Backyard Birdies

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I hope everyone's holidays have passed well.  I took time off work and worked only a little: an hour here or there in the days before Christmas and only one afternoon after Christmas.  My husband and I have been huddled together lamenting the return to work tomorrow!

One of my Christmas goodies was a new camera.  My husband has purchased my last three cameras as gifts for me.  It is usually a simple point'n'shoot, easy to transport camera.  However, on the rare occasion that we go on trips, the zoom on those little cameras is sadly lacking.  So, this year he got one with a real zoom: 30x versus the 16x I've had in the past.  I must admit, this camera has more functions than I will ever care to learn.  When we go on trips, he usually takes the pictures anyway, because my hands are not steady enough and even worse with zoom.

Nonetheless, I have played with it a little bit.  Here are the birds in my backyard on December 29, 2012.  The first one is taken at about half the maximum zoom.  Here, with no cropping or colour correction is a small group of cardinals:

Here, colour corrected on the computer:

Here, in the same tree (after much fluttering and shifting of the birds), at full zoom, colour corrected but otherwise uncropped:

In a tree beside this one:

And a blue jay.

I was thinking one of the cardinals more closely cropped might make a nice card.  (It will probably remain only a thought though!)

By the way, my husband also helped me re-arrange my craft room (again).  The last local scrapbook store went out of business and I nabbed a slat wall with paper holders.  He mounted it for me, even though I ran over his injured toe with a box trying to clear space in the closet for it and I also dropped the level on his head.  He looooooves me a whole lot is all I can say!

While it is rearranged, it falls to me to reorganize it.  Soooo.... pictures later.  I need to get at it before the end of January when my first class of the year happens, but I am just too swept up in a good book just now.

Hope everyone's holidays were happy and safe!