Year's Favorite HNT2008 Version

It was fun to go back and see what I passed off as HNTs during the year. Many I had forgotten about. Many I wish I hadn't seen again. But there were two different weeks that stuck out for me. As I'm sure that many of you will bypass the instructions and pick more than one, I will too. After all, I'm the one that wrote them! Interestingly, both weeks involved some sort of photo manipulation. I rarely (if ever) crop my pictures, let alone play with the images. But these both turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself!

The first one (and actually is probably my favorite) was a click-through from January. I had attempted to imitate the avatar of one of my favorite bloggers (Leesa), and was having little success. No wonder--she's cute. Me, not so much... Anyway, I was looking for a bit more effort on my part, so I took some more pictures. I dismissed many of them because of the mess in the background. As I found that I was running out of possibilities, I decided to get artsy-fartsy and go with the b&w treatment. Along with a high contrast and lower brightness. The result? I am amazed at the detail in my eyes (clicky-click to get the big picture!). And the gray hair on the side of my head. The stubble. The little veins in my nose that I've never really looked at. The lack of zits. It's a totally different picture than I think I've ever taken before. Might be some more of that coming in the future...


My second HNT that I thought was "favorites-worthy" was from February. I had used blue for when I went to the Blue Man Group concert with my niece. We had "RED" as a theme (rather than Valentine's Day) and I assumed that there'd be alot of green for St. Patrick's Day, so I was in a color frame of mind. I have hemmed and hawed about Photoshop (which I have installed, but rarely use), simply because of the learning curve. I generally want to know all there is to know with a software program, but I'm not willing to spend hours and days and weeks learning it. But I really wanted to try the color selection thing. After finding out that there's a couple of ways of doing it, I gave it a shot. Armed with a 5-lb. bag of M&Ms, and a very large beer stein, I took a series of pictures. If I'm selecting colors, I figured I should be as colorful as I could! The third picture never actually made it for HNT, but might be the be the best of the bunch. Again, now that I know how to do it, it'll probably creep in from time to time.

---

Red, red lips
Swivelin' hips
Movin' in some new blue jeans
Shufflin' sweet right with that beat
She can really shake that thing

Belt buckle
Shinin' day and night
When she shake that thing
Hope it's next to mine

I said, lord have mercy, my o'my
You been lookin' too good
I think you wanna shake with me
Baby I think you should

Belt buckle
Shinin' day and night
When you shake that thing
Hope it's next to mine

Please, please baby, I wanna say
You lookin' so fine
And if you hold mine next to yours
I'll hold you next to mine

Belt buckle
Shinin' day and night
When you shake that thing
Hope it's next to mine

~~ZZ Top (1999)

Reveal will happen tomorrow!

Figured I'd better do this now before forgetting! Our last MG of 2008 is the lovely Elle from Kink Unleashed! Be sure to stop by and check out her favorites of the year! Feel free to say hi, too!

---

Some great pictures for "...the Other HNT" this week, including a couple of people who came back for the end of the year, and one particular lady who is completing her New Year's Resolution! Be sure to stop by and leave comments for your fellow HNTers! NSFW, as always!

---

No New Year's wishes from me yet. I'll be posting my annual "Highs & Lows" of 2008 on Wednesday at around noon. I might even throw in some year-end thank-yous and things like that. There might even be a birthday wish to take care of, as well!