Last weekend we went down to visit my sister-in-law and her new baby, my brand new niece Rhyan!  How beautiful is this little girl?

And my husband, with his niece

I made my very first video tutorial the other day and wanted to share it with you.  This is just the basic way I import presets into lightroom.

How To Import Presets Into Lightroom from Heather Green on Vimeo.

Rick, who is a friend of mine,  told me about this abandoned prison down in the Everglades and after he checked it out and posted his pictures, I just had to see it for myself.  So I dragged my husband down there yesterday and took some shots.

I am one of  ‘those people’ who believes in ghosts.  I don’t want to SEE them or hear them, but I believe.  Sometimes I do get a ‘feeling’ about a place, and believe it or not this place didn’t scare me.  What DID scare the heck out of me was hearing a snake rustle through some grass a few yards away from me.  I screamed, of course.  I scream at any snake really, even dead ones.

What I did keep thinking about was one of my favorite movies, Cool Hand Luke.  The first time I saw that was in my Mass Media class in high school, back in 1990 I think….If you haven’t had a chance to watch that movie, do it.  Heck, watch it before you go out there.

A little more info:

Also once known as the Copeland Prison, or Jerome Road Prison, this site was opened in 1952, after the site was deeded by Barron Collier to the State of Florida. It was no longer used by the Florida Department of Transportation, and has been left abandoned since 2002

It’s been since used (illegally) by kids for paint-balling and graffiti.  My husband read that most of the prisoners that were kept there were around 18 to 24 years old, but I haven’t been able to find the website he found that bit of information on yet.

Kids have spray painted on the front of the building ‘Enter And Die’… it certainly hasn’t deterred people from going in.

Sticking with the spray painting theme…

More graffiti images…

The photo below is ‘the yard’, you can see one of the basketball hoops in the background of the top image.

Here’s a few more views of inside the prison:

And one last outside view:

Note: each photo is linked to its flickr page, but some photos are not active on flickr right now, stay tuned and they will all be soon.

I also used Lightroom for these photos, I just wanted to have my own take on these images, they needed a grungy and vintage style processing.

More information on Deep Lake can be found HERE

If you go…

Watch out for snakes…and I’m not kidding.  Especially on warm days when they are active (like yesterday!), there’s so much tall grass around there and well…this is in the everglades…a snake warning should go without saying.   I wished I had been wearing my boots instead of sneakers.

Please don’t vandalize it.

Watch your step, there’s broken glass and nails and all sorts of sharp objects on the ground.

Fire.  Yes, fire.  It’s been so dry this season and that place is full of nothing but dead, dry and tall grass.  Don’t start a fire, put your cigarettes out in the ashtray of your car or with some water.

Now, I did see two cop cars cruising north on SR29 on my way down there and two cruising south on SR29 on the way out.  I would assume that they don’t want people in there, but if you were to be ‘caught’ and were walking around with a camera then I think they’d probably let you slide and politely ask you to be careful or leave.  If you were walking around with a can of spray paint and a baseball bat then I don’t think they’d be very cordial to you.

Don’t SPEED!  You’re in Florida Panther country down there (bears, too!), there’s very few left so obey the speed limit and keep your eyes open.

Do you Twitter? I do!  I twitter about photoshop/lightroom and photography links I find, free goodies I find, and also random stuff.  There’s now a ‘follow me on twitter’ icon/link in the sidebar of this blog so if you’re on, follow me

Here’s some twitter links to get you started:

10 Easy steps for Twitter beginners HERE

Grab some free twitter icons like I did HERE

For more advanced Twitterers….

If you’re busy you can tweet later HERE

Get the desktop app I use to keep up on twitter HERE

Or there’s another desktop app, Twirl which is also cool HERE

Measure your twinfluence on twitter HERE