Walk my Time Line in LightRoom

 Hi everyone.   I thought I would put down the steps I am NOW taking from image to the final spot the images live.  Its like my timeline for processing.

 I am not shooting RAW.  I updated my LR so it knew my camera, uploaded test images and it took forever, honestly I can not tell much difference between my large format and raw so I went back to what I am comfie with.

Last month I was asked for a couple photos that had my watermark on it and I needed to remove that.  No big deal but would have been better if I had two copies, one with my watermark and one without in a larger size.   Now I am re thinking what I have been doing and how I save my work.

The steps I am now taking might be useful to you if you are stuck in my rut.  Geee, it might still be a rut in the future, but for now its better than what I did before.  Here goes:

* take my photos and import into LR

*review what I want to keep and get rid of and delete the unwanted photos.

*review the saved images, mark a couple I want to work on 

*develop one image and pop it over to Elements for more edits if needed

* Once finished in Elements I do a  "save" for LR which ends up as a psd 

*I now go back into LR to export to a folder on my external storage!   

*Now I can choose to export a huge file like 4MP as a .jpg to any folder I want with a name!

*I can also export another file as an email size into another folder for sharing in places like the web and Flicker.

*leave my watermark off unless I need it, as the small file sizes are not worth stealing.

So what I have created right now are two folders, one that has LARGE files and one folder that has the smaller files for sharing.  I have done this because the LARGE photos are ones that are for sales.  And of course inside that I have catagory folders like Flowers or Birds.  

I hope that these steps might help some of you crate a visual walk through your work with LR and Elements.  

Celebrating and Victory Dance

 Life can be so strange at times, just when I think I have nothing to share that is exciting or new, I go ahead and put it out there and Pizzaz...something amazing happens.  My images get noticed, get chosen and become part of a bigger picture. 

Now you might wonder what I think of when I go out with my camera but on this day we went out with family on vacation to this great stretch of beach, I knew I was looking for birds so I took my lens that would work best.

I shot so many images that looked the same, similar, color, attitudes and once home the big process began to widdled down to just a few.  Choosing just one or two out of hundreds to share.  Big job.  Flicker noticed, and I hope the world does too.   The big thing I find most interesting in photography is that what you might consider sorta random, might not be random in another persons eyes.  

Keep shooting, sharing and enjoying life through your camera lens. 

Brighten With Citrus MADE EXPLORER

EXPLORER!   Brighten with citrus was the prompt for out week 33 of Be Still 52.  I had to wait to get to the store to buy some lemons and oranges, ended up choosing lemons to work.  Its been rainy and dark and the yellow were a pop of freshness I needed.  Here I used some quilt fabric for my backdrop which really worked out well, I used a Friday Find for the little dish the lemons are sitting in, a single wine glass that has survived the years and an old silk flower.  Couldn't get my lemons to look interesting so got the knife out and sliced one up, figured I could use the slices in a pitcher of ice water.  Delish.   I love lemon water sitting out in a pitcher with lots of ice.  My glass is always full.

This is called Essence of Citrus, and I used a blackish fabric and a texture from Kim Klassen called more magic, I loved the little words that sorta brought the image away from looking like a staged still.  The little pitcher was a find at good will as was the glass bottle with the cork.  This was part of Week 33 also.  Same theme as above.

I would never on my own gather and create settings without these great prompts.  Its something I look forward to and its enriched my eye and creativity so much being part of Be Still 52 and now The Studio!

Dear Dreamer made Explorer

I am so tickled to see this made Explorer.  I am so surprised when this happens and I have no idea why images are chosen, but it sure puts a smile on my face.

These old roses are a find from good will, they were in the clutter of this and that, I took a chance on them as a prop..I am so glad I did.  I might add this book is also a good will find and my books are digital now but I miss having nice books around.  Real books are like having friends sitting there with their own thoughts and words just waiting to be shared.  This is an old readers digest book, a book of Curiosities!  Last Saturday I set up  a little table with props and just played.  I have several images I chose to keep from that shoot but this one that made Explorer is not the one I like best.
I used only a slight watercolor filter and a post card texture.  I titled it Dear Dreamer and gave it this description on Flicker:  Dear Dreamer, while reading a book the other day I thought of you and decided to send you a post card.  

Spools made Explorer on Flicker

Its another gloomy day and I am digging through some of my older photos, catching up on some Be Still prompts that never got processed.  One prompt that was shared in our Flicker group asked for spools.   Everyone had such amazing vintage spools of all sorts.   I sorta just stepped back from that exercise because I had nothing as exotic as a vintage spool.   Everyones images were beyond captivating.

Since I am a spinner I gave a try at using my bobbins for the spool prompt.  I have spun a graduated polwarth wool with tussah silk blend.   These singles on the spools have not been plied yet but I thought the colors were pretty and with the little scissors might offer something "spoolish".  

If I were to say something about this, it might be that be still is not the feeling it invokes for me, rather ...get busy!   Get it finished, get it knitted and spin some more!

Next morning I find this image has made Explorer on Flicker - I am SO over the moon about it.  

Fav 3 of 2014 ~ BeStill week 30

The end of the year and week 30 is wrapping up with a prompt to choose a set of your favorite

pictures from 2014.  It was hard to choose, I wanted some of my images to blend with 

similar softness and colors and the blue hydrangea never fails to make great 

images.  These were taken throughout the year and the center image was taken in

December with some of my dried hydrangea flowers, and it made Flickers

Explorer!  Now that is the way to end the year with a bang...

I hope to learn how to play on instragram this January.  I finally managed

to get the app working on my phone and digital life is whirring at warp speed

around me.   Will I be able to step aboard or loose my footing as I try and jump in.

~ snap~

Setting for 2015's First Shoot

 Happy New Year 2015

That is going to take some getting use to.  Not that long ago 2015 was a far off date in si fi flicks.  Now its marking the start of my new year behind my lens. 

I am inspired by light this Jan 1st.

 Its really ugly outside, freezing drizzle, cold and the only warmth to be found is under my quilt with a book.  It just nagged on me so much I decided to see if I could create something new and fresh inside in my work area. 

I decided to drag out some of my quilt fabric and use as a backdrop, and what the heck, I even pulled out some black!

I went for gold tones and things that projected
that warm feel of the sun and garden flowers.  Now that I have discovered that fabric is not for quilting, I might have to buy some more with a different minds eye!  

This leaf image is Red Bud dried and its hanging from a clamp over my table with fabric way in the background.  Used Aperture Priority and got in close with my mighty macro lens.

 This blue flower is in front of some black fabric, but I could not resist using a little fractal brush with it.  It felt sorta flat and now it has more whispy breezy freshness to it.

This blue flower is fake!   Yikes, I had to resort to what was at hand.  All my flowers are fake. 

 Its not such a great photo stand, but it works.  My rolling drawers stacked with plastic containers for height, my foam core board and with all this in place I can move it around on the wheels.  Its pretty ugly but it works.

 I used a curtain rod to hold a lace cloth which I have pinned some fabric to as a backdrop.  Its really busy batik fabric but one of my favorite fabrics I have saved and I used it in the first triptych image.  You can see how the fabric just blurs away into softness.

I took a class ages ago from Brenda Tharp on Macro Photography.  It was so great and I remember quite a bit from that workshop.  One thing I got back then was this very cool arm clamp.  The arm is jointed and moves every which way and here its holding my redbud leaves with seed pods.   How I WISH I had gotten more of these when they were to be had.   

This is also how far I shot this from the background for the leaf photo.   With the large aperture priority, my subject as far from background as I could get in my small area and shooting close as I could get I managed to create some feel of outside. 

When I processed my images in LR and PS Elements I added some tweeks to those images but the real work was trying to create light.   One thing you can't see is the pole light I have.  Its just plain ole lightbulbs and the pole light has 3 lights I can point in different directions, honestly I think I paid $12 for it at Walmart.  

Now that I have documented something exciting for the first day of the year its time to hop on over to Flicker and post my work.   Happy shooting and Happy New Year.

Playing of Faffing

 I was so happy to learn over the Xmas week about a little word called "faffing", an english expression for just wasting time.   It seems I do quite a bit of that, just playing with stuff to create lovely images or art.  Moving this and that around, looking for some light, a prop or two.  Is it wasting time or not...I say NOT.  Art is never a waste of time. 

 I love these little Shasta Daisy's from the summers flower garden combined with sea shells and a cheesecloth frothy surface.  Again lots of play with whats at hand.  I used a little ocean texture as the frothy crest of the wave.

 My prompts from Be Still were spool, string and three.  I think this was so much fun because I just learned how to use the Auto Sync function in my LightRoom program.  I edit all my work further in Elements but love the time saving auto sync.  I have learned so much to date in my e-class and there are still weeks left to enjoy and learn more.

These are little Zinnias that were seeds I special bought because of the fun little stripes and most were huge, but these were the end of the summer, stunted and small but while they were short of statue they made a fantastic prop with a great mason jar.

I love exploring ideas with still life and style prop photography.  NEVER enough props it seems, but there is a wish list and my eye is ever open to possibilities. 

My year ended with getting a couple of my photos on Flickers Explorer and that sure was something worth shouting about.  None of my physical friends are into photography so they just didn't get the high I got from it, but I shouted anyway!   I can't wait to see where my lens takes me in 2015.  Hope to see you soon!

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!

Two's Company and Three's a Crowd

I had to really do an improve for our recent prompt for an exercise using 3 things.

Backlight, window and a chair!   I have no cool chair that is weathered, stained and shabby but I did have this little tiny bench that was given to me as  a prop this summer.  I used my kitchen window sill and sat it there but really didn't have anything
interesting to use with it.  I was looking for a light bright fresh look and it was drizzling outside and dark - I hit a blank ..

I got to cooking up a pot of Manhattan clam chowder and for fun just tossed a couple onions on the bench, then added the towel and the little onion skin,  Took lots of shots and angles and decided on this one.  Love the square crop, and I used a little preset in lightroom called onair by KimKlassen and then a texture to give the grunge look.  The rain on the window gave a cool bokeh I thought so now I have an idea to paint this up white for a brighter look. 

I made Explorer on Flicker!

WOW this is such a big deal for me, my first ever image to make Flickers Explorer.  Its like the most fun thing ever and to think I didn't even know it until someone gave me a nice congrats on it!

This was an exercise from Week 27 of Be Still 52 group,
Our prompts were to create a vignette, use something tall and sweeping, a preset, a texture and a printable.  It was hard because this was very large and tall.  I dragged my kitchen island up to the fridge and propped up my black core board there for a backdrop.  Then began trying different arrangements to shoot.  I probably shot 30+ and finally ran out of angles and props,

This printable was our first xmas card of the year, so adorable with the white and hint of red from the snowmans scarf, it really fit in with the red bow around the bugle, the red books and wraping paper.

The pussywillows are fake and have been loved by me for several years.  I wish fake silk flowers were not so expensive, they make the most amazing props.

I hope I can post something exciting as this in the months to come so till then, its Sally behind my lens...

Two Sides

I so loved this exercise in negative space.   In my photography group Be Still 52 our prompt was using two sides of negative space, shoot from above, shoot square  and use the two sides as part of your main focus.

I was really just killing time when I shot this.  We were waiting to visit our friend for Thanksgiving dinner and just needed to kill an hour.

This plate is a hand thrown plate that one of our dogs won a few ages ago and the color is really like it looks,.  The linen napkins were gifted to me and the branch is from my friends yard, which is a redbud branch with pods still attached.  I can still see her face when I asked if I could have a cutting.   My surface is an old cookie sheet I layed on the floor and then placed the items on top.  It was just a lucky experiment that it turned out so great and now it has become a prop for the future!   Cookie sheets will never look the same to me ever again.  

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.

Photographing My Work

Photography is fun, prop set up and enjoying some control over the end results which I love to do with textures and light adjustments.  Its quite another thing to try and photograph something I want to project across people's computers in a way they can get a true sense of what they are seeing as in this hand spun yarn of mine.   This is truly work!

Does it give you a sense of the right color in daylight, how about the wonderful squishyness of the merino yarn and loft.  Is it representing the size and dimension in a way you might recognize.  I have taken so many photos of this skein of yarn that its time to call it quits and tackle the photos themselves.     Even after working them over in LR, I still have my concerns, but holding my yarn up to the monitor the colors do seem to be represented.   I have been absorbed in spinning and weighing fiber, working on yardage and silly textile things like quilting , its all taken me away from photography, just temporarily because while I don't have time now to post on flicker and update the blog, the camera works daily and the operator is lazy.

I Took Time Off!

I have been absent for some time here on my blog.  I finally have my mojo back and trying to get back in the swing of things.   Summer just drains me, heat, humidity, watering the dreadful garden, chickens padding down my wild flowers and me giving in to them.  Changed my diet to gluten free with the onset of digestive issues and so it goes with turning SS age everything else turned too!

The Good News..is!  I have had such great response to the updated photography blog that I dumped my old quilting blog.  But when I dumped it I didn't have plans to update it too.   I think its because in my mind I was thinking of all the textiles art I work on should be harmoniously living together on one blog.  I like keeping my blog to the topic and not delve off to parts unknown. 

Through Kim Klassens' on line classes I learned about WabiSabi and one day was amazed at how much the work I love resembles this imperfect perfect aspect of hand crafted artisan textiles.  I love packing my life full of photography, quilting collage, knitting and spinning.   It keeps me happy and there is always a new project on the horizon, new props to explorer, a new seed pod to photograph or the loan of a friends cool silverware!  

Cheers

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.

Lets Stay Connected ~ Greeting Card Swap

Its said that birds of a feather flock together.  I believe its true, at least in the case of us photographers and our art, props and imagination.  At a spree cast event today that Kim gave for all us Start To Finish 2 folk, I awkwardly declared I would start a photo greeting card swap.    I think its nice to have exciting mail come to your mail box, from the world over, from friends you met through classes and events.   Think of it as keeping the spark alive that began in Start to Finish 2 and for me Beyond Layers also.  

So without knowing about  Groupies of Kim Klassen over on Face book we will take my idea for the card swaps  and incorporate it there.  They are already doing something similar so no use being repetitious. I didn't know they had this group going so was totally thrilled to find them.  This is a private group and you will have to go there and request to join us.   Thanks for all the response to the idea of a greeting card swap.
~ cheers

The Illustrated Pears

 Hello again.  I still have some pear photos I am playing with.  By the way not only were they expensive but delicious and made marvelous models for my props.  I love how pears have  different textures on the skins.  I like enhancing the texture of them and by accident I applied a brush to the background and it fell over one of the pears, and it was like magic!  I really liked how the brush created a brand on the pear, like it was some special exotic fruit.   I thought of all the fun tissue papers used to display fruit in and this again reminded me of some of the very pretty printed tissue.

This is the snoring boring photo of before.  The bit of yellow behind the 3rd pear is a bit of Yellow Tissue!

My paper texture was from a scrap book and the rest of the art are applied brushes and light adjustments.   I hope you like before and after!
Keep eating pears!

A diptic or a dip...

Oh my this was the most frustrating thing ever! 
In my class Start to Finish we walked through diptic's in light room.  It looks so simple.

Well it was not, and not only was it not it took me 2 days to generate this story board and I must say, I am not sure how I did it.

Frustrations took me to another tutorial on exporting light room print layouts.   I finally got this saved as a .jpg in a folder on my hard drive.  Then I opened up Elements and did some light painting and signed it.  Yep I signed it even though its far from what I wished for but its a first! 

After two days of fooling with this, I am shy to try again but determined. Anyway I tried to import this image back into LR to work on it a bit more and by some gremlin's joy, I got my whole texture folder!  More deleting, more searching for the image - took a break to make breakfast - back to search for the image.  Finally....here it is.   It might not be a spark of creativity for you but if you are struggling with the diptic learning curve, you are not alone.   No textures used, just light.   Cheers till next time.

I Miss You...

White, round and minimalist, started out this way , ended up not so much.  In my class Be Still 52 one challenge was to work very simple, white, round and see where it took you.   I have such a hard time with working in whites.  I seem to just march to my own drummer.   Well, the white part was easy, the white daisy's, the white shells with just a hit of colorm tge white linen and the white cheese cloth.  So far so good, I laid these out in  a path type effect and shot above, from the side, in front and all aspects of angles.  This is the one I chose. 

This smaller image is just one of the try's before I got something happy.  I did like the yellow behind the flowers but in the end didn't use it...but I might still work on that!

The props are so much fun to use, collect and play with.  Some are so simple.  OH that is what its all about KISS....keep it simple silly!   I keep forgetting.

SO as you can see in the finished I Miss You I went past simple once again.  I added some moody graduated layers, played with my dof and added some elements and brushes.   I like it.  I hope you do too.

I need to get some photos done of this, adhere them to some post card's and get them in the mail and surprise some friends.

I think its time to start a yahoo photo postcard/greeting card trading group.  I have belonged to the atc community trading for quite awhile and the fabric postcard group trading with people all over the world.  Wouldn't be wonderful to do this with our lovely photo art!  Are you in?  

Let me know as this is part of the "spark" I have gotten from my classes this month.
Cheers........