Phil Scott Photography

It's been almost two years since I've been to Mexico. I've really enjoyed travels there over the last ten years or so. As I watch it snow here I can hear the Mayan drums I think.

It was a beautiful Christmas Holiday this year. We spent time with family in the Philadelphia Suburbs amd were treated to this gorgeous Christmas table for dinner.

On Monday I was up in a helicopter to shoot properties for clients in Fairfield County, CT and Westchester County, NY. We had a beautiful morning and captured some great looking environmental studies of major homes for sale.

About 14 miles off the coast of Northern Maine, not far from Candian waters, is an 18 acre rocky island called Machias Seal Island. Apparently the US says the island is ours and charges the companies that ferry naturalists and birders through the cold Atlantic Ocean to visit the island a landing fee and requires them to have special permits. OK, that all makes sense, however you soon realize that Canada thinks the island belkongs to them and they're so sure about ti that they built a giant lighthouse, helipad and living quarters for the two people who rotate onto the island.

The great news in all this disagreement is that the colony of roughly 3,000 puffins that call the island home and the 2,000 others that come to party there are well protected and watched over. I got up at 4:00AM in Winter Harbor in the second week of August and slipped out for the 1.5 hour drive up to Jonesport where the Norton Family has been taking people to visit the island for years. You go ashore in a little launch they tow in their wake.

They couldn't have been nicer and it's a trip everyone should get to take some time. Here are a few pictures of the inhabitants.

Sometimes when you get somewhere to take a picture of a property or a scene of some kind, you find things that you really wish weren't there. It's even worse if you have great light or a beautiful sky at that moment. Motor vehicles are some of the most common problems of course.
I stopped by a house at the beack yesterday to take a few pictures and found that a car was right in front of the garage. The light looked good, the flowers looked great, but the car had to go.

After a few minutes in Photoshop CS4, the car is gone. Some of the tools used for this include the Marquee Tool (M), the Move tool (V), the Polygonal Lassoo Tool (L), and the Clone Stamp Tool (S). The geometry of the house and lens were corrected as well. The result holds up fairly well when shown small as for real estate ads.