The image above was taken from a Hi-8 video that was recorded in June, 1996,
while I was traveling with a group from Front Range Community
College, which is in Broomfield, a suburb of Denver, Colorado. The location is at the most famous of
King Ludwig II's castles, Neuschwanstein, in the southern German state of Bavaria. It is said that the castle at Disneyland was modeled after it. I first captured the picture from video tape using
Snappy. Then I used a program called
Adobe PhotoDeluxe--which came bundled with
my Epson Stylus 500 Color printer--to manipulate it to the effect you see above. The photo at the left is how it looked before being altered with PhotoDeluxe.
Here is a composite. This started out with two separate photos: 1.) The castle (alone), and, 2.) Me (alone), taken as I stood in front of my motor home, in the mountains of Colorado.
Using PhotoDeluxe, the background (a motor home and a gravel road) was removed from around my face. Then my face was superimposed over the castle picture. Notice that the light is coming from approximately the same direction in both the castle's and my face's photos. It would look unreal if the shadows on the castle were not on the same side as the ones on my face.
This was my wife's dog, Maggie. She (the dog) was named after a toilet seat. The day the puppy came home, we were trying to figure out a name for her. The same day, I had bought a new toilet seat. The empty box was there on the floor. The brand name was "Magnolia." That was it: Magnolia. But we always called her Maggie. (She was a Lhasa Apso.)
Unfortunately, Maggie was sent to doggy heaven on 16 October 1997. After recuperating from spinal surgery that summer, she started losing her vision. The sight loss was caused by leukemia, which eventually got the best of her. It was quiet around the house after that, and especially noticed when we came home and she wasn't there, wagging her tail and wanting a hug. This is our current dog, which I brought home from the Denver Dumb Friends League on December 9, 1997, when she was 15 months old. She's a Japanese Chin mix, and weighed only 7 1/2 pounds, which is about the same as our last cat weighed!. I renamed her "Suki," which is a Japanese word meaning "liked." She is a happy, friendly little dog, and I feel lucky to have gotten her.
In September, 1997, I went to Germany for a month. For two weeks of that month, I was in the town of Schwäbisch Hall at the Goethe-Insitut, taking the "German for Seniors" course. I also spent some time visiting friends in Germany. I have created a few pages about that experience, and you can see them by clicking on the links below.
Thanks for stopping by. Drop me a line here if you have any comments.
German for Seniors
Classmates
Photos I
Photos II
Photos III
Röhlingen Band
