Life in the fast lane continues

These are just a few more pictures of our little trip down to Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge last week on a dreary day. And then, I promise you, I'll stop, ok?

As I write this, it's rainy and cold. And dark too, because it's nighttime. George is asleep at my feet after several rousing hours games of toy fetching. Reading your comments on yesterdays post made me happy and frankly, surprised. I want to welcome all the new faces here!

After the Boardwalk Trail, we walked across the road and north a little bit to Boxes Point Trail, which is a nice hike through a little forest. Can you spot the bird in the photo above?

At the end of the trail is a nice little beach with a park bench to enjoy the view. I liked this cool piece of driftwood.

A lot of you asked what I do to my pictures and I'll tell you that I rarely use one that's Straight Out of Camera (SOOC). I'm a sucker for a good action and for the two lower photos above, I used Pioneer Woman's Soft & Faded. PW has two sets of actions that are absolutely free and available for download into your Photoshop program. All you have to do is visit her website and click on the Photography tab. Then do a search for free actions.

I also used TRA's actions, and the one above is called Technicolor Dreamworld. It's available in Set 2 (The Revenge). Please note that this is not a picture of my husband's back.

When I open up my pictures in Photoshop and begin to play around, I'll look at it and try to recreate how it looked in my mind when I took it. I know that sounds weird, but it's how it works sometimes. I wanted the water to look blue because it actually looked blue that day as the sun was just beginning to break through the clouds. But the SOOC was not what I expected. And adding the burnt edge to the photo above made the water more blue.

For the one above and for many of these photos, I used a slight edge burn, also available as a free download. It's from MCP Actions and there's several more to try out on her website.

These two trees are a silent testament to the ravages of time, aren't they? This was taken at Boxes Point looking north.

I liked how these reeds looked against the sky and water. This photo also has a burnt edge to it as well as an action called Rusty Cage, which I purchased in a set from TRA (Totally Rad Actions).

The sun made a valiant attempt that day but nothing ever really came of it. So we called it a day and headed north for home.

Hope all this talk of actions and burnt edges hasn't totally put you to sleep!

Until tomorrow, my friends . . .

Oh, and that's my new favorite hat that I bought in NYC last month. I love it!