Toronto, Canada.

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Planet Jellies Exhibit at Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto. (9/11/2019)

Blackpool Pleasure Beach

Planet Jellies Exhibit at Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto. (9/11/2019)

It's getting dark so early that I never get a chance to take photos during the week by the time I get home. Left the office a little early today, but still . . . ISO 10,000! After a little de-noising, it didn't come out bad though.

Planet Jellies Exhibit at Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto. (9/11/2019)

Planet Jellies Exhibit at Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto. (9/11/2019)

Ripley plowing through a nice batch of the white stuff.

Planet Jellies Exhibit at Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto. (9/11/2019)

So - I've been going through the archives (now at 120,000 pics going back to 2001) and in the back of my mind I wanted to find two images that I could put together and quickly make the composite work. I got this in my head from seeing folks put images together in a double exposure theme for one of the weekly groups. I first came across the stairway and that's what I started with. I liked it because the colors were flat and I liked the lines. Now the real problem began because it's not that easy to "marry" up two images. Sometimes I can find an image and sometimes I can't, it doesn't always work out and it takes a lot of trial and error and I let the pics show me the way (that is, if I really want the pic to work, often I abandon the project and move on). After a few bad pics, I came across an evening shot of Ripley's. It started to look like I was on to something but the composite was way too yellow. Off to Nik, Silver Efix Pro to turn the stairs to B&W and while I was there I tried out a grainy pin hole effect which really dirtied up the pic and added vignetting, perfect. The only other thing I did was to erase the Ripley layer over the railing. I liked the rather dark, almost macabre feel and the stairs will lead you to the oddities when you, "..come inside and find out."

When I was done I thought about giving a little how to so I arranged the two starter images and decided to post them ahead of the main pic. I did this to show that the final image still has elements from the starter pics but really has changed in it's overall feeling.

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I had good luck getting a nice Christmas Day portrait of Ripley. I'm still working on getting one of Boo - but she is not cooperating.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee, USA

You can't say you've been to G-Burg unless you stopped by Ripley's.

Planet Jellies Exhibit at Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto. (9/11/2019)

The Devil's Pet ... L' animal du Piable

If you are old enough to remember that title, you know how it relates to the photo.

I don't know if this is real or not...but have to think it is. The log is out in the middle of the water, and 'setting this up' would have been a herculean task. Since both ducks were quite protective, I'm guessing that it is genuine, if pretty weird.

Gives a whole new meaning to the term 'nest.'

Mantis Shrimp. Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada in Toronto. (9/11/2019)

Saturday we were in Amsterdam. Here we visited Ripley's Believe It or Not. Amazing!!!

This is a sculpture, made of chicken wire!(John Lennon)

Fantastic art!

HMM...

Been way too busy with some not so fun life things, but I won't go into detail about them. There are people going through far worse right now. But when life forces you to almost completely remove what you enjoy the most due to lack of time . . . it really sucks!

Staycation trip through my favourite places in town. The Aquarium, of course, was on the list.