Friday Blues made Explorer

I am so tickled to find my Friday Finds which I named Friday Blues made it to Explorer on Flicker.  My 2nd image for December.  What a great way to end the year.  Never dreamed I would have one let alone two images in a month land there.

Thanks!

Friday Finds is a group hosted by Kim Klassen.  She also has Texture Tuesday and its a great way to get you to continue shooting throughout the week.  Sometimes we just need a little push to keep the inspiration going.   This little vintage bottle was my prop of inspiration for this image with the hydrangea.  Cropped to 4x5 size, and some processing of the light and a little pale grunge texture.   I hope you keep your camera close by, you never know when the spark will ignite!

Organic - Prop Styling

 Last month our group Be Still 52 had an exercise in Prop Styling with the Organic theme.    My camera had been silent for awhile as my computer and my health were under the weather but finally I was able to get this exercise done.

I wished I had old watering cans, cool prop boards of white wash and wood but in the end I gathered what I could find around the yard and set to work.

 

The first image is called Rounds and is a collection of Found objects on a cheesecloth background.  Wonderful green pods, leaves, chicken feathers create the collection.

The next is a bit of the last of my garden, wtih green peppers, asparagus and zinias.  

The little bright flower makes the peppers look like they are ready for an elegant resteraunt menu.

Finally I spied these mushrooms and with all our rain they were starting to  appear everywhere once I began searching for a good one for a photo.  I sorta like mushrooms in photography.  So unusual and full of childhood sillyness and fairies, forests and immignation,
I also had some little blue wild flowers still blooming so I used a special arm to hold the mushroom up next to the flowers to style these images, and then of course added processing later.

I like these images as they not only make me think of old post cards but magazine covers too from some botanical issue that might have been published in the past.

Double Exposure Experiment

I love the dreamy look of some of the photos I see lately that use in camera double exposure .   I know my camera is not able to do this but still there MUST be a way to get this look with layers.  Here is a little experiment I did using an image of some asparagus pods.    I chose it because it had a nice soft effect already, not to much clutter in the background.

I used my macro lens when I took this shot.  Just an outside shot, nothing special for exposure or settings, just trying to get points of interest with the stems and berries. 

I started in Elements 10 with two images of the asparagus and one image I set to a size .25 larger than the other.  This was the bottom image.   The normal size image I layered on top and reduced opacity down to about 68%.  An interesting thing happened with I did this.  I got the dreamy background but the for front pods held their clarity!   In fact it sorta enhanced them so they appear a bit more dimensional.  

The only other thing I did to this was to adjust some light after it was done using levels and the bottom layer I had a watercolor filter applied.   I love this little test and if it would quit storming I would go outside and take more flower photos and play with this again.

Whats In Your Garden?

Its been a long time coming, this little radish, the first from our garden.  Our weather has been so crazy, 70+ days for a week then down to freezing, the up in the 70+ days again and back.   Its like weather ping pong.  At least I planted some radish between my onions and they seem to have made the transition from seed to edible just fine.

My favorite haunt, the Hagerman Wildlife refuge is like the Sahara because we are in a severe drought.  Last weekend I headed out only to find hardly any wildlife, birds or food for my camera.  It really caused alarm and saddened me.   I hope my vegie garden will provide me with some fun photos besides some good food.

We are growing all organic with out
GMO's     Should be a challange!
Cheers

End of Season Color

A photo prompt brought me outside with my macro lens to see if I could capture some of that vibrant color only fall can bring to the leaves turning color.  I found some great leaves and also some great seed pods from my flowers.  These are marigold petals and some seeds which truly appear to be tiny paint brushes and the pallet of an artist.  Texture by R H West.

Love with Elements

Little Viola's in my container garden are almost like living faces, and wanting attention.  Sorta errie.  I used a nice overlay from French Kiss called Bohemian and a texture from Kim Klassen called Word set at soft light.  Now that I am getting to learn Elements 10 I find that is pretty much mirrors my old ps7.  If it were not for that I would be totally lost.  Enjly ~

Now Its Elemental

 Oh boy, its been a few days since I posted, but its all due to the big crash of my PC and the great repair.  Course now its all completely different and I am totally lost finding my way around.   The software is obviously newer than what I had on here before because some of my old outdated programs like PS7 did not want to run right and so now I have switched over to Adobe's Elements10.  Its hard learning two new things at once, but getting my feet grounded and these 3 images are my work from Elements10 with great flower images from Lowes Garden Center!  Enjoy ~

The Challenge of White

A little exercise in our Totally Texture group was to use a texture with the theme being white.  I had just taken this photo of the little cherub the day before so I was happy to use it for the challenge.  This image and so much clutter in the background from Lowes garden department, I ended up taking the statue out and placing it on a soft grey background, desaturated the statue and then added two layers of Kim Klassen's Ocean Side.  Once on soft light 82% and again with multiply at 82%.  I added the little soft frame effect to finish it off.  Flattened it and bumped up the brightness just a bit and signed it.  Enjoy ~

Flutterby Dream

For awhile I was posting birds and now it seems its butterflies.  They are so dreamy and delicate in contrast to our harsh environments.  This lovely Eastern Tiger Swallowtail was a giant in my garden last year.  I worked him over with a few textures after I did the Orton effect on the original image.  To make the Orton effect in photoshop, you duplicate the background>apply>screen 100%>blur>gausian blur about 19%
then you move that layer on top of the original.  Blend mode>multiply>adjust % and go from there.   I learned this from an article in http://www.naturephotographers.net/

I spend quite a bit of time looking at people's photography and gathering ideas to make my own images peculate with interest.  Enjoy ~

Busted!

I really love macro work and if you love that you gotta love the little world of insects and bugs.  One thing I have always admired in others images was the nack to be able to give expression to bugs that sorta told a story.  Here this lovely Tiger Swallowtail is peeking over a leaf and I was just lucky to get this as he was getting off his flower and  ready to lite onto another.  Enjoy ~

Angel Wings

Well its not really wings of an angle but of a Dutch Iris using my macro and morning backlit natural light.  Added a soft texture to it to soften the image.

Humming Bird Antics

I have become so lazy, and my photos are in desperate need of organization.  I have so many interesting images and how can I do justice to each one!  I have been taking some time this last fall between selling our ranch and moving to review some of my favorite photos and moving into a folder for future work.  This is one of those photos.  Its a little hummingbird hen who constantly guarded her flower area.  She is complaining to another hummingbird who is flying above her in this composition from last summer.  Enjoy!

My Territory

Its time to look at my spring photos and see what tickles me.   This shot I almost tossed out as the birds were so busy I could not get  good image but the flower was really sharp.  I decided to work out some texture art with it and add the extra bokah texture since everything was sparkly from the morning dew anyway.   As it turns out, I entered it into a contest and got Editors Pick.  I can never seem to get past this or finalist but it makes me happy that I saved this image and gave it a new perspective.