Visiting friends and a camera trick - can you spot it?

Eric, Kathryn, Judy, and Ron.  And our dog, Murphies.

We had a great time visiting Lloydminster.  Ron and Judy Plett, friends of ours now for almost 40 years, have been excellent hosts as we camped out with them at their home.  The best part has been connecting again since the last time we saw them and enjoying their hospitality.  We set up our RV on their family farm and have been busy with sharing in their lives.

Ron and I have been taking walks and driving around discussing whatever crosses our minds.  And, of course, looking for birds, or any other creatures that happen to cross our paths.  While visiting, I have managed to get some pretty great shots on their farm, my favourite being a yellow bellied sapsucker which you can see below.  I also photographed a house wren and song sparrow on their farm a host of other birds around Lloyd.  The coolest one was the eared grebe that I did a blog on yesterday (link here). 

Male yellow bellied sapsucker I photographed on the Plett's farm near Lloydminster.

It has been my long-standing desire to find and photograph a tiger salamander while visiting Alberta.  I have seen them before, but not for ages, and every time I come out I do some searching.  The funny thing is that the last time I was here I found none, but the day after we left two of the turned up in their garage.  The theory is that they will again make an appearance when we leave.  Isn't that just like a salamander?

Did you notice the top photo - two Murphy dogs.  I took two photos and combined them later in Photoshop.  You can see the originals below.  I thought it would be fun to have our dog in the shot twice.  Did that surprise you?

Two separate photos were merged to create the top image.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com



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