The White Tree of Minas Tirith

While we were in the Valley of Fire in Nevada a few days before Thanksgiving, we came across this tree along the Rainbow Vista trail. "Lord of the Rings" fans that we are, we immediately called it "the white tree of Minas Tirith", the capital of Gondor.

I chose it for this week's Texture Tuesday. I first did a brightness adjustment to get the tree even whiter than it actually was. I processed it with Kim's texture "kk_charmed" in Multiply at 100% and then brushed the texture away from the tree as much as possible - at least from the main branches.

You might think that the color is a bit too brilliant. Well, this is the same tree without any processing, straight out of the camera:

The tree was on the shady side of the trail, so I changed my white balance to "shade" which intensifies the colors. Before that I took a shot of the tree in automatic white balance. The image I got was completely off from what I saw with my eyes - look here:

The colors are somewhat dull and not quite as red as they really were. That is the beauty of Valley of Fire, the incredible colors. When I changed the setting to "shade" the camera almost saw what I saw and I was much more happy with the outcome.

Here are two more detail shots of the tree

I tried to find out what tree this is, but unfortunately I wasn't successful. If you know what it is I would be more than happy if you let me know in the comments. Thank you.

Do Not Let Your Heart Be Troubled

This is one of my favorite quotes by Galadriel in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring", the first part of his trilogy "The Lord of the Rings". Later she goes on, "And let not your heart be sad, though night must follow noon, and already our evening draweth nigh." Such a beautiful language - like elves talk.

We are a LOTR family - everyone has his or her favorites. Kaefer likes Galadriel, Arwen and Legolas; the Geek loves Arwen (of course); and I adore Aragorn, Eowyn and Sam. We quote parts of the book (or the movie) all the time and enjoy "speaking Gollum" - Hobbitses and pocketses. Precious.

It came as no surprise that Kaefer dressed up as Galadriel this Halloween. She sewed the cloak herself (she needed 6½ yards of fabric for that) and the Geek made the head jewelry out of copper wire. I made comments...

Here you can see the entire cloak. If you like you can look at the "real" Galadriel (aka Cate Blanchett) and compare (I'm biased here, so don't ask my opinion.  

"May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out."