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Shine On

J.D. Owens

February 18, 1987 - March 15, 2005

Remember when you were young

You shone like the sun

Shine on you crazy diamond

J. D. and me at the Platteville Raceway

Some shots from J.D.s model car photo shoot. These are all his own work.

"Don't Grieve For Me"

Don't grieve for me, for now I'm free;

I'm following the path God laid for me.

I took His hand when I heard Him call;

I turned my back and left it all.

I could not stay another day,

To laugh, to love, to work or play.

Tasks left undone must stay that way;

I found that place at the close of day.

If my parting has left a void,

then fill it with remembered joy.

A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss;

Ah yes, these things, I too, will miss.

Be not burdened with times of sorrow;

I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.

My life's been full, I savored much;

Good friends, good times, a loved ones touch.

Perhaps my time seemed all too brief;

Don't lengthen it now with undue grief.

Lift up your heart and share with me;

God wanted me now, He set me free.

Celebrating the 18 years we had together

From Here To There

I thought I might try writing about the creation of this image in a sort of step-by-step manner. As it usually goes for me, the final image is nothing like what I first imagined.

The first step of the process, for me, is to randomly browse through our collection of photos for a while until something sparks an idea. This time was a little different. I had a photo in mind to start and just needed to figure out where it was. I use Digikam to manage the collections which makes it a fairly simple task.

This is the photo I wanted to work into something wonderful.I noticed it a few days back on the screen saver which randomly displays all of the pictures in our collection. A bit of pre-processing and raw file development and send it to The GIMP as the first layer as seen above.

I then thought that it may be nice to add this photo of some dried, cracked mud with paw prints that we found in the desert in Utah a while back. It could make a nice textured background for the image. I spent quite a while looking at various ways to blend these two photos and there was nothing that I really liked. I decided to try to add a shot of some cottonwood tree branches as a top frame also, but it still could not get to where I was happy with the result.

After futzing ( yes, futzing is a very important part of the image creation process for me. ) around with these layers for a while, I thought it may just need something else. How about a nice shot from Point Loma above the Pacific...

But still I could not seem to make the red plant work in any way that I liked. I finally just removed the red plant layer and started working with the remaining layers with various smoothing, sharpening, blending, contrast, etc. filters. I did like the way the sky from the cottonwood photo just matched the ocean in the Point Loma photo. Here's what my workspace looked like after an hour of futzing.

 Oh well, so much for the red plant image I had in mind. Maybe next time.