Sunny Flower Day

Today might be one of the last warm days of the year, so I thought I'd have a little fun with my Jerusalem artichokes.

Okay - that sounds a little strange...

I thought I'd have a little fun playing around with a picture of my Jerusalem artichokes in Photoshop.

Much better...

These are the second to last vegetable from our gardens - the last being the Brussels sprouts, which hopefully will be ready just in time for Thanksgiving.  Even though the Jerusalem artichokes practically take over the entire garden in the spring and I have to weed them out of everywhere like mad to keep them contained in their little section, I keep them around for this fantastic display in the Fall.

I love walking through the parterre and having their sunny flowers dancing in the breeze way above my head.  It makes me feel like a kid again - running through meadows, picking flowers, months of vacation time and convincing my little sister it was her turn to do my chores.  (Sorry sis!)

So when the sun came out this morning and it warmed up like August, I just had to play --- even if it was only on the computer.

A Rose By Any Other Name

I don't know what it is about some of the flowers in our gardens, but they make me want to take out everything from the background except for the bloom.

Maybe it's the brilliant color.  But probably it's the way that the light shines through the petals.  It looks like they're absorbing the sun directly.

This rose looks to me as if it is made out of porcelain.  Its' petals seem so delicate and fragile.  Even though I know that it would take a bit of effort to tear them - and I'd probably get pricked by a thorn when I tried.

I never had much luck with roses before I found this Knockout Rose.  They would get black spot or aphids would eat them to the stem.  I was really good at growing rose canes, not so much at getting blooms.  This one blooms from May through --- well, as long as the weather holds.

All in all, this Knockout Rose lives up to its' name.  It's October and there are still a lot of blooms growing.  Some parts of the bush have gotten a bit of mildew, but the overall plant is thriving.  That's what I like about disease resistant rose bushes most of all.

Oh - and a Midnight Muffin Madness note.  My DH is bringing pie tomorrow (pumpkin - I'll post), so the muffins will resume next week.

Horsing Around

 

I was playing with an online photo editor just to see what it would do.  I know, too much free time!

So the photo on the left is the original one from my camera - and the one on the right is what the online photo software thinks that the photo should be.

I think that the camera was closer to the color reality of the shot.  There was a bit more blue in the grass.  The dark brown horse had some lovely red highlights in its' mane and the dappled horses coat was more golden.

As far as the sharpening of the picture, the online photo editor did a better job.  The day was really clear and the details of the horses were very crisp.

I can see how folks would like playing around with the online photo editor - they had a few neat filters built in to the application, but I wasn't totally sold on it.

Maybe I just like doing things by hand - or I'm a bit of a control freak - but I prefer to just use Photoshop to get the pictures to reflect what I see.

I'll keep looking for an app that automatically makes my pictures look like what my eyes see, however. I'm not adverse to saving time!

Filter Stripes

I was reading about filters in photoshop today and I ran across a website that basically said, if you have bad photos and don't know what to do with them then try some of these filters - your photos will look fantastic.

I figured, what have I got to lost besides a few hours of train time, right? So I gave one a try.

This filter is supposed to make it seem as though the train is whizzing by so fast that it loses its' colors on the way through the station.  Wow - that would be a cool effect.

But not so much.  I think it looks more like I took a bunch of tape and stuck it on the photo.

Maybe the trick is to match up the right bad photo with the right fantastic filter?  I'll have to work on this.

And I'll spare you the picture of a building viewing it's reflection in water.  Let's just say that that one was a little disturbing!

The Next Round

The next round of Spring blossoms has begun here at our bucolic manor.  The azalea is in bloom.  It's a little early, thanks to our mild winter this year.  You can still see the winter bronzing on the leaves.  But that doesn't detract from it's fabulous fuchsia blossoms.

I really felt like getting out my paints and spending the day capturing the essence of these beauties on canvas.  There's nothing like painting outside - plein air - with the warm sun and the fresh smell of the outdoors.

But, that wasn't in the cards.  Too many chores to do before the rain came.

So I will settle for painting with photoshop!  If I only had this years ago for my art classes.  When I was younger, my mother arranged for me to work with a local artist at her studio after school.  It was like a giant playroom to me.  I never knew what medium I would get to work with - oils, watercolors, clays - it could be anything.  She would work on her commissioned pieces or prepare for a show and I would make my own "masterpieces" of the still lifes she would set up for me.  My end results were - well, let's just say that they weren't gallery-ready.  No matter the results, though, it was great fun and I still take the time to sketch and paint now and again.

Even though photoshop can give me great results, I still do prefer actually painting.  I like that quiet time, the initial sketching, getting absorbed in the play of light and color.  So relaxing.

And my mother still thinks they are all masterpieces - you have to love that!

The Great Phoneography Compet(IT)ion

My DH and I went to the Great Millbrook Library Phone-ography Competition this evening to view our photos that we had submitted and see the other work on display.  It was a wonderful event and we had a terrific time.

The director of the event thanked all of the participants for the photos being shown and then introduced the judges for the phonography competition.

The 2 gentlemen were art teachers from 2 of the schools in the area.  They seemed to have fun judging the competition - and were surprised at the quality of photographs that our smartphones were able to produce.  The playing field was sort of leveled because of the restrictions on the cameras and the editing had to be done on the phone.  This made the "eye of the artist" really become the focus of the judging.

There was one point that one of the teachers made that I found sort of interesting.  He said that since people are using smartphones more as cameras - posting instagrams, flickr, pininterest and so on - they seem to be looking at things that they would have previously just ignored.  I think that's true.

One woman who had 2 photos entered is using instagrams as her "daily phone call" to her daughter.  They share what they see everyday instead of talking on the phone or IMing.  I guess it is a case of a picture being worth 1,000 words.

My DH and I had such a good time with this charity event.  At the end, all of the photographs were raffled off.  I got a beautiful picture of posies that had a ripple filter applied - very Monet like.  My DH got a chicken in a coop with Warhol-like coloring.  It made him laugh.

It was well worth the time to enter our photos.  And more worth our time to support a local library.

Just great fun!

Waiting Station

Some nights it doesn't pay to be 30 seconds late.  Because 30 seconds late for a train isn't really 30 seconds - it's actually 59 minutes and 30 seconds...the amount of time until the next train.

So what is there to do at a train station for 59 minutes and 30 seconds?  Well, not much.

If you're really bored, you could take a photo every 15 seconds, turn them partially transparent and then layer them all together.  But only if you were really bored.

Of course, now that I have this blog to keep me organized, I'm never late for the train by 30 seconds and I wouldn't be sitting on a wooden bench trying to use my hand as a tripod and take a picture every 15 seconds for almost an hour.  Of course that would never happen to me...

Well, it was either take 120 pictures and mess around with them or obsess about missing the darn train by a mere 30 seconds.

I think it looks kind of cool.  You know, if you're really bored.

Taxi!

This was a fun shot I took from the train platform on my way home last week.  It's a view of 125th Street in Manhattan facing east towards Long Island.  I wanted to do one of those effects where there is just one spot of color in the photo, and I thought the yellow cab headed down Lexington would be the perfect spot of color for this rush-hour scene.

Total Time: 30 minutes

I used Photoshop.  In image mode, I changed the color to grayscale.  I selected duo-tone and set the tri-tone option to 2 greens.  I cut the taxi out and placed it in a new layer, selected RGB and changed it to that NYC taxi yellow.  Just to conserve download time, I saved it sized for the web.

Here's the original.

I think everything gets all jammed together in the original shot.  Since the yellow taxi in the foreground is so bright, you don't really see the bridge at the end of the horizon.  It feels rather claustrophobic with everything crushed together and the bug bus and truck so near.

When I washed out the color, it gentles the whole picture and lets your eye move around to see all of the pieces.  So much calmer that way.

Please note the bus in the lower right-hand corner - that's not my bus.  Nope, my bus is still about 5 blocks away.  I had to get off and run for it.