Happy Fence Friday

Fence Friday, huh? Why not? Lots and lots over at Flickr if you want to look: http://www.flickr.com/groups/fencedfriday/ and http://www.flickr.com/groups/fence_friday/.

366: Day 53

One good thing: my sister brought my newest niece into the world today, welcome, baby Sydney Jean, we love you already!

Another good thing: my lens arrived!

And another good thing - the minute I stepped out the door with it, this beautiful cooper's hawk sharp-shinned hawk was just sitting there waiting for me.

Beyond Layers: Getting Painterly

Well. Painterly is what I'm mostly always going for, so I was thrilled with this week's lesson. Painterly in a mixed media kind of way though, not a fine art kind of way... which is how I feel the tulips came out... and maybe the gull too? I don't know. I was tempted to brighten the flowers, add some script or something mixed media-ish... but I refrained. Probably because I kind of did that yesterday and had lots of fun already. How many ways can I alter that tulip photo? That's a good question, I bet I could do a different treatment every day of the year. But, don't worry, I won't!

Here are my finished images, the tulips and the gull.

and here are my source images so you can see the difference. I think the best thing I learned was about sharpening the image ahead of time to get a more painterly feel out of it. 

 

Thanks for looking :)

More Tulips

Another tulip creation, I'm having fun with these. 

Sunbreak

A couple more photos from our brief sun-break today - too bad none of the hundred shots of rainbow came out any better than the one on my cell phone!

Beyond Layers Class: Time Capsule, Part 2

Well, look at that. Kim did have a magic trick for making these. Easy-peasy. (For those of you not taking the class, she did give us a free resource for some nice templates - Check out Gingerpixel - and I'm sure there are more on the web too.)

For this one, I couldn't resist adding a texture layer to bring it all together. I used Kim's "Evolve". Thanks for looking!

BTW, that's Pippi, the Buff Orpington, and Lulu, the Cuckoo Maran. We have two others, Daphne and Bella, I'm sure they will be featured at some point.

Texture Tuesday

I have two for Texture Tuesday. Both use Kim Klassen's "Simplicity" texture, plus others.

More Texture Play

This first picture is one of my sister's, she takes amazing people pictures, and has a real gift with lighting. I don't know how she does it. This is Ashley, my little niece. I added a few layers of texture to it, to make it feel old and treasured. 

and this is an old dandelion photo, it looks better big - go ahead, click on it!

Beyond Layers: Week 2 Part 2

I made this using a combination of these two photos of mine, one from a lake in Oregon, the other, a bird in Florida. Plus, Kim's Plaster Squared texture, and a Flypaper texture.

 

Texture Tuesdays

(Edited to add: I just started Kim Klassen's Beyond Layers e-class - a week or so late - and the first assignment is to write our creative story. I think this can be mine... there's more to it of course. Glass bead making, jewelry making, fits and starts with painting... trying different things at different times. Waiting for time and freedom to create until I about burst and just do it. Lots of that. Lots of waiting. Too many projects started and never finished... supplies, supplies, supplies. And of course mixed in with all of that is parenthood, and healing from illness, and life. It's probably not that much different than anyone else's story.)

The story:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who took lots and lots of pictures. First she filled shoe boxes up with prints and negatives... and as time went on she filled her computer up with them and plastered the internet with them, and she was happy. Then she started taking pictures of her beads, in order to sell them online, and photography became "work"... and she stopped taking pleasure in it and started only using her nice camera for that. Everything else was shot with the iPhone.

One day she saw that a bunch of her blogging friends were doing a year long iPhone photo challenge - one a day - and she thought "Oh, cool, I can do that!" but a few days into that she got bored. So she downloaded some fun photo editing apps and went to town. But then she thought, "how much better would it be if I had more control over this process?" and so she bought a book, which is what she always does when she wants to learn something new. The book was beautiful and amazing and turned her on to layers and textures.

One Tuesday, this Tuesday, she saw that Jen Worden posted about Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesdays. That sparked an interest! So, she got busy, downloading textures. Playing around. And made something.

This is really only the beginning of the story, because the girl is in love with photography again.

The End.


The original photo, a mermaid from Friday Harbor:



The textured photo, using Kim's 'Simplicity' and 'music lovin' textures:



A few more things I've been working on over the past couple of days:

Thanks for looking :)

Wearing the Photographer Hat

It's true, I love taking pictures. Of flowers, and water, and mountains, and my cat, the dog... anything colorful, yes. And I especially love taking pictures of my kid. But taking pictures of beads? Well, I can only think of one thing that is worse - taking pictures of finished jewelry. Seriously. It's not that fun. Sitting there, bead after bead, getting a crick in your neck, hoping that they are going to turn out and you don't have to do them again. Trying to get the light right, trying to avoid the glare. Getting just the right angle... stretching out your neck so it doesn't stick crooked. Trying to make sure there are no fingerprints. No cat hairs. No dust. You know the drill.

Well, several weeks ago I broke down and bought an EZcube kit. Yes, it's very expensive. It took me seven years to get around to caving to this want, to decide it was really a need. Seven years of trying to make my Tupperware box studio work. And then? I let it sit in a box for a month! I know, I know, crazy. It's not that it's hard to set up - it's Very Easy (or Very EZ), in fact. Part of it was I had nothing to photograph, and part of it was, it's very expensive, and what if my pictures were no better than before? What if it wasn't the miracle I was looking for?

So...today was the day, for some reason, I was ready to test it all out. Here it is - isn't it overkill? Apparently the smaller cube is on back order... so I set up the monster one. Look at how little my big bead looks!



And here are two photos of my latest bead. One with the gradient background setup and one with the black.





The glare is gone, yes. I'm happy about that for sure. But. They are still missing something. The magic. Where is the magic? I hold my bead, and it's there. I look at the picture, it's missing. Am I asking too much? Perhaps it's a lesson in letting go of the inner perfectionist? I don't know. I *think* it's possible, because I see other bead artists with magical photos. But maybe their beads are even MORE magical than the photos, maybe they are still wishing for more too? Maybe.

I'm going to figure it out though. Because it's not the day to tell that inner perfectionist to take a hike - she's been with me way too long to just walk away now. She's never given up without a fight before, so there's my hope. I'll find the magic one of these days. You'll know when I do, too!

Photo Friday: Children

This week's Photo Friday is Children and for once I have the perfect shot for it. I love this, cheesy as it is. Done with one of my iphone apps.

Another Purple Flower Photo

Summer camp started today - what was I thinking? 8:30 AM tennis camp? I *was* thinking I'd get up, take the kiddo there, walk the dog around the block for an hour and then take Luke to regular summer camp and go home and do something creative. Today did not work out that way *at all*. Will try again Wednesday, wish me luck.

Oh! Check out these very beautiful, amazing really, photos. Elephants and people, big cats and beautiful women, deserts... gorgeous: http://www.ashesandsnow.org/en/flash-popup.php.

PS. The hamster is in his roller ball, chasing the cat around the room. Bumping into the dogs. It's pretty funny.

Mushroom Flower

bee

Happy Flower Photos

Happy because I just have not been thrilled with the way my new camera takes flower photos - I think it's the lenses and today I decided to use the big one for these and they came out much better than usual. So, I'm happy.

Photo Friday - Blur

Seriously, this week's challenge was kind of a cheat for me - I really didn't put much thought into it at all since so many of my pictures come out this way - almost every picture I take of my kid, my cat, my dogs... is a blur.