and try to watch what any surround branches/perches are looking like (are they dry, is there ice on them etc). I tend to worry more about wildlife than humans, is that bad? I always love to read your words, you have a way with them. One day, I will get to your area and we can chat with a tea and watch the birds and bugs and mammals. Of course that will be one stop on our pilgrimage to the motherland...of PSP....Carole's place!?

I have been doing the same, empty at night, fill in the day. I do admit I use a heated bath and was worried about that, so I sought out some advice. I have a friend who works with a biologist who studies birds for a conservation Trust. She said she hasnt heard that happening, as they are well adapted to bathing in standing water that they find in the winter. She did say it's possible to happen and if using a heated bath she said to keep metal objects away to be on the safe side. I have lots of branches that I place around the bath. It gets emptied every night and stored inside till the morning. It's against the garage wall so it does not get snowed on. Last year the LBJs (LBJs -Little Brown Jobs- ) found a spent plant pot with dirt in it and were bathing in it. They like this fine dirt I have in one spot so this year I have made two dirt bath spots in low wide planter pots. I have placed branch perches nearby as well. I'll be excited to see if they use them.

What an awesome shot! These are the ones, well, not the EXACT ones, but ones just like it that were at my baths. By the way, that is a really nice bath you have. I even see the junco. I'm tempting Mother Nature by leaving my baths out this long. I'm trying to keep them out as long as possible for the birds, they seem to be using it more than I would have expected. Hope we dont get a sudden freeze. Thank you for sharing this photo and for information on these guys. I'm told their song is really pretty. I've probably heard it but didnt know which type of bird sung the song. Some, like the Merlin are distinctive. the one that fools me the most is the blue jay, I heard they are mimic birds, some pretty odd sounds come out of them. I never get tired of crows and ravens and love the magpies, as they seem to talk a lot. they are the tabby cats of the bird world.

You are absolutely right! I'm planning for next year. I have doubled my garden space for flowers in the last couple weeks and even going to try and grow some vegys. And I want to get out into nature like I used to. The studio is still a favorite place to get lost in and I have lots of projects I'd like to do in there. It has taught me a lot about observing light. But, winter is the time for indoor photography. Most of the flower photography was out doors this year, a nice change(some indoor stuff for later extraction to have as elements). It's a short time period and I tried to make of the time I had. On another note: The weirdest thing happened at the bird baths late this afternoon. We had 6-8 what I thought was robins come and drink and bath and they were there for sometime. they had the rusty chest and a white ring around the eye, the ring was very noticeable so we thought it might not be robins and because I've never seen that many in one spot. I didnt know if they hang out together like the waxwings do. There was even more in the trees. I looked in my bird book and it said they were migratory (and that some overwinter as well) so we thought maybe they migrated as a group and just stopped by. Must do a bit more research on that.

Thank you. My internet went offline for some reason now it's back. We still have TV and streaming devices worked. So weird.

I'm not sure how I got there, might be (likely) that's exactly what I was doing only I didnt know.....as you know (with scripting) I seem to have my own illogical logic. I know that I would have initially followed one of your tutorials. I'll have to download some to see just how I did it. Memory is fine line isnt it. Thanks for clearing it up. The more I read what you say the more I think that's what I do when using ABR but didnt realize it was making pngs. I just now imported ones with PSP by going: File<Import<CustomBrush<dialog box pops up; choose Open<get the file which adds the brushes to the dialog box(Brushes)<add all (adds to Selected for import)<OK - this sounds like a script! There must be some if/else structures in there. ? Is PSP also written in Python? Does Python talk to other coding languages?

I love how the background, you can see what it is but doesnt overpower. And of course your text on a path is mimicing your words about the Merlin's flight patterns. Magnificent birds. I'll have to get onto FB to see the full size one.

Wow! beautiful. And thank you for letting me see what lives my 'hood. We can hear them calling to each other and one day one brought it's snack to my yard and once i was treated to an airshow as they were training the kids to hunt. One flew over the yard (I was outside) and it hit the afterburners part way through, took off like a rocket. Amazing!

Beautiful layout Ann. the colors are perfect.

What I get when I convert them (in ABRMate is PS7 files) then I import/export (which ever is the right word) them into PSP. First I try the original file in PSP (always) and if it wont import (nothing shows up in that box) then I try ABRMate, which converts it to PS7 if it can do that (sometimes it can, somtimes it cant - like newer version PS brushes doesnt always work). Here's a file that only had the one file and ABRMate converted it to PS7. It's in my folder I call "Done - Imported" that means it's in PSP as a brush. I check them once I import them. Does this make any sense? It sounds like something I'm doing is wrong, but I am getting brushes somehow. The 5 and 3 in the picture is the start of the date modified, not how many brushes there was (there was about 20 brushes).

Did you try ABR Mate. It works on some but not all PS brushes. And converts them to PS7 and from there I import to PSP and PSP does whatever it does to conver them. Very big PS files have never worked. I bought some from photographers I like, sometime I can get one extracted but not all of them and other times I can get more. Some PS brushes I've gotten have both a newer version and older PS7 version for download. What I thought I noticed before was the newer brush files (from current versions) are really big. Not sure if that makes a difference or not. The neon tutorial sounds interesting. Hmmm....could a script be written for this I wonder.

Fabulous colors. Looks like they are on a little mound or hill. This is how a lot of the flowers were at this Garden place I used to go to as it was quite hilly there. the flowers had to lean forward to reach for the sun as there was also a lot of huge evergreen trees. My sunflowers did this too. Inexperienced as i am, I put them too close to the garage wall and they had to grow at an angle to get to the sun by having to go around the eavestrough. But then, they were mutants topping out a near 10' when they were supposed to be 6-6.5 feet tall.

Love the touch with the dog in the background, perfect expression on his/her's face.

Love that background paper. I drink Silk, but the oatmilk version. And the coconut, used to drink the almond until they changed it and now it's gross.

It was something like that Suzy. I got a killer deal on the one time purchase for the year, and then they offered a second year even cheaper. It was in November because it's all free for me until November 2024.

I think Mary has done quite a bit with CF Spark.

There's some weird "nursing" stuff in the campus blogs. Is it on the up and up. it has links in it too.

Another great idea. In the video when you did the less curvy curve (shortened the handles) it looked like it could be folded paper with the right shadows etc.

What a cool technique. Now I'll go watch the video. It came in as I was posting this.

The best kind of close encounter! How do they stay so white. Beautiful bird and photo. I like that mask. I did not know Bourico Casper is Lady 22.

Oh, that's awful. Nothing worse that waiting for someone to do their job.

Nice to see you back Lynda. Hope this isn't a self portrait. ?. How's the new house?

wow, lots for me to check out. thank you Julie.