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Silent Sunday #6
Elmwood-Murdock
Choir is Cool
Music in our schools is not dead, in fact it’s cool to be in choir at Elmwood-Murdock high school in Nebraska. The choir consists of 50% of the high schools enrollment and they are a source of pride for the school and community. Yes, this is a small school, but normally only those students who have good voices join the choir, which is normall a small percentage of a population.
However, a good choir director can find the inner voice in a willing student and bring out beautiful music. Below is the result in a piece performed at the 2012 Nebraska District Music contest. Enjoy “The Awakening” by Joseph M. Martin
Music contests are somewhat formal and below is the same song sung at the school concert. I like the below version better as the students are more emotional. Both versions give me chills, but I love the expression on the faces at the end in response to Mrs. Colbert getting emotional and tearing up.
Related articles
- Choir Classroom! (haleykimmusic.wordpress.com)
- Paint the Town Red 2012 (msjaxccc.wordpress.com)
#16/52: My Favorite Country Barn, Edited with Lightroom
I love country barns (okay, it’s really a corn crib) in Nebraska is one of my favorite photography subjects, yet this shot is my favorite. I pass it at least twice a day and it sits in the middle of a field with nothing around it, solitary, no trees, just in the middle of a field with either corn or soybeans growing on all sides. It has different moods depending on the light and looks different in the early morning and at night with the sun setting behind the western sky.
My favorite barn gets my attention every time I drive past and have often taken photographs to capture the mode. They never come out exactly how it looks in real life though. But with the help of Adobe Lightroom this has changed, I can actually say that this is truly what the barn looked like that day.
From what I understand in reading various photography blogs and sites a camera has difficulty collecting all the dynamic ranges of lights and darks. In simple terms you expose for the sky or your subject. That leaves the other parts of you picture over or under exposed.
The newest version of Lightroom 4 has an amazing capability of pulling out shadows, highlights, whites and blacks without leaving artifacts in the image. This was shot in RAW and I’m very impressed, puts my Photoshop CS2 to shame. The later versions of Photoshop do have more advanced algorithms that achieve the same thing, but I can only compare the programs I use.
I will still keep using Photoshop, Lightroom is only another tool to use and does not have text or graphic design capability. I still love adding drop shadows, borders and creating custom layouts.
Stay tuned for more Lightroom 4 examples, and possibly redo’s of previous photos as a comparison.
More Historic Country Barns
Barns of New York: Rural Architecture of the Empire State
Barn Quilts and the American Quilt Trail MovementBarn Find Road Trip: 3 Guys, 14 Days and 1000 Lost Collector Cars DiscoveredThe Barn: Memoir of a Family during the Nazi Occupation of Holland in 1940-1945
Country Roads and Friday Finds – Keeping With The Times
A Drive in the Country, barns, country, country living, keeping with the. Later in the day I visited Star Lake and ran into this fellow who was pretty much minding his own (business) … A Drive in the Country, barns, country, …
Barns along Polling Station Road | Hoof Beats and Foot Prints
Drive along with me on a windy country road. Polling Station Road in Harwood, Maryland offers views of a variety of country barns. Most of them from a past era of tobacco farming in southern Maryland and stand in the …
D.L. Marriott » Blog Archive » Living in a Fairy Tale
It draws up images of pumpkins and scare crows, hay bales and country barns framed in russet leaves. I grew up in the city, and although my husband and I have spent all our child raising years in the suburbs, pretty far out in …
#15/52: Prom Season 2012
Prom season kicks off early at Elmwood-Murdock high school and my daughter did what all teenage girls do before prom, searched for her dress (bought it online), had her nails done, her hair done and then have their Mom take way too many pictures.
Elmwood-Murdock does prom a little different than the bigger schools where kids rent limos which takes them to dinner and prom. The school prom committee raises money throughout their high school years and rents coach buses which picks the kids up at the school, where everyone rides together to a dinner, dance, and then takes them to the after prom party. This years prom was held at Dave and Busters in Omaha.
Students walk out of the school on a red carpet while parents get a chance to take pictures paparazzi style. Really a lot of fun, at least from the Mom perspective. Enjoy the images of the Elmwood-Murdock 2012 Prom.
By the way, all these images were edited in Lightroom 4 (still in the 30 day trial period) starting with the RAW files. I seriously miscalculated the exposure and almost all the images were over exposed. I am now soooo super impressed with Lightroom capabilities.
Related Prom Season Articles
- What’s Hot for Prom 2012 Dresses: Top 10 Trends from Sydney’s Closet (pasazz.net)
- The prom wear is free, no questions asked, at nonprofit’s new shop in Raritan Township (nj.com)
- Prom (ctmercantile.wordpress.com)
Where Poppies Grow, In Flanders Field
I could make it to the Elmwood-Murdock Veterans Day program this year, so I’m posting last years tribute from the high school choir. It’s my favorite and never fails to give me chills.
Thank you to all our veterans who have served and who are now serving in the United States Marines, Army, Navy, and Air Force.
