Random crap with Uno.

[Buster's Uncle]

Poe sounds pretty good, actually - one imagines his florid Victorian writing style would come across better verbally, and you might even encourage the kids reading while you're at it...

[Unorthodox]

Never more...

Yeah, I'm ruling out The Raven after having to explain half the words in Sam McGee. 

I think I can easily reword to age appropriate The Tell Tale Heart into a good workable tale.

But, I like to have a good jump scare one as well.  That's where I'm more stuck.  Not that I COULDN'T make the ending to that a jump scare mind you.  I'm not exactly beyond producing said heart and tossing it at someone...

[Unorthodox]

So i've settled in on The Tell Tale Heart or The Trick (not sure the author, in one of my horror anthologies) for the more open story for my daughter and niece.  The latter is much more straight up old school horror that steers much more King than Poe with extreme descriptions and details, which works really well for a campfire setting (which is why Heart works better than a lot of Poe's work for that setting as well, you can drag out and and build suspense easily with his descriptions of sneaking up on the man).  I still need to find a good jump scare for my nephew. 

[Unorthodox]

NO editing of photos beyond conversion from raw and auto color correct has been done with 2 exceptions when I cropped the macro shots. 

From "The Grotto" in Portland.  Shrine in a cliffside cave. 



Cannon Beach.



So...let's talk Clarence. 

I took Clarence along with a new lens on the trip.  I was shooting Clarence in a program/semi-automatic mode, but in a bracket mode, so it would shoot several different F-stops back to back.  I COULD have done a composite mode so it would stitch those together, which is what most folks do in photography these days.  The lens is fixed, so manual zoom (walk closer).  The idea being to keep things real easy and simple, and the kids could shoot as well. 

This shot in particular would have been interesting in composite. 

High F stop setting:



Low F stop:



Generally ideal lighting that evening...







Into the forest, I was impressed with what Clarence was able to do. 



HOWEVER, I then handed it over to Kyle...and he shot a lot of stuff, but not much usable.  Apparently I was so used to changing settings, I hadn't really noticed that I was, and Kyle's stuff was a lot more random in quality. 

(compare how the lighting didn't show in this shot to the one above)

[Unorthodox]

So, I was bound and determined to get to the tide pools.  Kalaloch beach 4 was rated as the best place, but I was not entirely sure I'd even be able to get there. 

From tripadvisor:

"This hike is totally out of the reach of anyone who is too young, too old or too concerned about falling or twisting and ankle or knee. We would not have hiked down the steeply slanting trail and two sets of stairs if we had known we would not be able to get down to the beach and tidal pools. The trail ends at on a stack of rocks 30-40 feet high and you'll need both hands and feet to get down them. "

With my knee, a 30 foot rock climb was going to be difficult at best.  But I was going to do it. 

The above is well overblown.  Yes, the trail is steep and technically ends in a sea stack, but the rocks have been eroded to practically form stairs if you just spend a bit of time picking your way down and aren't too ashamed to sit and slide or crawl a time or two.  .  Up was no problem at all. 





I did not even pack the computer on the trip, and hadn't seen the trouble Kyle'd been having with the camera yet, so he shot most of this beach, and unfortunately a lot was unusable, including what should have been a good shot of hEt and I. 

He also seemed to have a thing for shooting the ocean instead of the tide pools...



He did get a cool shot inside this tree on a random stop for "Big Cedar --->" sign.



I also took Clarence on this little stop to play with the macro features of the lens. 





Looking forward to shooting some bugs. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Lovely.

Now why is it you didn't want to post w/o watermarks?  Is the getting ripped off problem so bad vacation pics aren't safe?

[Unorthodox]

Nothing off my nice cameras goes up without a watermark.  It probably wouldn't matter on the vacation pics, but most my other stuff gets bandied about websites and pinterest.  Most are too lazy to remove it, so it becomes advertising. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Ah.

[Unorthodox]

It's usually just part of the automatic processing photoshop does when converting from raw for me.  I was more concerned the script had gotten messed up somehow.  Just a check box unticked.  It must have happened when I was using the camera to copy pics out of a photo album for Talia's country report

[E_T]

Great Shots!!

That 30ft climb thing, would it have helped if there was a rope set at the top that could help with the climb?

[Unorthodox]

It really was just a matter of taking the time to figuring out where to put my feet so my knee and/or ankle doesn't buckle. 

Story time went well over the weekend.  It was good enough a telling it even got Alec to put down his game and listen.  Got a few 'nope' heebee jeebies out of Talia.  No word yet how the niece and nephew spent the night.   

[Geo]

Looked like a nice discovery trail.

[Unorthodox]

Spirit opened locally.  My stop in did not have the effect the store would have liked, I'm sure.  But they had a nifty bit of technology hidden away that was working rather well, and generally making all their stuff look really nice...or rather SOUNDING nice.  So, being me, knowing what I know, I peeled back the camo and got a look at this little speaker hidden behind the store's props, and went inquiring. 

A speaker, you see, that was triggered and played custom audio files.  So, for the scary clown, it would play the appropriate laughing and music when the prop itself was triggered.  Now, I know a lot of folks are going to buy these props expecting that quality sound to be a part OF the prop, the way it's hidden, but you can't pull one over on me so easily.  I figured Spirit would be selling these speakers separately. 

NOPE.  They get them from actual haunted house supply stores.  Industrial strength so they wont go bad over the season of 8 million activations by every kid that comes through. 

I've been able to find a somewhat budget version online even.  So, yes.  Spirit sold me on something...just not from them. 

https://www.amazon.com/Halloween-Amplifier-Speaker-Support-Playback/dp/B07FCLJPMM

[Unorthodox]

NOT the lighting I'd use 'for real', but the easiest to put out. 



And yes, if you didn't see in the background...

[E_T]

Rig the thing to have something pop's up (or something else: special lighting & effects, etc) when a bag gets tossed into the hole.
The Tomb looks great!