Scott Lyerly

Feb 14 Photo

February 14th, 2016

My wife and sister-in-law have had this funny Valentine’s Day tradition for years, and that is to give Valentine’s Day the middle finger and go out for sushi. And even though my wife and I have been married for close to twenty years, it’s a tradition that persists. So today we went out to get some sushi with the kids and an old friend of ours.

The picture above is part of an order of crab rangoon (yes, I know, it’s not a sushi, but it’s an appetizer), which itself is seems to be something of a anomaly up here in New England. At least, as far as we’ve seen. Up here, you ask for crab rangoon, the restaurant knows what you mean. Anywhere else, they seem to be called crab dumplings. (Well, at least in Maryland anyway.) Not sure why that is.

These crab rangoon are a little different than what you usually see. Most times, it’s crab and a cream cheese filling in some dough, pinched together and fried. The crab rangoon we had today was crab and cream cheese, along with some additional herbs, wrapped in a thin dough and deep fried. Looked different than usual, but still very tasty.
Feb 13 Photo

February 13th, 2016

I love Scooby-Doo. I remember watching it when I was a kid, usually before school, waiting the time when I would leave to walk to school. Five or six years ago, I rediscovered Scooby-Doo when my younger daughter began to watch the shows.

A month ago, I’m walking through Target, and lo and behold, Lego has introduced a Scooby-Doo line. The Mystery Machine above is a recent birthday present, and maybe the coolest Lego I’ve gotten in a long time.
Feb 12 Photo

February 12th, 2016

My town has, of all things, a dairy. Model Dairy operates out of Main Street. I’ve lived in my town for fifteen years, and I still know next to nothing about this dairy. Their website is a Facebook page. They have a truck that roams around town that looks like it dates back to when Ike was president, and smells even older. They have a building that is down the street from me, yet I never see anyone coming or going. I’m sure this dairy is fully functional, but it must be a word of mouth kind of thing.

This morning, after dropping my daughter off at school, I noticed that the morning light was hitting this mystery building in a way that begged to be photographed. I pulled over, pulled out my phone, and started snapping. One of the results is above.

I played around with this one in Enlight. I’m still getting to know Enlight, to figure out all of its tips and tricks. One of the things it offers that some of the other photo-editing apps don’t is the use of curves. Using curves is essentially just picking a spot on a curve, overlaid on top of the photo, and dragging it this way or that to change the color within the part of the photo the curve falls. Think of curves as a way to alter the hue and saturation of a part of the photo only, and not the entire photo. Using the curves, I was able to enrich the warm color hitting the upper part of the picture, and cool down the lower part of the picture with the snow.

I think the result is okay. It’s not the best picture or post-processing I’ve ever done, but it’s still interesting enough (to me, at least) to post.
Feb 11 Photo

February 11th, 2016

Nothing like grabbing a fast food burger because you just don’t feel like cooking. That’s been me more than it should be lately. Because they’re open when I need them to be.

Shot with Hipstamatic.
Feb 10 Photo

February 10th, 2016

I know I said I didn’t think I’d have a lot of use for a fish eye lens. Well, turns out, a fish eye lens makes selfie’s REALLY interesting. Here I am embracing my inner lumberjack.

Okay, I’m done. The snow can go away now.
Feb 9 Photo

February 9th, 2016

The last few days have been a lot of big landscape and sky shots of the snowstorm. Today lets bring it down to a smaller scale

This is a view of snow trapped between the needles of a pine tree. I took this shot using the macro lens from Ztylus then cropped it to square using Snapseed.

Only one more snow picture tomorrow, then I’ll move on, I promise.
Feb 8 Photo

February 8th, 2016

The day after the snow storm was a bright, beautiful day. The snow still on the trees contrasting with the blue sky was pretty spectacular. I took this with ProCam and it is untouched by post-processing.
Feb 7 Photo

February 7th, 2016

This was the night of the snow storm, after it had all ended. We have some amazingly tall trees in our condo complex, and as I was standing at the top of our driveway, the lights from the next sets of buildings over, framed by the trees heavy with snow, struck me as a great picture. The sun had set and the last of the light in the west was making the evening sky a deep blue.

I wish is was better at capturing night photos with my iPhone. It’s something that I’m still learning how do, and the results tend to be hit or miss. But, despite being on the grainy side, I really like how this one turned out.
Feb 6 Photo

February 6th, 2016

What do you get when there’s a snow storm? A bunch of picture of snow. I’ll have a couple over the next few days, but I won’t drag it out too long, I promise.

I snapped this one just as the sun finally decided to show itself after the storm. It was late in the day, and the light was touching the trees in the background.

To give it an even more ethereal look, I imported the picture into Hipstamatic and applied a Anne-Marie lens and Mount Royal film, which blurred the edges of the picture nicely, drawing attention to the sun on the tops of the trees in the background.
Feb 5 Photo

February 5th, 2016

Today’s picture is the view outside my front door this morning. I guess it was inevitable that we’d get some measurable snow, this is New England after all. But I liked it so much better when it was in the 50s…

Taken with ProCam3 and cropped and saturation selectively increased around the lamp lights using Snapseed.