A New Thing…

I have recently discovered a lovely group of people…cyclists! Several of our friends are keen cyclists and a few months ago my dearly beloved started joining them on their morning rides.

I’d my bike for 2 years, but had only ridden about four times…shocking! Here it is…

Anyway, in December, at the grand age of 60 plus a few months, I got on the bike and started cycling. We live in an area that has some sneaky little hills, which are killers when one is unfit and starting out in this sport. My poor little heart pounds away and I puff and pant up those little killers!

I am not usually proud of what I do or my achievements, but I must say that I am pretty chuffed with myself and how I am improving. I have now graduated from my baby rides to riding with the group of friends. However, I realise my limits and am definitely the slowest in the group.

This brings me back to the group of cyclists…they are so encouraging and complimentary about my efforts. At least one of them hangs back with me and makes sure I do not get into any problems on the ride. A couple of them have been my personal trainers and taught me how to use the gears etc. As I said…what a lovely group of people.

A b&w version…

…and a partial colour edit for MOM 127…

I changed the red of the bike like to orange, though it still looks pretty red here 🙂

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MOM 126 – Painting With Light

On Friday night I went on an outing with the Photo Club that I have just joined – the Ballito Photo Club. We went down to the beach at Salt Rock and played around with Painting With Light. This was the first time that I had tried this technique. I did not get great shots, but it was fun and I certainly learnt a couple of things.

In the photo below one of the members had tied some coloured LED lights together and she swung them in a circle, whilst walking in front of us…

My husband twirled an LED torch in wavy patterns for the following shot…

For this week’s MOM entry I added an orange filter to the shot and this was the effect…

Happy New Year for 2015

I really must do more on my blog in 2015 🙂 Meanwhile, if you are reading this post…

 

MoM 106…

My previous post was about a visit to a spa hotel. The following photo was of the wall around the church. I love old buildings and weathered walls, doors etc. They have such character.

I am posting a last minute entry on Lori’s Mandarin Orange Monday…

I changed the photo to Black & White, then used the Coloured Pencil in the Filters layer…

Then I added an orange colour fill layer, changed the blend layer to overlay and lowered the opacity…

 

 

Time Away…

On Monday and Tuesday my daughter and I went to a Spa Hotel for a relaxing getaway. Hoar Cross Hall is situated in a village in Staffordshire in England.

Over the time that we spent there we had nothing more taxing to think about other than what treatment to have and then…should we go to the hydrotherapy pool or the saltwater vitality pool…decisions, decisions!

In the evening there were more decisions to be made…what to choose for dinner. The poor waitress kept coming to take our order, only to to be told we hadn’t made up our minds!! Eventually, we made our choices and then proceeded to eat some very delicious food.

On Monday afternoon we went for a walk around the grounds of the hotel…

The Church…

A statue on the outside wall of the church…

Garden features…

 

MOM 105…

At the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta I captured a few flashes of orange. Very kind of them to put on a show just in time for a MOM entry 🙂 The only editing I did on these photos was to adjust the tone and bump up the saturation. I tried a few artistic takes, but they just looked awful. So I kept it simple.

Herewith my entries. Some more photos can be seen here

Do visit MOM to see what other people’s entries.

 

Up, Up and Away…

Dionne Warwick’s song starts…”Wouldn’t you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?”

Yes I would have loved to have done that on Friday at the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta in Bristol, UK. I was so excited to have been able to go to the Fiesta, as I am not usually in the UK for this annual event. We were so lucky with the weather, as the Balloon Ascent on Friday evening was able to take place. There were fair winds and only a slight shower.

I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

 

Time to…

It’s about time I started blogging again! I’m full of excuses, some genuine, some just pure laziness 😦

At the moment, my life is being consumed by my grandchildren. I reckon that’s a good reason 🙂

Here they are…cousins, born 6 days apart last year.

 

Of course I have to do a b&w edit…

Morning Sky…

It’s a funny old thing, but this morning I got up and took some photos of the sunrise. Well that’s not a funny old thing…the funny thing is that it reminded me of a couple of lines I wrote in my journal a few days ago…

Wait in the morning

Dawn breaking upon the sky

As earth softly wakes

and then these are the words I read in Psalm 19:1 after having taken the photos…

The heavens proclaim the glory of God

The skies display his craftsmanship

Little events weaving life together.

I am linking up to Lori’s Mandarin Orange Monday

I enhanced the colour by using a colour pop method, though I must say that it did not need a lot of enhancing…

Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Flowers

I have just found Cee’s Photography blog, where amongst other challenges, she hosts a Black & White one. The current theme is “Flowers”, so I dutifully went out into our courtyard where there is a strelitzia in flower. I did take several shots in colour, but decided to set the camera onto Monochrome and took a couple of photos.

This is the SOOC shot…

I cannot remember all the edits I did, but for the following picture I added a soft white overlay, which lightened the image and brought out the contrasts a bit more…

Do go over to Cee’s blog and have a look at some of the other entries.