Playing with my camera a bit

Lately I have been participating in a challenge on the 365 project photo sharing site, to use a lot of black and white and play with exposure and try selective coloring.

http://365project.org/pandorasecho/365/2013-03-02

So here is a shot of me and the snuggliest dog I've even known

Here is that dog, looking mournfully out at the Barbara Marie, The Crab boat my son spends months at a time on.

Caesar is just too colorful to leave in black and white I think

Crab pots coming back home as the season winds down

ongoing construction in the harbor a couple years after the tsunami wiped out all the docks here and sank the crab fleet

HA!  I never get the moon to look like anything but a white light, the secret seems to be taking the picture when the sky is not such a dark contrast.

Driving through WonderStump Road, where a redwood logging train used to run to the logging camps

SeaLions in the harbor

Me, trying to overexpose a shot and still make it work.  Hmm, dows it erase lines and make me look younger?

Icarus, my double yellowhead got his name when he got too close to Sunshine, the cockatoo, and got a bunch of feathers plucked

My Husband and our 38 year old Green Wing Macaw, Caesar  Selective Coloring, I haven't mastered it nut it worked for this

One Year after the Tsunami, we shared with Japan

 Most everyone knows that the Tsunami was major and that the impact of it upon Japan is inconceivable on so many levels.  Our Small, Northern California and Southern Oregon harbors had a bit more than sympathy pains for our Japanese brothers and sisters.

Starting between 7 and 8 AM, we began to experience our own Tsunami, and the waves cycled through the commercial boat harbor, destroying boats and docks and peoples incomes, but most devastatingly of all, Pulling two people into the sea, in Southern Oregon at Pistol River (They managed to get ashore) and destroying the life of one young man who was pulled out to sea in Northern California, but who's body was found long weeks later in Washington.

 His Father, Jon Weber, is hiking the route from where his son's body was found, to here where his son was pulled into the sea, that story in the Del Norte Triplicate at

http://www.triplicate.com/News/Local-News/Trek-makes-good-progress

There were several crabbing and fishing boats left shattered on the harbor floor, so this big crane was bright in to help raise the broken boats from the harbor.  

This is a picture I took of my TV screen when they were showing how the water from the harbor was being sucked out of the harbor and then came flooding back in in 10 minute cycles

My Aunt sent me this paper with our hometown on the front page news, from her home near Pittsburgh PA

Although surviving the Tsunami is not a free card other, this sailboat survived the big tsunami, only to lie broken on the rocks in the spring rains and flooding of January 2011

 This smaller crane was here just last month to help fix the channel markers which were broken and moved and have caused a headache for boats coming in and out ever sine

 This dredge loaded up barge after barge of the silt which had been deposited in the harbor and filled the boat basin during the tsunami

Crescent City won one of the $10, 000 prizes from Reader's Digest in the We Hear You America Contest to help with the rebuilding, but as the Curry Coastal Pilot said

"Visitors to Crescent City Harbor this week will find a port that is a shadow of its former self, the surviving boats in the fleet crowding around a handful of new docks. 

Emergency funds to repair and replace docks and other facilities have been hindered by state and federal bureaucracy. Crescent City’s port was one of three California ports to be damaged by the tsunami, while Brookings’ port was the only one in Oregon.

Still, the work completed so far is impressive: the removal of 61 pilings, the dredging of 83 barge-loads of silt deposited by the tsunami, and the repair of about 500 feet of protective rock slope, all at a cost of around $5.1 million. 

“It’s been kind of a remarkable year for what we have accomplished since the tsunami,” Young said. "

To see that whole story go to

http://www.currypilot.com/News/Breaking-News/Tsunami-one-year-later

Red's Crescent Drive-In

 The End of Winter is for Sure Now.  From May to October, what we are doing on the weekend depends in large part on what is listed on the program taped to the kitchen window. If the double feature at Red's is on our list, we won't be heading out of town. The movies they get there are later in their season than the cinema in town, but at $12 a carload and a $10 carload on Sunday, no-one minds too much if it is movies that will be out on video the following week.

 Knowing that the Drive-in movie has opened again, allows me the freedom of really believing that Winter is over. I love this old relic just down the street from my house. 


That is $12 for a carload (up to 10 people) for a double feature

 The speakers don't work as well anymore as having your own radio and tuning in to 102.9 FM or 700 AM. The concession stand has popcorn, hot dogs and fresh hot pizza, "$1 a slice while they last," but at the funniest moments there is the interruption over the speakers, "The Snack Bar will be closing in 15 minutes"

 Ok, I've seen folding chairs and sleeping bags, people sitting on the roof of their car and the back of their truck, but this week there was a plaid sofa up toward the front of the drive - in theater, and a bunch of young people playing catch around it as they waited for the movie to begin. The picture isn't very good, but the situation had me smiling

 No, they don't have a captive audience like the cinema, so the prices stay reasonable. They know you can come to the drive-in with a car load of Pizza and candy and they can't stop you, so their candy and hot dogs and pizza by the slice comes at an honest price and with smiles for most people, although when my family comes in they have been known to scream, "Oh No! It's the Goodes" because we tend order a lot and be slow making up our minds. ("What Minds?" I can hear them asking now.)

Looking around I found a cool blog about Drive-in movie memories. http://the60sofficialsite.com/Drive-In_Theater_Memories.html

 Waiting until dark to begin the movie and then showing a double feature has always made the employees and owners impatient to get the show going, so the previews begin before it is dark and if the first movie has a lot of dark scenes you miss some of the detail in the first half hour or so

When the movies are family friendly the place really packs them in, like last weekend with "The Lorax"

Remembering to take your foot off the brakes is more important drive-in etiquette than turning for cell phone off.

Last year a wind storm knocked a few panels of wood out of the Drive-in movie screen and the season was delayed for repairs. Tragedy, I tell you. 

Here the local kids sneak in through the bushes to watch from up front without paying. Before and between features there are games of frisbee or tag. There is underage drinking at times but also a lot of family fun. People used to gather on the grass beside their car but it was too easy for a late arrival to try to find an empty parking space and nearly park on a person in a lawn chair or sleeping bag. Now there is a white wooden railing and people on the lawn have to stay in front of it if they don't want to sit in their cars. 

The perimeter of the theater grounds are encouraged trees and blackberry vines, but if someone tries to park outside and watch for free from the wrong side of the fence, Red's sons have been known to broadcast such messages as, "Will the cheapskate in the green truck either come in and pay for the movie or leave.'

Projection booth on right, snack bar to your left