We were just seventeen . . .

When my husband and I got to Chico on Monday, we checked into our hotel and then headed over to Peet’s Coffee, my husband’s favorite coffee place in any town that has a Peet’s (we don’t have it in Arizona).  When I saw the Beatles mural on the wall down the street, I was ECSTATIC knowing that my friend, Carol was coming to town the next day.  We were pretty much Beatles fanatics during the sixties- so what better photo op could there possibly be than a Beatles mural (unless it was Paul or Ringo in the flesh!)?

As I was standing between two parked cars to snap these photos, the owner of one of the cars came along and offered to take a photo of both of us with the Fab Four.  We couldn’t resist!

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Linking up with Kim Klassen’s Friday Finds- we found the Beatles!

Kim Klassen dot Com

 

 

 

 

 

Melinda8 Comments

Remembering

We were in Chico, my hometown, this week, because of business my husband had nearby.  It was a very brief and bittersweet visit, because I knew I might not have occasion to return, now that we live in Arizona.  My college roommate, Carol drove up from Sacramento to keep me company; I have some fun photos from that visit to share with you tomorrow!

On the way out of town yesterday, we stopped at the cemetery, where the ashes of my mother and three grandparents are located. On my other visits, I didn’t take time to really notice how beautiful the grounds are- or maybe it wasn’t at the same time of year. This time I took time to soak it all in.

Beautiful oaks shade the lawn.

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The artificial flowers we put in the vases by their vaults have disappeared. My mother would have disliked them anyway; she was a lady with impeccable taste!

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Melinda3 Comments

Road Trip

On road trips my husband does all the driving- and I read, play Words with Friends, and take photos out the window with my phone.  Now that I have more apps than ever before, I have a lot of fun editing the photos.  The last two were taken through the car window at 60+ miles per hour; I found that adding textures (in Snapseed or Mextures) helped disguise any reflections in the glass.

I’m linking up today with “app happy” Wednesday on Barb’s Keeping with the Times.

Keeping With The Times

Photo 1: The Starbucks we finally found after searching for 45 minutes (painted in Waterlogue)

Photo 2: Power Lines in the Sun (edited in Mextures and blended back with the original in Image Blender)

Photo 3: The Road Ahead (textured – can’t remember which app- sorry- then painted in Waterlogue and blended with original)

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Melinda4 Comments

Negative

My friend and fellow photographer, Carol (infocusdaily.com), and I have been talking about the use of negative space in our images.  In looking through some still-life photos I took Saturday, I found one that definitely has negative space- more than I usually use in my photos. This was taken in my current home studio- the hall bathroom- that’s a shower curtain in the background!

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Melinda2 Comments

In search of my still life mojo. . .

In the hopes of finding my still life photography mojo, I’ve taken on two of Kim Klassen’s photo classes- Start to Finish and Be Still.  Both emphasize still life photography, a genre where I often feel awkward and uninspired. After two years of doing a Project 365 and another year and a half of regular photography blogging, I have taken photos of almost everything in my house- actually two houses! Time for some new inspiration!

My intentions for this class are to learn some new skills and to create some photo art that is truly my own expression.

I am just beginning to gather my props and was delighted yesterday when a package arrived in the mail that contained the family history items that my husband had gathered from his father’s home during last week’s visit to Kansas. Yay- props! You might notice a Mason jar in the background- it’s new! I had asked my husband to look in his dad’s house for some jars; when he mentioned it to his sister, Kathy, she gave him one of hers to give to me. How awesome!

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This photo is edited using some of Kim Klassen’s older textures- soft grunge, archives, abstract, and scratchedmagicjuly.

I’m linking up with Friday Finds as well as my Start to Finish classmates.

Kim Klassen dot Com

 

 

 

 

Melinda14 Comments

App Happy!

I took this shot with my iPhone of one of the birdhouses in our backyard (left by the previous owner).  It is perched on a piece of driftwood, and is very low to the ground.  I haven’t seen any birds going in it, but I might be missing something.  Do the quail or roadrunners fly up into it??? Seems like the opening is too small. My bird-knowledgeable friends need to help me out here.

Painted in Waterlogue

Several apps were used as part of my process for this image.  I forgot that I could take the shot in square mode, thus eliminating cropping it to a square afterward- so I needed to crop it in one of the apps.  I used PicTapGo for this and also added a bit of warmth.  I found myself really disliking the right side of the photo (rocks and an out-of-focus branch), so I then opened the photo in Snapseed and used the Tilt-Shift effect to blur out the unwanted parts of the image.  Next, I added a texture in Mextures and a watercolor filter in Waterlogue.  I finished it off by adding the word, Home, in Phonto. Five apps for one photo?  Seems a bit extreme, but it worked for me this time.

As part of my quest to learn more about iPhoneography, I am linking up today with Barb’s new App-Happy Wednesday on Keeping With the Times.  I’m eager to see what the other iPhoneographers have done- I’m such a newbie at all of this!

Keeping With The Times
Note to my friends who take photos with their phones and are intimidated by the whole DSLR photography and editing thing:
This is seriously FUN! It is easy to edit your photos and make them look like little pieces of art.  Most of the apps are free- and the ones that aren’t are inexpensive. Try it!  You can figure out all of this in an afternoon. Join me on instagram. I’m #melindaroo.

Melinda13 Comments

Create

Simple is this week’s Texture Tuesday theme. I tried not to overthink it, so decided on a simple composition, a few textures, and a black and white conversion.

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textures: bamboo, sophia, and canvasback by Kim Klasse

Melinda7 Comments

Wabi-Sabi

I learned a new term last week on Kim Klassen’s blog- wabi-sabi.  As I understand it, wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic embracing the imperfect, the incomplete- the natural, the simple and unaffected- the moment just as it is.  The perfectly imperfect.  The now. A philosophy for art, living, relationships- I could go on. I love it!

I used that new (to me) term in completing Day 52 of Beyond Beyond.  This lesson gave us a new template for Lightroom and Photoshop and challenged us to print a photo- and use that photo in another photo.  A picture in a picture- which reminds me of the opening of each episode of Modern Family, a show I’ve only discovered in the last few months.  Kim’s example was a picture in a picture in a picture, so I did this too.  I’d like to use this technique again with people- perhaps my favorite models, Miles and Henry.

I chose a Mason jar to photograph, this time with flowers, because of its wabi-sabi-ness! It is imperfect, utilitarian, and simple, and I love it.

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2B_wabisabi_ pic_in_picYou might have noticed that my blog has a new look. It’s been well over a year since I’ve made any changes, so it seems like time for an update.  I went back to my original layout with a new header, and made some corrections on my “about” page (it still said it was 2013 and that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area- oooops!). The slideshow is gone, and I have my sidebar back. There are other little changes I want to make as well- after I figure out how to do them.  So what do you think?

Melinda11 Comments

Hippity Hop

Look who I found hopping around my front yard!

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This was taken while sitting at my desk looking out through the window.  She (I always think it’s a she) visits pretty regularly and hops from bush to bush, where she hides from the hawks and coyotes. I’m hoping to see babies!

HAPPY EASTER!

Textured with Kim Klassen’s waterfront 21. Linking up with Friday Finds.

Melinda7 Comments

Photobooth Boys

One of my goals for this week was to start getting caught up on my Beyond Beyond (2B) lessons.  I’m working backwards and doing whatever strikes my fancy.  This one (Lesson 51) was so much fun- I downloaded a photobooth storyboard action that Kim linked for us and put in some of my shots of the grandboys from when they were here! Easy and very entertaining!

PHOTOBOOTH_BOYS

Melinda6 Comments

Blood Moon

Like everyone else, I was riveted to last night’s lunar eclipse AKA blood moon.  I set up a chair in the driveway, and settled in wearing a stocking cap, gloves, warm socks, and a fleece jacket, accompanied by my camera, tripod, cable release, binoculars, flashlight, and a Lisa Gardner thriller.  It was so cold! And I was a bit concerned that a coyote ( or perhaps a scorpion) might come by.  I snapped photos every ten minutes, and was enjoying myself- but then the moon turned a beautiful orange-ish color, looking three dimensional like a painting of some distant planet. Unbelievable! I took a few (very dark) photos, but mostly just sat gazing at it until I could gaze no more.  My photos do not begin to capture what I saw.  But that’s okay.  I SAW it!

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Melinda5 Comments

Perfectly Imperfect

A few years ago I attended a knitting workshop. I was knitting along and noticed I had made a tiny mistake quite a way back in my project.  Upon noticing my dismay, the instructor launched into a speech saying that it is the tiny imperfections that show the difference between handmade and machine-made. Handmade is made by a real person with skill and care; machine-made means, well, made by a machine! I’ve always thought of that when I look at the hand-painted designs on the pieces in my Blue Ridge pottery collection.  Each plate, cup, saucer, bowl etc. was painted by hand, making no two pieces alike, even those with the same pattern.  Perfectly imperfect (which just happens to be the theme for this week’s Texture Tuesday) !

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Although I have almost an 8 piece set of one pattern, Sun Bouquet, I usually mix up my table settings and include pieces from several patterns.  Most of the patterns I look for are in primary colors, so they blend well together.  And there’s my newest Mason jar (yes, I now have two) in the middle- it’s perfectly imperfect as well!

Edited with two of Kim’s textures, 1301 and sybil.  Linking up with Texture Tuesday today.

Melinda12 Comments