Happy St Paddy's Day 2012

IT'S A GREAT DAY FOR THE IRISH

It's a Great Day for the Irish, it's a great day for the fair!
The sidewalks of New York are thick with blarney,
For sure you'd think New York was ol' Killarney!
It's a great day for the shamrock, for the flags in full array.
We're feeling so inspirish, sure because for all the Irish,
It's a Great, Great, DAY!

This is my crazy, obviously Irish, friend Linda. My cohort in crime back in high school and still my friend today. I've written about Linda, she's one of the kindest people you could be lucky enough to meet. And she's funny! She was voted Class Clown of our graduating class and there was no question who would win that title. I kinda think everyone voted for her.

As you can tell she went all out at work in a pre-celebration of today. Still just a funny girl inside! I can only imagine how much crazier she's dressed today! She makes everything fun, makes all feel comfortable in her presence, just "good people" as "they" say!

But today everyone is Irish. Everyone has added an O' in front of their names, no matter what their nationality. And here in New York City it's a perfect day for the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, perfect weather.

Everyone is cooking up their corned beef and cabbage which my mom did every St. Paddy's day as well. Me, not a fan of corned beef and cabbage, love the potatoes and carrots, especially the potatoes, my favorite food. But my family loved it and it was traditional for my mom to cook that on St. Paddy's Day. The leftovers she used and made corned beef hash, of course I didn't like that either, I'm way too picky an eater, better now but still way too picky. To be honest, I don't even taste certain foods, just act like a baby and say I'm not eating it because it doesn't look a certain way. Some day I'll grow up (eating wise anyway).

This morning walking in my quite town, which was a really cool morning, cool meaning awesome, cool looking. There was a fog laying over the town and the sun was breaking through, halfway through my walk I wish I had taken my camera with me. As I neared the main street I could hear what sounded like 20 kids screaming and having fun walking up from the block around the corner from where I was. When we finally met up at the crossroad before the main street I saw that there really weren't that many of them, maybe 10 at most. They were loud, getting ready to get on the train in Staten Island to take them to the Staten Island Ferry and then subway it uptown for the parade, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were drinking alcohol already.

To be honest, in my commuting days to Manhattan, having St. Patrick's Day on a work day was the worst. The kids were loud and crazy and lots of them drunk on their way to the parade and fugetaboutit, as we say in Brooklyn, coming back from the parade is an ugly scene. It's sad, but for a lot of people today just means a day of drinking.

On the other side, there's homes filled with the smell of corned beef and cabbage cooking all day, your family and friends surrounding you and watching sports and talking and yes, some drinking too but it's not like out in the streets, it's calmer, fun, safe. That's my kind of St. Patrick's Day.

So before any St. Paddy's Day parties for me, this afternoon I took a free class on b&w digital photography at Blue Heron Park here in Staten Island. When I was setting up to leave this afternoon I noticed that I didn't have a black and white option for my camera but decided to go and learn anyway. So glad I did. The gentleman who was teaching said take your pictures in color and think of your computer photo programs as your dark room, where you can turn them into B&W and create a totally different look to a picture.

Even choosing the right picture to change to B&W is very important.

For an example here I just used my fun friend Linda's zany St. Patrick's Day picture. One that you really wouldn't want to turn into B&W. But it's St. Paddy's Day, it's appropriate! Below are just some examples of how you can change a picture.


This is the original color picture.



Next I just copied the photo and used special effects to change it into B&W. When I did change it to B&W is when I noticed there was someone in the background typing, I noticed the hand, which I didn't when I first looked at the photo, I noticed Linda and GREEN! But that's just an example of what he was teaching us, not only can you change a picture into B&W, but you change the look of the picture, you can draw a person's eye to another part of the photo.



This photo I used the sepia effect, making it look old fashioned, again it changes the picture and again, this is not a photo you should choose to change to B&W, as you can tell that's the best one of the four.



This was the antique effect. Had I added a little more of this effect, it would almost be a question about whether it was color or B&W. If I added too much of this effect, the picture turned pink which you might want to use with a beach shot or sundown shot, again it depends on the picture you choose.



It was a great class, I really learned a lot, too much actually, came out with lots of notes and know I have so much to learn. I did these effects on my MAC iphoto program but there are more sophisticated programs that will allow me to fine tune the B&W exposure and depth and again a whole bunch of other things I am looking forward to learning about.

Happy St. Paddy's Day! Be Safe. Have Fun. God Bless!