Fix-It-Friday #60

The orginal:

My Edit:

B&W:

Shenanigans at Naptime

At the tail end of Ethan's nap I heard much laughter which made me smile.  Then a chorus of potentially ominous 'What happened?'s which made me pause.  Upon investigation I found this:

Ethan found a feather from his pillow and stuck it on YaYa's head.  As he said 'YaYa has funny hair'.  Indeed.

A day at the playground

Happy Father's Day!

To Bob with much love:

- there is no one that can make us laugh as hard or as often as you
- there is no one that gives us so much unconditional love and support as you do
- there is no one that makes us feel feel as secure and protected as you can

Emily and Ethan


As Ethan would say 'Happy Daddy's Day!' to everyone!

Fix-It-Friday #59

The original:

My Edit (Lightroom):

Temp: -4, Tint: -5
Tone Curve: Linear
Exposure: +0.38
Vibrance: +21
And because I cheated and snuck a peek at Julia Rivera's edit, I decreased saturation and increased luminance in the Red's and Orange's.

Using Soft&Dreamy preset by Presets Heaven.

B&W.

New Observation of the Day

'I don like eet fall on da ground!' 

- E

Hong Kong Park

We took a visit to the Hong Kong Park in Central to visit the bird aviary.  It's a pretty nice park and Ethan liked looking at the birds.  Okay, he mostly liked racing down the wooden decks.  Show him a hill and he has to run up and down it. 

En route to the park.  E has a fascination with handles.

Gazing at the fish.

Said fish.

Entering the aviary.

Look of wonderment in E's eyes.

Bird with it's own paparazzi.

I have never seen birds like these before.  The feathery heads were kinda scary yet pretty at the same time.

More birds!

It was a fun afternoon.  Hong Kong Park is open daily and also free!

iheartfaces fix-it-friday #58

Another week another picture to edit!  I'm having a bit of an editing problem.  I just can never adjust white balance correctly. All my pictures seem a bit too yellow and I can't get it quite right. Also I have no control when it comes to adding more contrast. I need to find a way to sharpen without adding contrast, but I like the shadow definition. 

Color edit:

B&W:

Osaka

Last post about Japan I promise!  We only spent half a day in Osaka (and half of that time traveling to the airport and back to drop of our luggage since someone didn't think they had luggage storage lockers in the city *cough cough Bob*).  Since we didn't have time to go to a real onsen while in Kyoto we ended up at a place called Spa World.  It's like an entire building with 8 floors dedicated to spa/water activities.  Since it got such great reviews and people say they spend all day there we thought we were good for a couple of hours.  Turns out I visited every pool and did every treatment and was still done in one hour.  =P  I guess I'm not much of a spa person.  We then wandered around the streets in Osaka where there are statues of Billikens everywhere.  Or at least on the particular streets we wandered down.

Then at last we went home.  I was lucky and got to try out the new pods they have in business class on Cathay.  At first I thought they were confining and isolating but it turns out I really liked being isolated from all the other people.  It was kinda cosy!  Then we got home to a certain little boy that I missed very much.  The next morning when I saw him he just said 'Mommy'!  Then ran back and played with his toys like it was a usual morning.  =P  I guess I'm not need that much after all.  Side story:  The morning I left for Japan I told him I was off to work (since Bob goes off on business trips all the time and that is the term we use) and would be gone for a few days.  It was breakfast time and he wanted to have cereal instead of the oatmeal that he was eating.  So I said I would go to the grocery store to buy some and snuck out the door.  Well, periodically when I was gone he would ask to 'go find mommy' and my mom would say I went to work.  Then he would counter 'no, mommy go buy cereal'.  Awww...kids are cute.  So the whole time I was gone he probably just thought I was taking a really long time at the grocery store.  I have noticed the last week or so since I have been back that he won't request cereal anymore even when I offer it to him as a choice.  He probably thinks that I will disappear again to try to find the cereal.  We have a sweet cute funny boy.

Kyoto Part 2

Ginkaku-ji Temple (Silver Pavilion):

Path of Philosophy outside of Ginkaku-ji.  Someone contemplating life while drinking beer.

Kinkaku-ji Temple (Golden Pavilion):

Ryoan-ji Temple: 

The famous dry landscape garden.  There are 15 rocks (number 15 denoting completeness in Buddhism) placed in the garden but from the veranda you can only see 14 at a time.  Yes I get why that is profound but I still think it is silly.  When we were narrowing down which temples to visit, Bob said this was his first choice since he just had to see what the hype was about.  =P

A model of the zen garden.

This picture is really for Ethan.  Ever since Chinese New Year, he has been obsessed with lanterns.  We go down and touch the ones hanging from the restaurants in the plaza where we live every day (they must love that).

Fushimi Inari Shrine:  I thought this was one of the coolest places in Kyoto. 

Dedications to Inari (Shinto god of rice) as foxes are said to be messengers of Inari.

There are about 10,000 torii (Shinto shrine gates - translating to bird perches) that line the hiking trails above the temple.  It takes 2 hours to walk along the entire trail.

Kamogmawa River:

Pontocho Street.  Great nightlife, great restaurants.

Kyoto Station.

My favorite places to visit in Kyoto were Ginkaku-ji, Kinkaku-ji, Fushimi Inari, Gion and Pontocho.  Okay, that might practically be all the places we visited.  I loved everything about Kyoto.  I was wondering two main things as we visited the temples and shrines: why were the statues of the deities (typically of Jizo) wearing red bibs/hats? Answer:  red is the color thought to expel demons/sickness and since Jizo is the guardian of all things, especially children, the red garments were given to help protect them.  And what does the saffron orange color the torii and temples represent? Okay well according to Wiki orange is the essence of Buddhism and symbolizes wisdom, strength and dignity.