Greetings,

We ended up coming up to Bonita, as we had planned, last Friday. And we’ve been enjoying the weather Portland and Vancouver used to have. We haven’t had a chance to try out our AC units up here yet this year. The doors and windows have been open since we arrived. I think it got to 84 one day just before the sun set and it dropped to the low 70s. Enough rubbing your noses in our altitude.

As I’m typing this (2pm Wednesday, 6/30) we are having our first downpour. In the last hour we have gotten 1.3” of rain/hail and it’s still coming down. We SO needed this rain…and a gully washer rain too.

My geek for the last few days has been playing with my ham radios. The last 20 years we’ve lived up here we have had empty lots behind us. It’s been nice and quiet. And with permission of the owners of the lot directly behind us I’ve had some wire antennas strung off my tower and tired to a couple trees back there. Alas, we came up Friday and I noticed someone had done a perk test for a septic permit on that lot and that told me we are about to have new neighbors. Sure enough, we checked the county records and both lots behind us have sold in the last few months. I hope our neighbors are friendly…and if they have dogs, I hope they don’t bark constantly. (my only real worry). I’d hate to have to install a ‘dog bark trigged fog horn’ on my tower.

We’ll be in the studio in Chandler all weekend and I have a couple shoots lined up as well as a little training. And a little of the same the next weekend. Then we’ll be at Bonita most of the time after that unless something changes.

CRASH! BANG! BOOM! << lightning and thunder.

I’ve seen some good mindful inspiration lately. One was reminding us that we can have goals and strive for achievements, that’s fine and good. But a hug, buying someone a coffee, or just being there for someone when they need a shoulder to cry on, or to hear a joke they heard, that is a real achievement too. Helping someone smile. If we have happy people around us you can guess how we will feel. Be their happy person and help them find their happiness.

I have a new project I think I mentioned in the last Museletter. Doing that disintegrating look like so many movies do now. I’m intrigued and I finally have everything in place to try it. I just have to watch the video again and practice.

I had something seriously strange happen to one of my often used brushes in Photoshop. The Mixer brush. In one operation I do all the time, frequency separation, when I’d go to smooth out some color on a body, like taking away a tan line, it would give me a pattern that looked like a gravel road. I have been scratching my head on this for a week. Yesterday I found it. A tiny check box that told that brush to edit all of the layers at once and not just the one I was editing. I kinda’ remember checking that box to see how it looked doing something else and I forgot to uncheck it when I was done. At least my ‘oh crap’ moments don’t involve the moon exploding, or tornadoes, or finding sharks in Bonita Creek.

A few weeks ago I had the honor of shooting the beautiful Rebecca at Bonita. She has come over from the LA area twice to shoot. That lady has more muscles in one calf than I have in my entire body. As you can see.

And the head shot of Elley in green is in my top .001% of beautiful portraits I’ve ever captured. In honor of that I shared some that we took around that one. I certainly don’t want the reputation of just doing head shots. I also included a before and after of a steam punk shot.

Until next week, be safe, happy, cool, and hydrated.

Dave

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Enjoy!!! And stay safe.

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