God’s Faithfulness

As the weather cools and the leaves begin to turn, the signs of fall are all around us.  Our sovereign God controls all things.  His faithfulness to us is displayed in the changing of the seasons as the heat of summer gives way to the cool  nights of early fall.  Soon, the snow will fly only to be followed by the daffodils of spring.  As sure as the seasons is God’s grace offered to us in the horror of the cross.  One day we will be with him.  Until then, we enjoy the beauty of his creation and dream of the day when all will be made perfect as it was intended to be before Adam allowed pride to enter his heart.

As we spent our first afternoon in a tree stand, we were filled with anticipation for the deer that might pass within range.  On this day, that was not to be.  As so often happens, each deer passed by safely beyond the range of my arrow.  There will be more days to dream about the big one that didn’t get away. Today was a day to spend some time with my boys and recognize that I am blessed by the God of All.

New Blog

Because none of us have enough blogs to follow... Karen and I have a new blog. We wanted to have something that our friends and Karen's family could see without sending all that traffic to the Thompson family blog. There's a link to it on the right, along with Tom's & Rob's blogs. For now, you can check this link: http://www.spenglerspot.blogspot.com

Photo project

Here's a photo I took of Lindsay along a trail off of the Kancamagus Highway. I shot it in RAW and .jpg format simultaneously. The picture was Karen's idea, using the amazingly blue sky and vibrant green leaves as a backdrop. Karen held Lindsay over her head while I got her attention and took the shot. Due to the bright light in the background, I shot with the pop-up flash on... not much control, but just enough to provide some fill-flash. Lots of smiles, but this one was my favorite!


Using Photoshop CS2, I made some edits. 1st, I cropped, to remove Karen's thumb from the picture. I also pushed Lindsay over to the right just a bit to make the off-center seem more intentional and take advantage of the 2/3s rule... although I wasn't able to get all the way there. Next, because I shot in RAW, I was able to adjust the white balance, warming up the picture a bit to make the lighting feel more natural for that time of day. I then bumped up the contrast and saturation just a bit, while toning down the midtones slightly trying to reduce the hot spot effect on her forehead. Most importantly, perhaps, I lightened and saturated her eyes. In the original, her eyes are very dark and unnatural, while in this new version you get a better sense of their true color.




Then, just to see what it would look like in B&W, I used the Channel mixer to turn the photo to monochrome, pulling down the red tones and boosting the blue and green. That enabled just enough detail and contrast in her face.

I hope you like the results as much as we do! What a cutie!

Toby’s first touchdown

Kindergarten!

Chase's 1st day of Kindergarten was a huge success! He even went back for Day 2 today!

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