Steller's Jay Impressions

A bit of a pun here... I used Topaz Clarity followed by Impressions to turn this photograph into an Impressionist painting. I don't do this often but once and awhile, when the urge gets me, I play with making a photo look like a painting. Why? Because it is fun. I have no intention of trying to make a painting that looks like this. If I did paint this subject, it would come out looking like my painting style, not like this. But meanwhile it is fun to play. I put the original in extra photos so you can see how this started.

I'm posting this on Friday because I just didn't get to it on Thursday. I was really tired at the end of the day. I had both my individual therapy and the Alzheimer's support group and by the end of the day I was pretty wrung out. The reason is that I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that there will come a time when I have to move Arvin to a place that can care for him better than I can. That time is not yet for sure. But it is getting closer. I realize that it is very easy to pretend that isn't happening but it is. 

In the support group we spent quite awhile talking about this topic. There are three of us whose husbands are quite close in their journey so we are all considering this outcome together. I realized that I do not want to have to put Arvin somewhere where he is away from me. He is so expressive of his love for me and how much I mean to him that it feels mean spirited to put him in a different place. But a time will come when he will need more care than I can give. And the clock is ticking.

Thinking more deeply, I realized I also don't want to be alone without him. He is still my sweet love and we still have moments of laughter and affection together. Perhaps as his disease progresses these times will get more scarce and it will be easier. Right now I am not ready and he is not to the point where it would be necessary. But I can now see that the time is coming and it makes me very sad. 

By the way, I took this with my new little camera that can shoot 17 shots a second. And it is not a composite. This is what the camera saw. I did a bit of Lightroom processing before posting the original shot, but not much. And I was taking jpegs. I am going back to raw now to get a sense of the difference. I upgraded to Lightroom and Photoshop CC 2015 and they support my new camera's raw files.