My Nephew Alexander Jordan Troyer sent me this.

Link: http://danielkornrumpf.com

"Focal length" 2009 by Daniel Kornrumpf

detail and 42 x 36 inches

With the exception on one image in which a human face appears, these images were created in photoshop without a photographic source.

We went to Home Depot and Tessa was disappointed it wasn't the grocery store.  Then she saw the seeds and  she wanted watermelon. I tried to steer her towards the tomatoes. No, she wanted watermelon. I remembered my own experience growing watermelon when I was little so I gave in -despite the fact that we haveno ideal place to grow them. Three seeds in some dirt and in no time we have the exciting beginnings to Tessa's Watermelon Adventure. Now where to replant them?

I was so preoccupied with cutting down the pine tree that I did not anticipate the mess of branches and logs that would need cleaning up. The pile reached to the roof of the garage. My little chainsaw would cut up the logs, but I realized I'd need  to either cut and bag the small stuff or rent a wood chipper.

Wood chipper rentals were $80 and up for a day.  I found a twenty-year old chipper that wouldn't start on craigs list for $80. MTD 240-645 with a 5HP Briggs and Stratton engine.

It took a whole three day weekend and $20 of parts (carb rebuild, oil, misc nuts and bolts for the chipper, spark plug, airfilters..)  but I got the Briggs and Stratton running and it does a great job. It is definitely a residential consumer machine though - I imagine the bigger commercial chippers would of made short work of the pine branches. I took me another weekend to finish the cleanup including cutting the firewood. AND! the wood chips cover the area where the dogs run.

Now that the job is done what do I do with a wood chipper? Maybe I'll go into the wood chipper rental business next.

Being the farm boy that I am, and despite living in an urban area, I couldn't bring myself to call in the "professional tree removal" team to take out the lovely 30-40 foot white pine that was leaning heavily on the garage. Not wanting to find any restrictions, I did not bother to look up the local codes (safety) on tree removal by homeowners.

With healthy dose of fear as my guide I determined that I would proceed cautiously, and not let farm-boy pride come before life or limbs. If needed I would give up.  I bought the smallest lightest electric chain saw with extension cord and  I climbed up to the garage and practiced on a few limbs. Soft pine wood. Sharp chain. Feeling more confident. Now to crawl 30 some feet into a tree with a chainsaw. hmmm?  Because the white pine had plenty of branches it was not that difficult to climb up inside and brace myself, and slowly start removing branches, first at the top, leaving parts of the limbs close to the trunk for rungs and braces. Below was the garage roof and the yard. Starting at the top also allowed the cut branches to fall through the branches below. The result was a kind of drifting to the ground instead of crashing.  My caution was undiminished though because as I descended the slicing of the trunk became more serious as every cut was through thicker logs and the falling pieces heavier. Amazingly it only took me two or three hours to get down to the roofline of the garage - faster than I expected. I stood on the roof  looking at the pine carnage in the yard and it started to rain. I was hot and tired and I lay down on the shingle roof, looked up at the newly cleared sky for a moment and then closed my eyes and let the rain cool me off.  Napping away  and feeling satisfied I had no idea that cleaning up the tree debris would take 2-3  weekends!

Looking back  I would not recommend trying this - too risky -  it would take only one unexpected goof up for something irreparable to happen. I'll call the pros in next time (or rent a cherry picker? hmmmm).

This retouching project was taking three different exposures (below) and combining them into a single image for the cover of a view book for Dominican University. This was done with the version of Photoshop from 10 years ago (2000-2001). These days in Photoshop CS5 you would use the 32-bit High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging. Ahhh Technological Progress!