Mike Hendren, Your Castle Rock Realtor®

Photo © Mike Hendren, 2009

We had a few inches of fresh snow just a few days ago. The morning brought us clear skies and sunshine, and as I walked around the end of my garage, I was treated to this beautiful sight!

This mule deer buck was just meandering along, looking for food (or maybe love - it is the season), and of course my sudden arrival definitely got his attention. But he didn't run - he just stood there like a majestic statue studying my every move.

I quickly went back in the house, got my camera, and was fortunate enough to get off a few shots before he finally walked away.

I did discover a little trick with Adobe Lightroom on this image - I desaturated the blue channel to get rid of the blue colored snow back in the shadows without affecting any of the other colors!

This morning, while waiting for my first cup of coffee to brew, I noticed these copper canisters sitting on the counter. So, I grabbed my Nikon D700 with the 14-24 mm lens, set it on the countertop and fired off 5 bracketed shots.

Then I played with several of my software "toys" :

• First, I exported the 5 images into Photomatix Pro to merge them into a single High Dynamic Range (HDR) image.


• Next, I exported the HDR file into Nik Color Efex Pro and used their "Glamour Glow" filter to soften the image.


• Finally, in Lightroom, I just tweaked the exposure a little and did some noise reduction to end up with this final image.

One of the things I like about this image is the way the four different textures work so well together: copper canisters, granite counter, stone tile back splash, and wood cabinet.

Photo © Mike Hendren, 2009

I was traveling through Arizona a few days ago - headed home after visiting my son and his wife in Phoenix. I took a little detour, just about 6 miles off I-40, near the eastern border of Arizona to visit the famous Meteor Crater.

It is truly impressive, especially when you consider it was caused by a direct hit from a relatively small meteor. The crater is about 550 feet deep and 4,000 feet across and was caused by a meteor not much bigger than a large house - only about 150 feet across. It's scary to even contemplate what would happen if a fairly large meteor hit the Earth - I'm afraid it would be a catastrophic event! I'll keep my fingers crossed. :-)

One thing that shows the size of the crater is when you consider that I was standing on the edge, using a 14mm lens, and I still couldn't get the whole thing into the photo!

For this HDR image, I started with 7 bracketed images and used Photomatix Pro to combine them.

You can see my Photo Blog at: http://thrumikesviewfinder.com/

I've been thinking about this for a while. We all stay in touch - sporadically - occasional emails and phone calls where we try to "catch up", but there are so many things that happen to us between times, it would be impossible to remember to talk about all of them. So we try to update the really important highlights and some of the other stuff gets lost.

So . . . How's the Market in October, 2009?

According to Jack O'Connor, an Owner/Broker of Re/Max Professionals, LLC, our market is showing signs of turning around. The statistics show that Sept., 2009, actually had more sales close than in Sept., 2007, and the number of properties under contract is at the highest level (for October) in 5 years.

Another very positive indicator is that the current number of active listings is at the lowest level in the last 5 years as listing inventories continue to decline. This has decreased the average time on the market to less than 100 days and should help prices begin to increase.

It's not all good news yet as the better performing segments are still in the lower price ranges below $300,000.

If you do consider selling your home, there are some things you can do to optimize your market position:

• Use a professional stager to make your home shine and stand out among your competitors.
• Make your home the best conditioned home in your area to differentiate and help justify your price point.
• Add carbon monoxide detectors - they're required now.
• Consider financial incentives like prepaying HOA dues for a period of time to attract buyers.