Saturday, October 01, 2005

In the night side of Eden we're born again dead.



"...Hold me like you held onto life,
When all fears came alive and entombed me.
Love me like you love the sun,
Scorching the blood in my vampire heart..."
~ Ville Valo


This afternoon I drove up to Mountain View Cemetery located at the end of Piedmont Ave. in Oakland. Those who know me well, know that I love cemeteries. If you were to ask my friend Erin who lives back East, she'd probably roll her eyes and tell you how everytime I go back to see her, I make her stop in almost every cemetery I see along the way. No matter how small. Well, she has lived in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and now lives in Massachusettes. Com'mon now, you want to take a peak at history, back East is where to do it! Oh, and Salem Mass! Oh yeah, I am all over that town EVERY time I am back there. I donno, I can't explain it. I just love cemeteries.

And apparently I am not the only one either. While I was driving and walking around MVC there was another guy there taking pictures too. I was walking up to take pictues of Domingo Ghirardelli (1817-1973) mausoleum (yes, that would be as in the chocolate), and decided to take a little detour to the right and go up and over to the left, then back down to Ghirardelli's. Because I had spotted the Delger mausoleum behind Ghirardelli's, that I just had to take a picture of it. When I got up there, that guy was up there taking pictures of it too. I struck up a conversation by saying it was nice to see I wasn;t the only one who liked to walk around cemeteries taking pictures. He told me his name was George and that he was actually borrowing a friends camera. He had never been up to the cemetery, he drove by it all the time and wanted to check it out. This picture here is the Delger mausoleum.

I was taking 2 shots of the same thing. One in black & white and one in color. I wasn't really liking how the black & whites were coming out. They were just too blah, where as the color ones I saw the pictures jump out at me. Unfortunately my battery drained, and just when I was getting to some really go spots. My camera actually died on me as I was talking a great shot. Damn it! Oh well, time to go home, download the pictures and see what I got.

The top picture is the very first picture I took. After downloading them all and looking at them, I was finding that I really, really didn't like the black & whites. Especially the top picture. Since I still have a little over a week left with my trial of Adobe Photoshop CS2, I figured I'd fix most of the pictures that I did like, and place my name and copyright date on them. Out of boredom I opened the top picture again and started tweaking with the exposure, messing with the offset and gamma. Now that top picture is my favorite one so far. I was able to give it that old European, vampire, Count Dracula look. I'm loving this PhotoShop. If anyone would like to buy me this program so I can keep creating these cool gothic pictures, please... I'd be ever so greatful!

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