Cellpic Sunday – Blogger Meetup

L-R: Janet, Donna, Marsha

Scottsdale, Arizona.

A few days ago, Tuesday to be exact, Lynn and I were invited to a blogger meetup at a nice restaurant in Scottsdale for Breakfast. The plan was instigated by Marsha who writes the Always Write blog. Lynn and I met Marsha a few weeks ago when she was in Scottsdale on personal business. We got together for lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, Frank and Lupe’s.

When Lynn and I got to the Snooze Restaurant on Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale, we met Janet who writes at This, That and the Other Thing, and Donna of the Wind Kisses blog. It was a bit of a drive for us, about an hour, but we are used to that. Buckeye appears to be an hour or more from almost anywhere in the Phoenix metro. >grin<

For the record, the blue shirts were serendipitous. We didn’t have a “shirt color memo.” That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

L-R; Janet, Donna, John, Marsha, Lynn

Whenever we take off across town to do whatever, we try to plan at least one more stop at a place nearby to save the long drive. In this case, it was to visit with another blogging friend at an automotive-related venue. Lynn and I also ventured to the Penske Racing Museum where we met with a blogger friend who goes by the penname of rulesoflogic and who writes the blog Disaffected Musings. I happened across this blog because I am a classic car nut and I discovered Disaffected Musings while searching for automotive-related information. His take on the history of automobiles and performance cars is always interesting.

A red Ferrari fastback and a white Maserati Ghibli

The museum features race cars driven by the Penske auto racing team. A future blog post will focus my camera on some of the cars on display there. The Penske complex in Scottsdale is comprised of several luxury car dealerships. We saw a nice collection of new and used luxury automobiles, all well above $100K. As they say, “Look, but don’t touch. If you break it, you bought it.” >WOW!<

From the second floor of the racing museum, there is a large terrace that looks over the complex. Looking down from that vantage point, I saw a few million dollars worth of cars. The photo above features just a couple of examples.

About the photos: Both portraits and the view of the cars were captured with my Samsung S20U. I did my usual processing in Lightroom, then used the portrait tools in Luminar Neo to finish up the portraits. My favorite tool in Neo’s Portrait module is the Portrait Bokeh tool. It does a beautiful job of blurring the background. The effect makes it look like I used an expensive lens with a large lens opening, great for creating those soft, blurry backgrounds.

Click on any of the images above to view it in 2K HD on my Flickr site, or you can scroll through the entire album here.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

John Steiner

45 comments

  1. I am glad you found the photo of the beautiful women John. The car museum must be a sight to see. I await more photos. I am guessing you didn’t put a deposit down 🙂

  2. It’s so lovely that you were all able to meet up like that! I know from my Virtual Tourist meets how much fun it is to meet ‘in real life’ someone you’ve already got to know online 🙂

    • It is so much fun to ask those questions you’ve wondered about while reading their work. I have made one long-time friend through photography and blogging. He and I have traveled together on photo excursions and as a bonus, our wives have found friendships in each other as well.

  3. I was so happy to read Marsha’s and Donna’s posts that you all met up in Scottsdale, John. You all look fabulous in blue! Quite lovely images of you all. How fun! I’ve been so happy to meet up with fellow bloggers over the year, many of whom I have long-lasting IRL friendships with to this day! Here is my cellpic Sunday contribution this week: https://secondwindleisure.com/2022/03/13/sunday-stills-monthly-color-challenge-not-too-jaded/

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