Karma is....

Well I will let you decide.

I went for a hike at Sidie Hollow Park which is a County Park just outside Viroqua. The camping area was full and I saw families and tents and people doing all sorts of activities.
The sign at the entrance to the trail says: Dogs must be leashed. Please clean up after your dog.

I hooked Charlie up on a leash, checked our water supply and headed out. We ran into a cyclist who was cleaning up some brush on the trail. Charlie admired his bike as we talked.
He headed off.

We met a couple that had a whippet that went to shaking when he saw Charlie. His owners said he was terrified of little dogs. I picked Charlie up so he wouldn't frighten the whippet and we walked on.

Charlie was enjoying himself and walking on leash like a great little guy. No pulling, just a lot of dog sniffing.

We came around a bend and there was a huge German Shepard type dog slinking with its head down, ears back. One of the women on the trail behind the dog said, "Hey, I've got a dog!"

And I replied, scooping up Charlie once again, "And I SEE you have no leash on your dog!"

She gave me the finger.

As we followed the trail through the big rig camp ground two little ratty looking terrier type dogs ran at us snarling and barking. Charlie once more was in my arms.

The lady walked out with a little stick and started talking baby talk to them. "Now you girls BeeBee and Toots go home!" I waited patiently and said nothing while she wrangled up her tiny nasty beasts.

A group of teen aged boys walked by later and stopped to pet Charlie. The walk was pleasant but I couldn't dawdle in the wooded area as mosquitoes would come buzzing.
The trail is a circle around the lake so chances were I'd meet the Shepard and women again.

I walked towards the lake shore to look at some really beautiful flowers. But stopped short. Mixed in with the tall flowers was some low lying poison ivy which looked very healthy.
I admired the flowers and walked on.

Here came the big Shepard low to the ground and ears flat. I saw the lady glance at me and then turn away. The dog circled us without a wag in its tail nor did it make a sound.
I walked slowly with Charlie in my arms again.

"Call your dog," I said, "or I call the Sheriff." I got a double finger this time and she called the dog off me.

She walked past with her friend and then exclaimed, "Look at those flowers!"
To my utter delight, her dog bounded through the poison ivy breaking up the oils as she walked in her flip flops to pick wildflowers.

I stroked Charlie on the head before setting him back down to finish our walk.

"Charlie," I said, "my next dog will be named Karma."

And I smiled.

Doing Sidie Hollow ~ by Charlie

She walked around the house putting things in her back pack and I started to get worried.
The back pack means 'Walk' or 'Hike' or 'Let's go to the woods and smell good stuffs'.

So I watched carefully from the couch.

She put a small bag of doggy treats in the back of the pack and then I started to get excited.
Walks!
I like walks!
She let me outside and I ran around the yard. She jingled the car keys and I ran to the Subaru.
Was I going to get to go to town and 'Socialize' again? Oh boy!

I was ready.

I still don't really like the car rides as much as She seems to, but we sometimes have some pretty cool adventures when we go.

I perched on the edge of my seat and looked out the window while we drove out the driveway.
She babbled on and on about something and something...stuff that didn't make sense really. Just human talk.
Every once in a while she'd reach over and lightly touch me on the head without looking at me.
She said something about the roads were too twisty and turny for paying attention to me.
Huh.


We got to Sidie Hollow and I was patient while she hooked me up to the leash thingy.
She pointed at the sign that said "All pets MUST be on leash."

Part of the way around the trail we ran into a young couple and a couple of kids. They had a huge brindle dog that looked exactly like a pit bull. She stopped several feet away from them and started to talk.

Big old Bad Bruno wasn't big and bad really. I rolled over and wagged a lot. He whined and lay down next to me. Imagine a bigger dog than Dixie playing with me!
We sniffed each other's butts and other private parts. The young folks were a bit embarrassed I think but not Her. She was like...Oh no big deal!

We hiked fast and hard, I led most of the way. The only time I didn't was when SHE picked me up and walked. There was some people and they had a  really huge boxer ---something mix--- that was growly and angry. He didn't have a leash on either. He dragged the human type person around and snarled.

She didn't say a word to them and walked by with me in her arms.
I don't think that was a happy dog.

She laughed later on when we found a "Hello" mushroom. I have no idea what that is.

We talked to some people in a canoe..okay, it was a yellow floaty thing that people pushed around with board things. I couldn't make any sense of it except that the yellow thingy kept them from being in the water.

I wagged my tail a lot.

She eventually said that She found a good spot to take a morning photo. She said something about Jersey Valley and then sighed loudly.

I don't know, all the smells were just fine with me. I like this Sidie Hollow place. 

When I got back in the car seat, I curled up and let Her navigate all of the way back home.

Fun with Topaz Studio

I'm not a huge fan of one particular photo program over another. I did try Lightroom and used the Free Trial for a few days. I didn't like how the program tried to force me into 'cataloging' my photos. I simply date my shots with a date taken and where/or what it was about.
I wish I could afford the Lightroom editing program, there are some nice features I could use for some of my more experimental shots such as star shots. However I don't see my self going into astro-photography.

I switched to Corel a few years ago and downloaded Photoshop C2 which was free at the time. I have used Topaz products and plugins ever since they came out.
Topaz offers 'Topaz Studio' in a free version. It works pretty darned well and has lots of tempting effects.

Below is the original shot. I did use RAW or the Nikon version of it called NEF.

With Topaz Adjust I was able to get this. I actually used a Toned shot setting called Vintage.
Now the shot was not perfectly in focus and I would have tossed it. In fact I probably will toss it as it really is nothing spectacular.

However this gives the view a better view of what I 'thought' I imagined when I took the photo. A quiet beautiful man made lake. It was built to prevent further devastation and flash flooding along the Bad Axe River around the year 1960.
You can see the dam in this shot.

Original:

Edited version with Topaz Studio. I used a Toned Sepia color here to bring out the fall colors and added some contrast. I had hoped in this shot to catch the mist rising off the water, but everything washed out in the original.

And then just because I had Topaz Studio open, I thought I'd visit Van Gogh and see how he'd see this shot. 'Van Gogh' setting:

That was pretty fun. As an experiment is worked nicely.

I used an HDR edit on the shot above to bring out the shadows.

My favorite shot of the morning was this reflection shot. The mist is nearly impossible to see, and the original shot had so much grey in it.

Original:

I used Topaz Adjust to bring out the colors and the trees I had to use a method similar to HDR processing.

And since I just wanted to fool around with it, I went into 'Trending' in Topaz Studio and found this effect:

I think it was an Orton glow effect.

Fun, but then again not something I'd print.

In truth, I don't think I picked the best time of day to come to Sidie Hollow to take photos. Sure it was right at sunrise, but the sun ... well, it doesn't peek into valley until at least an hour after the sun comes up.

I came away with a few shots I like, but I had to do some processing.

I'm not sure I'll purchase the full version of Studio. But I'll keep experimenting.

Sidie Hollow in the Morning

I went to OT [Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy] Friday morning and had an hour and a half to kill before my hair cut appointment. I was way over due for a hair trim!

I followed the foot path from the boat landing and walked out to the floating fishing dock.
I was pretty happy to see the morning mists rising off the water.

I didn't have much time to really explore. But for the 45 minutes I was there, I did find some beautiful things to try out the Tamron lens.

At full zoom it was a bit soft in the low light, but I was able to catch some almost decent shots of some Canada Geese taking off in the shadows across the small bay.

It was a beautiful 45 minutes and I'd really wished I'd had the day to explore.

Sigh.
Now it is the Brown Season. But I think I will see if will challenge myself and see what interesting things I can find.

Morning at Sidie Hollow

Just leaving the driveway was beautiful itself!  The temperature was in the 30's and we had a light frost.
Everywhere there was a mist in low lying areas.

I was looking for some 'me' time without distractions and scheduling.  My next week looks to be very busy between work and appointments.

And I knew that the fall colors would not wait for my schedule as Mother Nature has her own plans.

When I got to Sidie Hollow it was cloaked in morning mist and I couldn't see the west side where the earthen dam was.  However after an hour of sun, I was able to just barely make it out.

I made it to the fishing/viewing area and set up with a tripod and my cameras. The light kept changing and the mist swirled.  Half of the valley was lit up with brilliant sunshine and the other have was shrouded in shadows and mist.

I used my ND filter so I could take a 5 second exposure of the moving mist.  
And then moved into the sunlight to see if I could get reflections and mists.

This was a 1 second exposure and shot at a higher ISO so I could capture some of what was hidden in the shadows.

I began to wrap up things when I turned around and looked east.  There in front of me was a beautiful shot that was begging to be taken.  I hadn't looked east because of the glare of the sunlight on the mist and the water.

However ...

There is was, my last shot of the morning and my favorite one of the day.
I got the eerie mist, sunshine, tree colors, and reflections in the water.

It was a win for me all around.

A family with young children stopped on the trail.  They wanted to come on to the floating observation area, I motioned them in.  I was done and I wanted them to be able to see up and down the valley.  
We talked for a few minutes and I learned that this was their very first visit to the 'Driftless Area'.  I told them that I'd been here for 19 years and had fallen in love with it.

I also said the locals would love to keep this area secret.  We had a great laugh over that.

The rest of the day was boring.  Grocery shopping, cooking, baking, freezing squash, and making a chocolate/squash cake.