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"Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind, something you dream about and think about. Maybe it is not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit. Maybe home is just a collection of memories and our roots" A somewhat changed quote that originally was written by Hugo Hamilton. I like it at the beginning of this short movie below. The short movie reminds me, and should remind everyone, about not pushing yourself too much. No matter if your running or doing anything else, I believe that all of us sometimes get so caught up in what we are doing that we forget about life and ourselves. Anyway, hope you guys enjoy this short movie too, and find it as inspirational as me. 

Friday Theme - Black and White Portrait

This Friday I am jumping on the Friday Theme train again. I haven't really done the Friday Theme in a loong time. Mostly because some of the themes have been tricky, and other times I just haven't had time. So todays theme is "Black and White Portrait", and I usually don't like adding pictures of other people on my blog (it happens every now and then but not today) so I figured I could turn a recent photo into black and white...or white and grey I guess, since that is how most editing programs make them, and yes I am sure there are some specific things you can do to edit the program filters but I like the greyscale black and white :).

This photo above was of course a "color" picture originally, and I actually took it yesterday while skiing to school/work, it was -34C and I felt really cold for once... I really liked my eyes in this photo and wanted to highlight them, so I decided to make it black and white and then use one of the "tools" in the picture editing program to "brush away" the black and white. Now I did this, and was thinking: Man this is bulls€%, it doesn't do its work correctly... So I changed my way of doing it and decided to brush in black and white on the whole photo, but the eyes. And then I realized that my eyes really are that blue in this photo. I thought the brushing out black and white didn't work because the eyes were so blue. My eye color is generally blue green and depending on what I am wearing, or the surrounding colors they shift between those two colors. So I guess that yesterday my blue side of my eyes was enhanced, and of course it's only a photo :).

Here is another black and white photo I made from a photo. A really good friend of mine took it with my camera when I was in Rome to visit her.

This photo below, W took last year in San Fransisco. Both of us were so happy because the weather in San Fransisco was so much better compared to Fairbanks. This was last December.

When we are at it, I want to share some of my other black and white photos I have taken.

This photo above is from Yellowstone. W's family usually go there every christmas/new year, and I love it. Below are some photos taken with my iphone that I made black and white [gallery type="rectangular" ids="1619,1620,1621,1622,1623"]

Happy Friday!!

And then the Temperature Dropped

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This week we have experienced a little bit of a colder weather, or I guess it actually started during the weekend. This morning it got down to about -4F. The nature always looks so beautiful during these low temperatures. And as I was waiting for the sun to rise I took some pictures. I usually don't like skiing when it's too dark out, since I am terrified of running into a moose on skis :) I like how pretty the trees look all dressed in snow.

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Everything looks so peaceful with the snow, almost as if everything were asleep (which I guess it kind of is).

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Sun finally rose and I could start skiing to work. I usually don't like skiing to and from work when it's dark, because I don't want to surprise/or be surprised by a moose. Some of the trails are kind of narrow too.

Blue Sky

Morning starts

Sunrise

Skitrail

The temperatures are suppose to drop down to -30 to -40 tonight and tomorrow. We will see if the weather forecast is correct or not. Either way I am skiing to work tomorrow.