Photo Assignment: Drive

I do a lot of crazy things - like take pictures while I'm driving. This week on the Digital Photography School website, the assignment is "Drive" - interpret it as how you wish...and all pictures that are entered into this contest need to be taken in a recent timeframe. So yesterday, while I was driving to work in the morning and then to Dylan's hockey game in Pembroke, from Easton, I took this while I was behind the wheel:


I left my house early for work yesterday morning with the intention of checking out Target for potential Christmas gifts - when I got there, I figured out that the store did not open for another 30 minutes (I should have checked online for the hours before I left my house - but that would have made too much sense). These barriers are at the the end of the parking lot.

Right before the barriers is this stop sign....It was a color picture that I converted to black and white and then used an action called "color select" and then I vignetted...I have Photoshop Elements 6.0(Adobe came out with 7.0 this year - I'll pass for a year). You can get both these actions at EZActions.com. If you are really into post-shooting editing, I think Photoshop CS4 is the way to go - very expensive if you are just an enthusiast like me (makes a great Christmas gift - hint, hint - just kidding - I don't have time to learn that right now)...PSE7.0 is about $140.00 - and is not too difficult to learn, if you have the time to practice....
This was a back road that I was driving to the hockey game after work.
This is one of the towns I had to pass through to get to the hockey game. Let's see - 21 miles from work - Easton to West Bridgewater to East Bridgewater to Halifax to Pembroke...40 minutes later.
So I'm driving through Halifax on a back road and come up on this sign - you know that I stopped short (don't worry, no one was behind me), made an illegal u-turn and then another, parked on the side of the road and got out to take this photo....why? Because that is my mother's maiden name and my middle name - it's a cultural thing that Filipino do...I won't say all Filipino people do it but it's pretty common for your child to have a first and middle name followed by the mother's maiden name and father's surname (I think the tradition may hail from Spain - where I believe it is still commonly practiced). We can talk about Filipino history some other time....

Today, I have to study for the last test of the semester (I still have a final next week), the girls have skating practice and Dylan is playing in Providence, RI at the Dunkin Donuts Center - Providence Bruins ice - playing Whitman-Hanson today (I know who you're routing for Kimmie!!! Can you believe that we have to travel to all the way to Providence to play Whitman-Hanson? Whitman is the next town over from Brockton.)

Watch out world: Brockton Boxers Mites C's have hit the big ice....pictures of that soon!