Never a Dull Moment

My the time flies. There have been stories I could have written for the blog but other stuff just took first place.

A week ago was the Chili Cook Off. I was great fun. As you can see lots of people came out. San Miguel is staying right abreast of the rest of the world because we had a flash mob dance during the afternoon. There was lots of music, dancing, food and of course the opportunity to taste many pots of chili and charro beans. The Cook Off was held on the grounds of the Real de Minas Hotel and for me the biggest surprise of the day was all the families who had spread blankets to sit on but spent most of their time chasing toddlers. I knew we had some gringo families here but really had no idea that we had so many with tiny children and besides the gringo couples there were a lot of families where Mom or Dad was Mexican. So if you have thought about coming to Mexico to live with your toddlers, come on down. You'll find plenty of other young families.

Also last week as I mentioned in the previous post, Candelaria opened. All the paths in Parque Juarez are loaded with flower vendors. It is so beautiful. You are bound to run into friends there who are either out to buy or just taking a walk among the beautiful flowers and plants.

One day a week I'm helping in the library that was started in Los Ricos out in the campo in conjunction with the English classes that are sponsored by Feed The Hungry. I've done this for several years and it is really fun to see the kids as they move through the elementary grades.

We went to the Tuesday Tianguis and then stopped for comida. Dinner out one night with the teachers and spouses from Los Ricos. Date night. Cooked dinner for friends. There is all the regular shopping and picking up mail. I finished one book and started another. And of course, I still have my photography work to do. There is never a dull moment!

Evaluation of Adobe Lightroom

I sometimes have people ask me what image editing program they should buy. I often recommend that they look first at Adobe's Lightroom and if that doesn't suit their needs then I'd recommend Adobe Photoshop. Lightroom is about 1/3 the cost of Photoshop. I have a lot of photography friends who tell me that they are using Lightroom almost exclusively for their image editing. I'm told that Lightroom is superior to Photoshop in managing a image library. I've got lots of photos and I surely could use help in managing these files, edits, and backups.

So from time to time I look at the latest version of Lightroom. I've downloaded a trial copy and this afternoon when we came in from Parque Juarez where the plant and flower show for Candelaria has just opened I downloaded the files I had shot via Lightroom. I have Scott Kelby's book, Lightroom 3 book for digital photographers and so I have referred to it to do the tasks I wanted to do. I'm trying to keep an open mind until I decide if Lightroom really offers me advantages over the workflow I've developed in Photoshop. The jury is still out.

This was the first image I shot when we walked into Parque Juarez. I like patterns. I converted it to black and white to better show the patterns. I think with a little work it could make a good large print but wouldn't it make a mind-blowing jig-saw puzzle?