So it's March now. In other parts of the northern hemisphere, it is likely getting kind of nice out, warming up, things starting to grow or perhaps even bloom, but here we are still in the midst of winter. Mind you, there is hope as we are supposed to get up to freezing or possibly even a bit above in the next couple of days, and despite the minus 20s (with windchill into the minus 30s) of the past week, we also have some hopeful reminders of the changing seasons. For one, the horses are starting to shed out a bit. Alpac has been letting go of his hair in a minor way for a couple of weeks now, so I'm being a bit more conscientious than I generally am about grooming him. That and the fact that I'm still not riding due to the saddle being elsewhere, so I have a bit more time than usual for basic maintenance. At least it's come at a time where the extra grooming really pays off and is noticeable. I'll have to remember to start saving the hair that he sheds out for my backyard bird project. I like to put out a bunch of horse hair on the platform feeder in the spring for the songbirds to take for their nests. It always gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling to clean out a bird house at the end of the season and find that my horse's hair has been made into a nice cozy nest for the baby birds. Likely gives them a warm and fuzzy feeling too!
Since it snowed several days last week, I got out and took the obligatory "horses in snow" shots, but I have to report that my heart isn't in it the way it was for the first dozen or so outings of earlier months. My hands still got almost as cold, though. Now I'm more focussed on looking forward to the mare and foal shots that I will be getting in a couple of months, of various breeds and types of horses belonging to friends who are good about giving me photo access. Of course in between now and then we'll have serious water and mud season to work through. Sometimes there are good photo ops there as well if you can only navigate the mud without mishap.
Since I was unable/unwilling to do much in the way of photo outings, I spent quite a bit of time on "photo innings", working on a series I am doing of humble objects in domestic interior settings, on the days when we actually had sun. Other than that, I've logged a lot of computer time, mostly trying to set up, and then trying to make sense of and use, my new Corel Painter Essentials 4 program. The Painter Essentials 3 program came free, bundled with my Wacom graphics tablet when I purchased it a few years ago. I didn't really notice that I had this extra program until recently, but I thought since I had it I might as well install it and try it out. This led to a longish and trying set of attempts to get it to co-operate with my new computer, which in the end didn't seem possible, for reasons unknown to all. The tech person from Corel that was helping me was mystified as well, and in the end very kindly asked if I would be willing to work from the newer PE4 program, which I was happy to do. So now I'm embarked on yet another learning curve with this program. So far all it's done is confirm for me yet again (as if this was needed) that I am *not* a painter. Not in the real world of art supplies, and apparently not on the digital screen either. However, it's early days yet and I can certainly see a number of non-conventional ways that I will be able to make this program work really well with my Photoshop endeavors, so stay tuned.
The top image today is of one of my first efforts with the PE4 program. I thought I'd better start out simply, with a style of image that I have worked with in "real" art media, so I came up with this little cave-horse style pony. There's a lot I can (and likely will) still do with him, but this is as far as I got with him today. The second photo is another one I did, starting from a source photo (the cave pony was done from scratch) which was then modified with the "auto paint" program, then taken over to PS and merged with the original photo. This was from a shot I took last fall before the snow fell, and I have always like the textures, soft colors and backlighting in this shot and the others I took at the same time.
Shot three is another happy discovery from the past week. I spent a fair amount of time lurking by the weir on the river last summer gathering pelican shots, but for months they have been notable only by their absence. As I was rooting through a pile of discs, I discovered that I had apparently put them all on a CD, so now the pelicans have come home to roost once more. It's so nice to see water that isn't frozen!! These are non-breeding birds as they don't have the characteristic "keel" on the upper beak of the mature pelican, and are probably "teen-agers". From the way their were behaving, I thought they were likely two males and a female (the boys were doing a fair bit of showing off and posturing and she was mostly ignoring them) but really I could be all wrong about that since I don't know how to tell the sexes apart in the world of pelicans.
The last two shots are of the "then and now" sort, taken from in front of my house at two distinctly different times of year. The "now" shot of the wintery street was actually taken during an earlier snowfall in January, but that's exactly what it looked like this time last week as well, except the depth of the accumulated snow on the sides of the street is considerably higher by now. The other shot was taken in late August or early September, in the golden glow of the long evening.
So who knows what I'll have to report on for the weather by next week. Could be more winter, could be a rush towards spring. Maybe I'll also have found the cat photos that are also MIA. Happened with the pelicans, so there's still hope! And maybe my saddle will be back and I'll be riding again. That would be nice.
