A Tale of 2 Hotels

This past weekend, Liz and I took a weekend respite from our hectic work schedules to get away for a couple of days in the VA mountains. Liz had purchased a one night stay at the Homestead, a plush resort in Hot Springs. The small sleepy town is famous for a few things - the multitude of warm mineral rich springs, the home of legendary golfer Sam Snead, and of course, the Homestead itself. To extend the weekend, we decided to drive up on Friday evening and stay over in Lexington, home to VMI and the College of Washington and Lee. The original plan was to explore Lexington on Saturday morning and then head up to the resort that afternoon. It turned out being an experience in social spectrums and as plans go, ours changed on the fly.

The Ugly Truth - William Shatner Isn't Always Right

This will be crushing news to any Star Trek fans, or even those that look back favorably at TJ Hooker, Captain Kirk isn't the best source of travel planning. In order to save a few bucks, we booked our hotel stay in Lexington through Priceline, a website that I have used often in the past to make travel arrangements. This time; however, we decided to try the "name your price" service and leave it to the captain of the enterprise to find us boarding. The result was a night spent in a HoJo that may have possibly been last updated when many young geeks in the making were still excited about a new episode of the original Star Trek airing.

The lobby was furnished with 70's era couched and coffee table. Sadly, it was more modern than the room in which we were about to spend the night. The stench upon opening the door was the first sign that the evening would be mildly uncomfortable. It caused me to check under the beds to see if there was possibly a decomposing corpse left behind by the last occupant. The single light illuminating the room was sickly issuing from a broken shaded ceiling lamp. Thankfully there was nothing scurrying about the room. An 80's era television and dorm room fridge were the extent of luxury items. We had to laugh at the thought that the room was eerily similar to one you would find in a low budget teen slasher film. It really brought it all together when I heard Liz in the bathroom acting as a plumber and fixing the broken toilet.

The one amenity the hotel boasted was the on-site miniature golf course just outside of our sliding glass door. The photo below is of it in all of it's majesty. I don't think Sam Snead built his golf legend start here. The funny thing is that we were in the heart of the most beautiful country in VA and this was the BEST view that we had! I'd be willing to bet that the 18th hole isn't officially sponsored by NASA.

For a change of scenery, we drove into Lexington for dinner. This was a much anticipated moment because I was going to get to enjoy the best bowl of French Onion soup known to have been created in the states. For those that went to school in the western part of VA, or like me had a sister that went to Radford, you probably already have figured out that I'm talking about Macado's. It has been almost 20 years since I last tasted a rich, cheese covered bowl of heaven. I think I started salivating before leaving VB. Well kids, I'm sad to report that they changed the recipe. There must be a cheese shortage! The only cheese was on a piece of french bread that was provided with the soup. It was still tasty but...why Macado's, why?

Ugliness, Part 2

For the second stage of our trip, I can't blame Shatner; however, Mother Nature is at fault. When we woke (well, I'm not really sure we ever truly fell asleep) Saturday morning, we decided to scrap our tour of Lexington in order to try to beat the massive storms that were moving in from the west. As those of you in VA and NC know, the storm system resulted in numerous tornados that devastated much of eastern NC and VA, costing several people their lives and many others their homes. Homestead was an hour drive up through narrow mountain roads from Lexington. For us it made winding up the mountainside in near zero visibility being buffered by 30-knot winds somewhat of an adventure.

In hindsight, I wished I had stopped to capture the massive rapids of the flooding river but getting the camera gear out in the driving rain didn't seem like a great idea at the time. When we pulled into the Homestead, we were greeted by menacing skies. For a moment, the massive building juxtaposed against the stormy skies conjured up images of the Shining. It was oddly beautiful and scary at the same time.

Between the breaks in the rain, I managed to get out to shoot a few photographs as the storm passed through. It is hard to do something like this justice. Standing there it looked even wilder and more menacing.

The Beautiful - Living the Life of the Privileged

OK, I'll be first to admit that I am probably more comfortable in a beach bar with sand covered floors, but there is something to be said for experiencing a place like the Homestead. Im kicking myself for not taking more architecture shots of the interior but truth be told, we were so busy trying to fit in everything we could within 24-hours, I didn't get the time to spend behind the lens. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford to spend several days there but for now the handful of exterior shots will have to do.

We arrived on at 11:00 and the staff graciously let us check-in early. While not extravagantly big, our room was very nice in every detail. I may be a simpleton, but I really dug the idea that the closet light came on automatically when you opened the closet door. It is the small things that keep me happy.

The hotel, itself, is an architectural masterpiece, sprawling over several city blocks. I had to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to stop getting lost. Everything is big! The grand hall when you enter leaves you breathless and that carries throughout the rest of the building. We swam in the indoor pool fed from the mineral springs, lunched in the casino overlooking the golf course, had afternoon tea in the grand hall, dined at Sam Snead's Tavern, had cocktails in the President's Room, explored the Garden Hall at night, and even crashed a wedding reception after party in the Player's Club.

The next morning after breakfast in the main ballroom, Liz headed off to go horseback riding and I ventured around the gardens to photograph the building in the clearing morning.

The following view of the Magnesia Spring just one of the thousands of romantic vistas the Homestead affords. "Afford" in this case is relative. ;-)

I wrapped up the morning with a 28-frame pano from below the main building before we packed it in to head home. Personally, I still prefer to vacation at a location with sand and surf; however, it is nice to have a change every once in awhile even if it does mean occasionally having to wear a blazer for breakfast. If you get the opportunity, it is a nice escape.

The Creation of Ariel

I recently received a request on DGrin for information on how I created an image of an angel. Btw, the angel is my niece Savannah and she truly is an angel! The Ariel image was created for the LPS Challenge: Sin or Virtue last year. Here is the final....

When I envisioned it originally, I planned to purchase or rent wings from a theatrical store for my niece Savannah to wear. Well I couldn't find any for rent and to purchase a set online, it was going to cost at a minimum $600, which was way more than I was willing to splurge for a contest. Next I investigated making a set of wings only to find that Michael's had 3 feathers for $5, another small fortune. I decided to take a different tact and employ some editing skills. The key was that all of the images had to be taken that weekend so I didn't have a lot of time to set up perfect shots.

Element 1: Stormy Beach

This part was going to be easy. It just so happened that their was tropical storm passing by Virginia Beach that weekend. As usual, though, it was not as easy as planned! When I got to Sandbridge Beach, I opened my bag to find that condensation had formed inside of my 18 - 200mm lens (I was using Sony at the time). The only other lens I had was a 70 - 300mm, leaving me the choice of either giving up on the landscape or set the lens to 70mm and shoot a panaroma. To get enough usable field for the depth I wanted, I set the camera in portrait orientation and took 8 frames.. 4 top and 4 bottom. Here are a few to get the idea....

Frame 1:

Frame 2:

When I got home, I stitched these using PS CS3 and trimmed the panaroma into a 2:5 ratio to get the following image.

As you can see, the tropical storm was a bit of a disappointment as the the clouds never formed into the dark, nasty formations that you expect from a storm like that. To fix it, I created a black and white layer above the color base. I then added multiple curves adjustment layers and gradient masks to enhance the contrast of the sky and beach separately. The next step was to copy the original background layer to the top of the stack, set its blend mode to "Color" and then drop the opacity until I got the tone that I needed.

Element 2: The Model

Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to take Savannah to the beach for the shot. I had to settle for getting a shot of her at her house on my way home from the beach. Now this is possibly one of the worst portraits -- I take that back -- this is not even a portrait by anyone's standards. It is a 5-second snapshot in bad light with a horrible background.

In PS CS3, I extracted Savannah from the background. It was a fairly frustrating extraction due to the mortar in the bricks matching her hair. This was probably the most pain staking part but when I was done, the patio was gone.

Element 3: Wings

This part was fun. I grabbed my camera and headed down the local marina and hung out by the fish cleaning station for a bit. Before long, a group of fishermen showed with a nice catch and began carving away. Within seconds, there was no less than 50 seagulls hovering around picking off scraps. I must have shot 200 images and I'm not sure if this is the exact one I settled on but it was close...

Element 4: An Angel is Born

In PS CS3, I opened the image of Savannah and the seagull photo. Using the Move Tool, I dragged the wings image onto the Savannah image, creating 2 layers with the wings on top. Selecting the Wings layer, I dropped the opacity to 50% so that I could see Savannah beneath them. I selected Edit>Transform and rotated the wings so that they were pointing more vertical and moved them so that they lined up with Savannah's body. I also tweaked the image size to make the wings "fit".

Once I had the wings in the location that I wanted, the next step was to create a mask on the wings layer and begin painting out the portions of seagull and that I did not want. Paint on the mask with black to hide the unwanted elements and let the background show thru. I then raised the wings layer's opacity back to 100% and I had the rough angel image that I needed.

As you can see, the image is really rough (Also pretend that the white background is really transparent). I used the Healing Brush to smooth out the intersection of feathers to Savannah's body as well as hide her arm by adding feathers. I also cleaned up the mask a bit more to hide the extraneous stuff I missed the first time around.

The final adjustment to the Angel was to desaturate her facial color. If you recall from above, her portrait was taken with hard sunlight bounced off of a brick wall and her face picked up a lot of red. I lowered the saturation and selectively brought back color to the eyes and mouth by masking the Saturation Adjustment layer. I added some surface blur to her face as well to give her that soft powdery appearance.

The last step in the process was to drag the Angel layers into the Beach image and make some final healing and color adjustments to each element to get them to blend seamlessly while adjusting a final curves layer to add depth.

I wrote this from memory of something that I did a year ago so I probably missed a few things but I think you will get the general gist. The key is envisioning your target image and then seeing how different components can be molded to fit. On their own, each of these photos were less than good; however, bringing them together created something kind of magical. I wish I was this creative all of the time.