Japan - Outdoor Life at the Fancy Restaurant / Mom and the Cop

As everywhere, the entire grounds of the restaurant were clean and trimmed immaculately - it was a treat just to look at.

The picture above was taken on the grounds along a pathway very near the restaurant itself, and is similar to one that I captured in Estes Park, Colorado, but required a lot more work.  The moth in this shot was out of focus, so I borrowed one from another pic that was not composed as well, but at least the moth was in focus.  The borrowed moth was assigned to its own layer, rotated, sharpened a little bit more, saturated a little bit more, and brightened.  Even after all of that, the background proved to be much too busy and distracting.  Thus, I decreased the color saturation of the background and flowers by 30% and learned about a BRAND NEW TOOL (to me) in Photoshop - the TILT SHIFT BLUR TOOL!  Wish I'd discovered this amazing capability much earlier on.  The background photo, after being desaturated in the amount described, was progressively blurred away from the moth to make it less busy and distracting.

I had to get on my old knees to capture the frame below, of this praying mantis.  It's fairly cropped in, but I missed focusing on the eyes by a fraction, so had to fix it in post-capture:

I became convinced during this trip that my walkabout lens might need to be focus fine-tuned.  I looked up in the manual on how to accomplish that, but it seems to be a bit of a hassle.  One thing that attracts me to the D500 is the claim that fine tuning the focus on a lens can be done automatically.  But WHY did they exclude the built-in flash?!?
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Mom and the Cop

Last week's story was about my friend Kenny Sanford in Nacogdoches, Texas.  As stated then, I was raised to appreciate and respect the older generations, and have always felt at home with them.  Conversely, they appreciated the interested attention of someone from a younger generation, someone with whom to share stories and experiences from an earlier era.  It was a win-win.

Mom did two things which drove home to me the lessons of respect for the elderly.  One was her volunteerism.  She visited the Jones Rest Home in Orange every single Saturday (and probably more than that, while we were at school), bringing me in tow.  My two older siblings never came on these visits, and I learned later that it was because the residents at Jones just took a shine to me and enjoyed my visits.  Thus, every Saturday I trailed Mom down the halls visiting our favorite residents, getting to know a few of them fairly well.

The other was sharing our Thanksgiving.  There was a man named Mr. Spurlock at Jones, and as long as he was alive Dad would drive by the home to pick him up to spend Thanksgiving with our family.  I have memories of him laboriously walking up our sidewalk and entering our dining room to take his seat at the table.  If you were to look at our pictures from those years you would see Mr. Spurlock right there alongside the members of his adopted family, at least for that holiday.  It must have been a very special time that made a huge difference in that man's life, thanks to Mom.

As comes with the territory for such a calling, the death of our friends was all too frequent.  These affected mom, and she grieved for each and every one.  I was sad, too, for some of the ones who had befriended me from those Saturday visits.

After the death of one of these elderly ladies, Mom brought home a watch that had been hers...the last real possession and only valuable that she owned.  She made it clear to Mom that I was a very special boy to her and that she wanted me to have that watch to remember her by.  Dutifully, Mom brought it home and I kept it in a safe place.

A day or so later she attended the lady's funeral.  After the service was over, a big, strapping police officer approached Mom and asked her about that watch, and that he thought he should have it since he was her son.

I can see it now.  Without a moment's thought or hesitation, Mom - all five feet of her - rared back her hand and slapped him hard on the face, right in front of the family and everybody.  No time to recover from that before she berated him loudly - how DARE he even THINK he had a right to anything belonging to his dear mother, whom he neglected to visit EVEN ONCE in spite of the fact that he lived but a few miles away!  He had NO RIGHT to expect ANYTHING that belonged to her.  With that she stalked away and nothing more was heard of the matter.  I kept that watch in a false book on a shelf in our living room for years, and have it still to this day.

Thank you, Mom, for your spunk and example.