jean labelle

I've toned down the post processing a bit for this version... any

better? Thanks, Jean

I've toned down the post processing a bit for this version... any better?

Thanks,

Jean

I really like this effect. How about a little tutorial?

Do you think there is too much post processing on this shot?

Thank you in advance!

Jean

7/7

Just fantastic!!!

Apart from the dust, what would you improve upon?

Thanks!

I like it.

Happiness is a loaded Nikon I alway say...

Very powerful!

Hope all is well!

JPL

Very nice Gaetan!!!

Was this the week where the temperature dropped down to -44. How did the camera hold out?

Jean

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs. and spread mayo on the same

cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to

get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it

raw sometimes too, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake or quarry

instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring - and dangerous).

The term "cell phone" would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell,

and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE ... and risked permanent injury with a pair of

high-top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training

athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I

can't recall any injuries, but they must have

happened because they tell us now much safer we are.

Flunking gym was not an option ... even for stupid kids! I guess PE

must be much harder than gym.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the

halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting a wet spot. How

much better off we would be today if we only knew we could have sued

the school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in

detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must

have had horribly damaged psyches.

Schools didn't offer 14-year-olds an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't

have known what either was anyway), but they did give us a couple of

baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the sniffles. What

an archaic health system we had

then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was

allowed to be proud of myself. How retro!

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station,

Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations. I must be repressing

that memory as I try to rationalize the denial of

the dangers that could have befallen us as we trekked off each day a

mile down the road to some guy's vacant lot, built forts out of

branches and pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got

to be the Lone Ranger.

What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot? He

should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the

property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder

alarm. Oh yeah ... and where was the Enadryl and sterilization kit

when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant

construction sites and, when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 cent

bottle of Mercurochrome and then we got our butt

spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day

regimen of $200 worth of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney

to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly

dangerous pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either, because if we did, we

got our butt spanked (physical abuse) there too ... and then we got

our butt spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door-to-door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked

down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks

(remember why Tonka trucks were made tough ... it wasn't so that they

could take the rough Berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car

with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play, and I am

sure that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we

went on two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for

the danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the

family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know

that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an

automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive.

How sick were my parents? Of course they weren't the only psychos. I

recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks

on the front stoop until he fell off. Little did his Mom know that he

could have owned our house! Instead she picked him up and swatted him

for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they

were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known

that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?

We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't

even notice

that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we survive?

All to say, the times are a changin... sadly.

Jean

I love this very much the way it is!