Karate Tournament

Today Michael competed in a Shaolin Kempo karate tournament.  He came in 2nd place in black belt sparring and 2nd place in black belt Kata.  I am totally impressed — especially because Mike has been busy with school and has not regularly attended his karate lessons. Here are some pictures from the event today.

MS Walk Slideshow

I put the images from the ms walk into a slideshow. Click on the image to see it!

A few pictures from the MS Walk

Jazzercise students from around central Kentucky participated in the Multiple Sclerosis fund raising walk at the Kentucky Horse Park. The students besides raising money and participating in the walk, also did the warm up. I went along to take some pictures.

Jazzercise students warming up.

Melissa’s legs.

Students from the rear.

Melissa leading the pack.

Melissa being a drill sergeant!

Melissa having fun.

Henrietta doing her “groove thang” . (p.s. Lisa Eddy put me up to this!)

Melissa and Cindy McGeorge.

After the warmup, Melissa and her students started the walk. This gave me an opportunity to take some pictures around the Horse Park.

A little boy touching the horse.

I also saw some famous horses. Here is Cigar.

And here is Da Hoss.

A barn cat enjoying a lazy Saturday morning.

I saw a cowgirl.

And an Indian and Sheik as well!

I saw lots of horses out in the fields. Here are a couple

Here is a close up.

MS Walk Animation

Today I went with Melissa to the MS walk. She was leading the Jazzercise warmup. I took a bunch of pictures and I will post soon (probably tomorrow), but I wanted to share this little movie I made of her students. I think I needed a tripod!

BW Melissa

Here is an image I converted to Black and White.  Well it is more brown and white, but it works for me!

Gallery Hop At Midway

Tonight Melissa and I went over to Midway Kentucky to the Gallery Hop which featured lots of artists and music plus wine and bourbon tasting. Yum O. When we arrived we decided to eat. We chose to go into The Black Tulip and get something to eat. The place was crowded, but luckily for us a 2 person table just opened when a table for eight ended up only needing a table for 6.

Here is a picture of the place from the outside:

Here is a picture of the inside:

Of course a fine meal needs a good glass of wine. A pinot grigio hits the spot for sure!

Here is a picture of our Shrimp and Avocado salad that we had as an appetizer:

Here is a picture of Melissas awesome Alaskan Halibut:

Here is a picture of Jim’s filet:

The food was awesome and we plan to go back often.

Here is a picture of some musicians playing on the street:

After dinner we walked to the Quirk Cafe (which was featured in Southern Living Magazine) and had dessert. I had key lime pie and Melissa had Kentucky jam cake with caramel icing. A perfect ending to our gallery hop. I neglected to mention that we had a WHOLE bottle of Pino Grigio with dinner and that was the cause of me forgetting to take a picture of our desserts!

Blog Face Lift

It has been about a year since I started my blog and I think it was time to give it a face lift.  In case you don’t exactly remember what it looked like, here is a snapshot of the old version.

 

I think I like this new version better.  The original blog was put up without much forethought and I didn’t know how long I would actually keep up with blogging so I didn’t put much thought into it.   This one is a little more refined, but I suspect I will change it again in the future.

Black And White

While I like black and white (b&w) photographs, I have never been overly fond of them.  As such, I tend to not do much work in b&w.  But in order to force myself to appreciate b&w photos more, I played around with some b&w processing of pictures today.  Here is one:

Photo Fun

There are so many effects one can apply to pictures that it seems like there is limitless freedom to create artistic pieces of work.   I took one of the pictures of Tiff from a couple of weeks ago and played with it and came up with this.   That is one of the reasons I love photography so. My ability to create works of art is only bounded by my imagination.  Sort of looks like it belongs on a CD cover.