If it's okay with the rest of you folks in here, I'm going to withdraw from further comment about old age related ideas, lol, for the near future by saying that a good portion of my recent shots, like the fox that everyone seems to like so much in my "critters" post have been shot while I was sitting in my car. I didn't want to tell you that 'cause I didn't want those of you still climbing around on and fallin' off of rocks and stuff to get angry with me or come out here 'cause the traffic is already real bad out here and any more lined up car fumes might make MY elk go extinct. So, like the bumper sticker back in the '70s said, "Welcome to Colorado, now go home." Better yet, just stay where you are. I'm likin' my "drive by shootings" and don't want to be worryin' about steering around a bunch of you and stuff like that. Not only might MY elk disappear if you come here, but then there's all those noisy shutters and candy bar wrappers, beer cans, and...

evandr my deepest condolonces about the loss of your wife. Having never been married I don't know how that feels but i do know its GOTTA SUCK BIG TIME. I pray you find peace and comfort. If its Gods plan for you to meet another special lady, he will put thre right one in the way till you trip over her. As for me, I am not a bad boy, don't have buns of steel 6 pack abs, or a thick wallet so as far as women are concerned I might as well be invisable. Besides the single women in vero beach are old enough to tell you where they were when they heard the news that President LINCON had just been shot :lol:

You're right and it's time for me to be a little more somber and respectful. We endured the advent of ovarian cancer in 2008 and for some reason I was spared the anguish you've had to endure and I want to extend my sincere condolences and agree fully that you sound like a man who deserves to think of yourself alone for a little while as you regain your equilibrium and focus on life and your interests. While I wasn't forced to endure your experience in the end, we shared everything up to that point, believe me, and I was faced with contemplating your delimma so I've "been to the well." I know whereof you speak and am discomforted by your lack of alternatives. Please forgive me if my adolescent frivolity has interfered with your attempt to gain some solitude.

Hey Evandr, I've got good news and bad news for your birthday. I took the liberty of checking on your male/female stats in Tooele City for you. Like I suspected it would be, from ages 45 to 59 there are 2390 males and 2276 females. The good news is that I was right in my suspicions about what ratio I would find. The bad news is that you're sure gonna have to get all slickered up and smellin' purty when you go out on Saturday night 'cause there's 113 or you guys in Tooele without a woman. That's a lot. I think the best thing you could hope for is to put an advert in the Salt Lake paper announcing that stat or hope that there's more of them young men somewhere gropin' each other than you'd like to think. Estimates are that only 1.5% of men are guy-gropers even though they like to puff up their numbers to something more like 10%. You're just going to have to get slickered up dude. Get out your old math book and dust off your bell curve and put those eligible females where you think they'll best fit and then go after that part that best suits you, figuring that 10% are gonna be real keepers, 10% are gonna be tossers, and 80% are going to be more or less painful to work with, dependin' on which side of the bell YOU slide off on. And, good luck to ya.

There's one other thing I failed to mention. I did a lot of work with the census a few years back, doing demographic research work for my own edification. One thing I did, not for personal use but in researching for a piece I was writing, was to count, zipcode by zipcode, the number of men and women at various age levels to see how badly women outnumber men since so many women were complaining that there weren't enough men to go around. I don't mean I literally "counted them." I can do a little database programming so it was quick and painless for me and very efficient.

I don't mean this to be discouraging on your birthday but, what I found was, from 18 to 55, through the most likely courting years, men outnumber women in our society. That draws to a near tie at 65. Then and only then do women start to outnumber men on up to the end. Need I point out that most of the women who constitute the numerical advantage we hear about are in some kind of institutional living arrangement which also speaks to many other issues such as political power, etc. My database I created could be manipulated to show which zipcode, in descending order, all 43,043 of them, where a woman could go to find the most favorable zipcode where the ratio of men to women was the greatest without respect to the issue of how many were actually available, read that "married" which seems to be less of an issue now. I did the analysis in 1993 comparing the '80 and '90 census. That said, we don't change as much as we might think or as fast. My analysis would still be good today in 95% of the instances. It also worked the other way around for men too but a person has to be capable of "getting there" where the odds are most fertile. That's not always the easy part. I was also analyzing for several other reasons and that was just a little part of what I was doing but nonetheless, very interesting.

By the way, I sure like your work with the old house. That ol' demon rum. Looks like someone enjoy themselves "'til their house fell down around them." I've been hearing that all my life but that's the first time I've seen enough evidence to justify the saying, albeit circumstantial.

Hay all you guys with creaking joints, including me! I listened to Coasttocoastam regarding lyme disease by a man named Tom Grier, http://www.canlyme.com/

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2011/09/14

The diagnosis of Lyme disease is difficult as is the treatment and the symptoms cause problems with joints, nervous system etc. I had the big Bulls Eye tick bite and was told flatly that it could not be lyme disease because it is not in Florida, only in New England. Fired him went to another, test was negative, but test is only 30% good.

The ticks got on me while laying down photographing beautiful lichen on a rock.

Tom Grier, was diagnosed via symptoms as having MS! but eventually got better with treatment for Lyme disease.
Worth reading about.

Hey Sinatraman, we'll give you 15 days to learn the words in case you don't already. I'll get you started and you can google the rest if you don't know 'em. Here we go... "and now the end is near and I can see the final curtain... lah lalah lalah... It's all over buddy. It's downhill from here. You'll come to a point where the only thing you can comfortably shoot with that long zoom lens is a picture of your lower legs and feet. It's comin' man, I'm just warning ya.

:D

It IS hard. On the other hand, death is easy and I have some good friends who are going down that final road and I think, however hard this one is, I'm glad I'm here and not there. I have friends with MS who can't walk, but still manage to get out and shoot or paint (whichever is their thing) ... and others with relatively minor issues that just sit around and get mouldy. So much depends on your mindset. I'm in a lot of pain a lot of the time, but I recognize that no matter what I do or don't do, I'll still be in pain, so I might as well do something. Can't make the pain stop, but I can try really really hard (with mixed results, I admit) to not let it win. Hang on in there. You are NOT alone.

...and I think back to just before I started this aroung 60 and all those encouraging words like, "it'll be a real good hobby for when you get older." Me arse! It just frustrates me, knowing what I want to do and not being able to do it or if I do, not enjoy it. I know it's all attitude and that you're gonna hurt anyway but some of us aren't as even tempered as others. Guess which one I am? Maybe it's good for my circulation, to get all steamed up like some kind of brat 'cause I can't get "over there" and get that shot I want. Still, it'll be alright, eh?

Hah! My orthopedic surgeon mri'd my shoulders and said the last time he'd seen a pair of rotator cuffs like that was on a dude who was in a plane crash. I told him I felt a lot better after his comforting words. Made me feel like my motorcycle crashes and fast pitching softball were too unimportant to complain about. I'm hearing some good stuff in this post and every time I pick up that EOS 5D MkII with 15 feet of lens on it, I'm gonna be haunted by everything you folks are saying here - 'til I do something about it. I've done run my nearby Wally World nearly out of naproxen. My conundrum is complicated by the fact that diabetic neuropathy keeps me from "walking right up" and firing off a few shots. If I can't get over the urge to shoot, I'm gonna have to figure this one out pretty soon. It may just be me and the history channel 'fore long. I wasn't figuring on being here 75 years or I'd probably have done some things different. There's days when photography isn't fun at all.

First of all great layerin of different photos! I havent even began to think about that yet, I will have to start being more creative to catch up ;) But to answer the original question about layering that may refer to the different things you can do with one picture, I believe you can do it with most programs. I use Photoshop and if you select the layers bar at the top it will give you different things like filters and gradient tools, you can experiment by trying each one. once you get something you like add another layer and keep adjusting, hope this helps!