First (gray) day of summer

Fr. Daniel asked me to check up on the church this week while he was away. The church is only a few minutes' drive from work, so it's easy to swing by at lunchtime.

I thought that since summer had arrived this would be a good time to bring the camera to take a new panoramic banner picture for the website. The current one was taken in spring.

And while I was at it, I thought, this would be a good opportunity to try out the "panorama assist" feature of the new mini digital point-and-shoot. I've not always been quite happy with the results of stitching together digital photos taken with the old 1/3 (yes, one-third!) megapixel Mavica and the newer 6 megapixel digital SLR. Getting the brightness, contrast, etc., to match across shots isn't easy, especially ever since Microsoft ruined Photo Editor in the change to Picture Manager. Photo Editor used to be great for work like matching pictures; the more difficult stuff was done in Corel "Photo [Whatever] 7" but that doesn't work with Win2K. Neither the Gimp nor Image Editor, the two tools I have today, make this easy and I'm not ready to spend... ummm... this blog is supposed to be about the church, not digital photography. Sorry.

Well, in case you haven't already sneaked over to check the website only to find the same old picture there... it didn't work out. Despite the forecast for sun the sky remained white, with that awful headachy glare Seattle is so good at this time of year. And of course my sunglasses were sitting in my pack in the office (which is dark because the blinds are tightly shut against the glare).

Maybe another day. I figure a picture for each season would be about right.

6/22 AM Update: Bright and sunny today, blue skies. I'll try again at lunch.
6/22 Noon Update: Bright and sunny, blue skies didn't last. It's gray again.
6/23 AM Update: Bright and sunny today, blue skies. I'll try again at lunch. 6/23 Noon Update: Some overcast crept in. Oh well.