Summer Green at the Water's Edge

We took a mini vacation at the end of May where we took the Badger carferry across Lake Michigan to Luddington.  We spent a whole day hiking and biking around the Dunes State Park nearby.

That's where this photo was taken.  I loved the impressionist reflection of the trees in the water, and the textures of the foot bridge curving through this photo. 

Footpath - Let's Do 52 - Week 11

 Ruined Tower at Fairy Glen, Isle of Skye, Scotland
I think the official name is Ewen's Castle

Fairy Glen is one of our favorite places to visit on The Isle of Skye.  It should be some kind of national monument, or historical place, but instead it's just a bit on someone's farmland there.   If you follow the road to the end, you wind up in the farmer's yard.   Sheep graze the hills there (Watch your step!).      It's getting so many visitors these days who are not careful about disturbing the space ...  that I've really seen it get more run down and tired in recent visits.    It's sad, and magical, just the same.  

Photo Processing :

1) 2LO Texture as background : Fairy Tales 18

2) Ruined Tower at Fair Glen Photo - Blend Mode : Multiply

         Touch ups (remove people)

         RadLab Magical Black & White

3) Sparkle Brushes to add texture to the rocks and sky

4) On iPad in Distressed FX App,

         Add bird trio brush

         Add Azure Sky texture

5) Back to PhotoShop Elements to clean up a few bits in the sky

6) Final brighten

Here's the original photo for contrast.  

Once again, I am participating in Denise Love's 2018 "Let's Do 52 : 52 Weeks of Photo Prompts" to kick start the lull in my photography.   If you'd like to join us, find out more at the link above.  The more the merrier!

Dancing with the Dawn - Morning - Let's Do 52 - Week 6

"Dancing with the Dawn" or Morning
I hesitate to call it "Fire Walk with Me" due to the horror connotations Twin Peaks brings to the phrase.   But she does look like she's dancing with a big flame.

Photo Processing :
Layer 1 - 2LO Fairy Tales 8 Texture as background
Layer 2 - Cut out Dancer and Blend
Flatten Image
Layer 3 - Rad Lab Clarify - to add light --I would still like to see a little more light on her face ...  May still tinker with this one!
Layer 4 - Topaz Impression - Color Sketch 40% - to smooth and blend

More light in this version.  On the verge of dreams and waking ...

Here is my original photo of a belly dancer at the 2018 Door County Ren. Faire.

Once again, I am participating in Denise Love's 2018 "Let's Do 52 : 52 Weeks of Photo Prompts" to kick start the lull in my photography.   If you'd like to join us, find out more at the link above.  The more the merrier!

7 Days 7 Photos from your Life in Black and White - No Explanations

Day 1

7 days, 7 black and white photos of your life. No humans. No explanations.
I was nominated by my sister, Amanda Yoshida.
Play along if you want to join us ...

This is a meme going around FaceBook these days.  I thought I would compile theme here as a series for future reference.

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7
 

 

Day 8 (Lagniappe for sticking with me this long)

Kirsty Mitchell's Wonderland at The Paine

 The Pure Blood of a Blossom

This weekend, I attended the Wonderland exhibit at The Paine Art Center here in Oshkosh.  It features the work of photographer Kirsty Mitchell.   They actually had a sign posted encouraging visitors take their own pictures and posting them to social media.  That's a new concept at an art gallery--to have them embrace that.  It's free advertising, in a way. 

The amazing fairy tale photographs came out of Mitchell's grief after her mother and best friend died in 2008 due to a brain tumor.  Her mother was an English teacher, storyteller, and avid reader.  So the stories and the world's Mitchell created for the photographs were a way for her to revisit time with her mother.

This show has so many things going for it -- Fairy Tales, story, amazing photographs, amazing sets, grief and healing, books, flowers, the Woods ...  With a background in fashion design, Mitchell also created all the costumes and sets.  Just as captivating as the final images are the videos explaining how she made everything ...

The Wonderland Book, 2nd Edition from Kirsty Mitchell Photography on Vimeo.

And then, to top it all off, she published a beautiful coffee table book to go along with the exhibit.  What is actually on display at the Paine is just the tip of the iceberg.   The book contains many more photographs from the series, along with commentary, and the Wonderland Diaries as she was going through this journey of grief and healing.

It's the most expensive book I've ever purchased for myself, and I'm glad I did -- I would have regretted passing this up.  She's doing what I wanted to do with the Vasalisa pictures a few years ago ...  But I never really took it further.  It's expensive to buy the costumes, find a model, schedule the time on locations.  And Kirsty clearly had a staff from makeup artists to staging help. 

Mitchell came to our fair city this week to speak about the project. Wow!  Again and again, she said the project was not about her, but her mother.   I wish I could tell her that her mother is right there with her, every step of the way ...  loving how she has blossomed, and come through the other side of her grief.  They don't stop loving us once they die.   It took me a long time to learn that after my friend Sandy died, after beloved dogs died.

She said that she learned to take whatever weather came on her shooting days.  She took that to mean her Mother was present and taking an active part in the making of these images.  And often, the weather added elements she could not have imagined.

When I saw the exhibit, I was a little surprised that it was just the images printed and blown up to 2 meters, but none of the accompanying costumes or props were part of the exhibit (except for the Faerie Key).  One the panel, someone asked about the costumes -- They are all in her house, she has most of them still, is living with most of them still.  She did say that some of them fell apart as soon as the picture was taken ...  So there's the idea of photography being a moment in time-- a momento -- the photograph being the artifact, not the costumes and props. 

She also talked about the preponderance of ships in many of the photos.  Mitchell said the ships signified a journey.  In this case, an inward journey.

She also said, she started out with a lot of these flowery girl pictures, but they didn't really go anywhere -- until she started taking these characters into the swamps and getting dirty with mud and blood, that SHE really started to heal and began to feel better about where she was going with her grief, that something good could come from it. 

I did persevere in the long line to have Kirsty Mitchell sign my book.  I got her autograph!  And no, I did not hold up the line for everyone behind me to get a selfie with her.  I didn't need that ... and the people behind me didn't need that either. 

I'm so glad I went to the show, and her lecture, and that I bought the book.  Janna--You have to see it sometime!

Joy : Week 24 Let's Do 52

This shot deserved it's own post.  Why not link it up with JOY?

I guess it also shows the uses of reflected light to bring out the colors.  This is much brighter and more vivid than the whole quilt pictures we took.  

I made a quilt for the birth of a close friend's first grandchild. This is the view of it inside the washing machine after it had gone through a cycle. This is how I want to remember this quilt. It is a JOY to welcome a child into the family. A joy to see my friend become a Grandmother; and a JOY to be able to make a quilt to welcome the child. It is a JOY to create ... and a JOY to recognize precious moments like this one.

I was also thinking about the other things that bring me Joy -- my dog (ALL my big black dogs), my family, creating ... making ...    Back in the day Figure / Ice Skating brought me a tremendous amount of JOY, too.  The joy of moving, of flying like the wind, of mastering the physical forces so you could defy gravity ...  But I wasn't sure how to get a photo of that.  It's much more about FEELING for me than watching, or knowing anyone up close whom I could photograph.

SO you'll have to settle for the joyous quilted visual above.  ;-)

And now a joyful musical accompaniment :



Tommy Shaw - Sing for the Day

Stevie Winwood's Higher Love

I am participating in Denise Love's 2017 "Let's Do 52 : 52 Weeks of Photo Prompts" to kick start the lull in my photography.   If you'd like to join us, find out more at the link above.  The more the merrier!

Circles : Week 17 Let's Do 52

Circles : Antique Buttons on a Wooden Stump

Old Buttons on Old Wood

Plus the growth rings from the tree adds yet another layer of circles.

Concrete Culverts from a Construction Site

I was also thinking about rain drops falling, and the circles the ripples make from the drops.  

Circles in Motion.  

Not a great image (It's tricky to shoot in the rain), but something to work on for the future.  

Or even video.

I am participating in Denise Love's 2017 "Let's Do 52 : 52 Weeks of Photo Prompts" to kick start the lull in my photography.   If you'd like to join us, find out more at the link above.  The more the merrier!

My Love is a Summer Red Radish

 

My Love is a Summer Red Radish.

Sometimes hot and spicey.

Sometimes cool and refreshing.

Always passionate.

 

This black magic treatment made it look more like a painting or at least a sketchbook page.

Notes on the making of this image :




 
Layer 1) Background Image.
Here's the original image that I started with.  I love red and black together!
I tried all kinds of things to improve this image, and nothing really worked until I applied the black magic textures below.   I learned this trick from Kim Klassen.  I made the black textures below in an excellent online class with Denise Love from 2 Lil Owls. 

 
Layer 2)  India Ink on Yupo Scan 21 - Screen blend mode 63%
Layer 3) Copy Layer 2 - Overlay 55%


Layer 4) India Ink on Yupo Scan 14 - Screen 68%

Light Painting with Steel Wool Sparks on the 4th of July

Here's what we did for the 4th of July!  

I love how you can see my silhouette on this one.   

 Here's another cool one with high arcs.  I think Oliver did this one.

As the fireworks were going off a few blocks away in town, we were in the park quietly doing our thing.  No noise with this, and seemingly safer than sparklers.  Seriously, the steel wool has a gentler and quieter burn than a sparkler.

 

 Here's the first try by Oliver.

 

Aidin's first attempt.  He got a red caste to his sparks.  Perhaps he was swinging the whisk slower, so the sparks weren't burning quite as hot?

My first attempt at it.  Looks like Cindarella's pumpkin carriage!

Aidin sis this one.  I can tell because his were red.

 At the end, the boys were getting more creative - ad libbing with their swing patterns.

We went to the park next to our house, and did it on the baseball diamond as sand that won't catch fire.    We brought a watering can to snuff out any sparks that needed dampening.   Although there was a streetlight nearby, it didn't seem to disturb our light experiments.  In this photo, I turned up the light after-the-fact so you could see WHERE we were doing this.

The crew : 2 boys (Oliver and Aidin, aged 14 and 13) and I made the sparks (one at a time) ; my husband manned the camera.  That seemed to be a good sized crew - with good communication among us :  "Camera-man ready? Camera-man ready.  Oliver ready?  Ready.  Light ready? Spark it up!"   Each one of us had a different style, swung the whisk a different way and at different speeds for different effects. 

Actually I've been wanting to do this since back in wintertime, when I wanted to do it on frozen Lake Winnebago ...  There's always next year!

This is the instructional You Tube video we consulted for the technique.
It's ingeniously simple, and kinder and gentler than a sparkler--but still hot.  And quiet.  No booms or noise with this effect.      My camera would not allow us to set the exposure for a full 30 seconds, as recommended in the video.  We did this with 15 seconds--with great success!

Remember ALL safety precautions!

Texture Tuesday : Pick More Daisies

Photo Processing Layer by Layer :
Layer 1) Background Image - cement cleaned up, smoothed out
Layer 2) Copy Background Image - Soft Light 38%
Layer 3) 2LO Junkyard 25 - Soft Light 37%
Layer 4) 2LO 1 - Soft Light 100%
Layer 5) Kim Klassen's Rest Texture - Soft Light 21%
Layer 6) Kim Klassen's Karla Texture - Soft Light 38%
Layer 7) Kim Klassen's Wonderful Magic Texture - Screen 100%
Layer 8) Kim Klassen's Chalk Magic Texture - Soft Light 18%
Layer 9) Text - CK Ali's Hand Font - Multiply 76%

Here's the original image I started with.
Taken in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where they were having a Latin Fest and where I purchased the very well-made sun hat.  My Old Friend, J, bought me some flowers to go with it. ;-)

Sharing with The Texture Artists FaceBook Group and Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday.

Photo Heart Connection November 2013

One morning on the way into work, I spied this frosty leaf in the parking lot with early morning sun streaming in from the side.  I was grateful I had my camera along to capture the moment.

Lovely color.  Lovely texture. 
A Joy to behold.

2B D29 : My Very Own Textures

I feel like Kim gave me the keys to the Kingdom with this lesson!  The whole world has opened wide with the knowledge of how to build textures.    I've been a big texture lover for years ...  I've got a hard drive full of wonderful texture pictures, but I never quite knew how to go from raw textures to the beautiful abstract textures that can effectively be layered into a photo ...  until now!

Now I know the secrets!  I'm so excited!  Just when I find I'm running out of space on my hard drive.  Doh!  I'm also learning that these layered texture files can grow into whopping big files in a hurry.

I've decided to name the textures in this set after some of the beloved characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time.  Mary Margaret, Charming, Henry and Emma.

The Bird Brush came from sd_stock here at Deviant Art.

Don't worry-- There are many more characters on the show who need textures.  Including the Villains.  More to come!

Here are some of the base textures I started with on my texture walk in downtown Oshkosh a few weeks ago :

 
A few more thoughts on this exercise :  It seems I would get one of the textures "just right" and then by the time I exported it, and smallified it, something changed.  It just didn't look quite like I had worked up.  Sometimes it made the softer parts rougher, or the lighter parts darker.  Finally, I just gave up.  This is what I ended up with.

Of course the real test will be to actually layer these into some "real" photos.  I'll leave that for a separate post. 

Although I can't share Kim's basic recipes for creating great textures (Sign up for the class and you'll learn the secrets!), I will share Lost and Taken's Tutorial for How to Create Subtle Grunge Textures which shows a similar process.