I am a retired professional photographer. I earned a living, put three kids though college, own my home, bought a house in Italy, and live there three months out of every year. To paraphrase a famous baseball player, "Photography has been very good to me." I was feeling pretty good about myself until I encountered the beautiful work on this forum. Now I feel totally inadequate. The photos I see are absolutely stunning. I hope to post a few of my own but am worried about them not making the cut. Anyway this forum is great with a lot of diverse topics and it lives up to one of my favorite axioms, (I have many), You are never to old to learn something new. Looking forward to seeing and learning more.
Gilkar

The attached picture was taken with a Nikon D-300 (I think) in jpeg mode. It was sunset in Sicily at the villa of my friend. "Leone" was guarding the property. I played with the original increasing the saturation darkening in the area around the dog. I was going to add some color to the cloudless sky but could not decide on just how much. (I tried several scenarios), so i left it alone.