Mother Load Painted Buntings

I was so happy to finally spot these little birds.  It was not

easy to find them and they were pretty shy.  Now if truth

were to be told, I might tell you this is actually just 2 birds out

of 8 shots I was able to get before they flew off never to be

found again.  They loved the middle of the road and this big pipe

where they would fly up and chatter, then fly down to the ground again.

Really comical and entertaining.  This image used a texture called

Ancient Wall which I liked as it toned down that glaring rust and

gave some softness to the busy background.  Taken in June 2012

at Hagerman Wildlife Refuge on pad L.

Book Spine Poetry

Have you ever heard of Book Spine Poetry!  I have just been introduced to this from our Beyond Layers group as a challenge.  Create poetry from book titles.  After our move I got rid of all my books except some tutorials art books but I did have these 3 at my bedside table.  I figured there would be no chance to partake in the challenge but I checked them out and I was so tickled that my books were able to give me this little poem.   Through A Glass Darkly, The Sleeping Doll, Now Face To Face.  Very prose and haiku like.  Plus it was a great challenge to photo the still image.

Scissortails

 I had some fun out at Hagerman Wildlife Refuge today, hot and humid was not fun but finding the Scissortail sitting right at the edge of the road allowing me the shot of the day was worth the trip and sweat.

This image was processed before I added  my texture background, and then I added a few dandylion accents with a cool brush.  I have been working on some sets of cards for my Etsy shop Timeless Dog Studio and I really thought this would be a winner.  The image was hand torn on the edges for a deckle finish and processed with a fixative to give it an canvas appearance and texture.

Text Fun

Humph, this is not exactly what I was after in this little tutorial with Beyond Layers group. In Fun With Text we worked on some lettering using our photos.  This was a super fun image taken a couple weeks ago of the flowering forest floor, a little magical world.  So I chose my word, ethereal.   Somewhere along the line I actually inversed the text and got just the outline of the word which did not show up at all, so I darkened the background layer so the letters would pop out.  An unexpected extra step has been found to entertain my mind and use in the future.

What Fun Is This ~ Dragonfly

Last weekend I got to visit Loy Lake, a little small secluded water area loaded with water lilys that were blooming.  I was surprised with so few birds to see, only one Green Heron and one Double Breasted Cormorant.  The dragonfly population was not fairing to well with the high winds over the last week and many were staying to the deep grasses and just clinging onto the foliage.  This one appeared to have his wings stuck together but later we could see they were not but he held them in an upright position making for a very unusual photo.

Last of Quote Week