Sunday was gorgeous, so we finally went to Ault Park, which is supposed to have one of the best views in Cincinnati. I can't really argue with that assertion. I think Mount Lookout is the hill the park is on, and you can see across the valley to Kentucky pretty much. The trees have finally burst into color, so seeing them from above was really neat.
After that, we checked out a comic shop in Mount Washington. It had that classic dusty smell, and was full of old school issues in long-boxes and plastic. The clerk/owner looked kind of defeated, and it made me a bit sad. It can't be a very profitable business to be in these days. The store had mostly the big name Marvel/DC/Dark Horse fare that's easy to find anywhere, though there was a hardcover Firefly/Serenity book I would have liked. I wish there were a store in the area to find smaller independent comics, and printings of webcomics. I suppose if you're going to be cutting edge in the comic business these days, you have to first of all be doing business online, and also with print-on-demand places like Lulu and such for special orders and small online comics. Even then, I imagine there's not an awful lot of money to be made in the business these days.
After Mount Washington, we made our way back up to Mount Adams, which we finally discovered on Friday. I'm still kind of giddily excited about that neighborhood. It reminds me so much of a small east coast town--maybe old-school Vermont or Maine, with narrow hilly streets, and pretty, ivy-covered old buildings all nestled together. We ate at the place that used to be the Rookwood Pottery Factory. It still has the giant brick kilns and chimneys in place. In fact, there are tables within each of the three huge kilns--they're pretty much private rooms now.
It's blurry, but it was a nice view!
I was glad to get the chance to take some pictures, since I've been wanting to try my hand at putting together some HDR photos. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and I guess the simplest description is that it's a compilation of several identical photos of different exposures, which uses the best exposed bits of the image to create one more like what the human eye sees. At the same time as being more like what we actually see, they're also a bit bizarre because they can be ultra vivid, and crisp in ways we don't often see photos. HDR photos can also be tweaked into utterly surreal, gorgeous images. Er... I'm still getting the hang of the whole "gorgeous" part here. Here are a a couple attempts at HDR images. I'm not using RAW files like I should be for these, so they're pretty grainy and "noisy" at times. Ah well. Fun all the same. This one is from out front of the uber art deco Union Terminal Museum Center. It's a bit on the surreal side, but I think it's interesting to look at, and it's not so boring a photo as it was.
Here's the pavilion at the top of Ault Park. A little more realistic. The sky was actually that blue.
These are a couple from a bridge up on Mount Adams. The city view was pretty fantastic. We could see all the way to Union Terminal on the other side of town.
Anyway, after a bunch of rain last week, we're being rewarded with some days of gorgeousness. It's Halloween today, and although we don't bother celebrating it, it's fun to see how excited the kids walking home from school are. It was chilly yesterday, but today I stepped out onto the patio to find it was sunny, in the high sixties, and our entire neighborhood smelled of freshly made waffle cones. Huh? I have no idea. I did hear the school marching band in the distance not too long ago, so perhaps there's a festival-type function happening? Anyway, I've opened all the windows (mmmm....wafflecones....) and I'm expecting small people in costumes to come seeking sugar any minute now, so I'd better go.
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