Textured with Kim Klassen’s sybil texture for Texture Tuesday.
Flowers in the Crannied Wall
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Alfred Tennyson
At some point soon-ish, these flowers will be gone, so I thought I should take some shots (in our front yard) before they disappear. Every time I look at them, the above poem goes through my mind- one of the very few poems I still remember from high school. I like to think it was the deep meaning that drew me to this poem, but I think I might have just liked the word, crannied.
Saturday Night
What does one do on a brisk October night in Arizona? Well, having just seen Gravity last night and having discovered that the beautiful Arizona skies are full of stars, I decided to try a night shot. I googled photographing stars and discovered all sorts of conflicting information. For example, one photographer mandated a wide angle lens set at the sweet spot of 2.8 (my wide angles don’t go to 2.8. . .) with a high ISO- and then adjust shutter speed. Another said f/22 for maximum depth of field and at least 30 seconds at ISO 200. The last one made more sense to me, but then I discovered that 30 seconds wasn’t long enough at f/22- and that I needed to set it on BULB and use a shutter release (my wireless one isn’t working- and not sure that would have helped anyway). SO… I did what I could. I used the widest aperture I could (5.0), a shutter speed of 25 seconds, and a somewhat high ISO (640), depending on Lightroom’s noise reduction to do its magic.
There are a zillion stars over my house!
Here’s the view looking out from my driveway. I had to crop it, because the lights from the house next door were lighting up the left half of the frame. I found it very difficult to compose a shot in the pitch black night! You may notice some lines in the sky; I think they’re airplanes- or a satellite debris field- Aaaaaaaaa! Ignore that last part if you haven’t seen Gravity.
Orange
Next week I am visiting a photography group which I may join, and we are all to bring up to 4 prints to go with this month’s theme- orange and/or spider. I got busy yesterday taking some orange photos (haven’t seen any Arizona spiders yet- yay!) to get printed before next week’s meeting. I also will bring this spider photo (second one down) from last September. I went outside with my macro lens to take a closeup of one of the many marigolds we have growing, but there was so much wind that I ended up picking one and bringing it inside. The light wasn’t as pretty on the inside (darn tinted windows!), but I was able to get better focus.
Yellow
Here’s another photo from our walk at Lynx Lake- these little butterflies were all over the flowers. I finally managed to get close enough while this little one was relatively still.
CM Monthly Blog Link-up
I haven’t participated in the Clickin Moms Monthly Blog Group’s link-up for the last two months, because I was so busy with getting ready for our move from California and then with moving into our house in Arizona. But this month I am BACK!
The topic for this month is a difficult one for me- Humanizing the Non-human (huh?). After reading the details and see examples I have chosen three photos to post. Two are pretty abstract and open to interpretation (I’m offering no explanations- not sure I have any!); the last one is a pretty literal response to the challenge, at least I think it is- but maybe not. Anyway- here are some photos for your enjoyment!
Check out what the other photographers in the group have done with this topic! Start with Lisa Jones and then follow the links around the circle.
Deep Purple
I’m still getting to know the plants and flowers in our “garden” and am on a rush schedule now that it is October. I’m anticipating that the flowers will soon be gone and that freezing weather will be upon us at some point; this will be the first time I’ve lived with snow. Yesterday I used my macro lens to photograph this beauty with its deep purple petals. I textured it with Kim Klassen’s cool grunge texture, an oldie but a goodie, and am linking up with today’s Texture Tuesday.
Lynx Lake
Yes, there is water in Arizona! Drive about 5 minutes past Costco, and you are into the Prescott National Forest. Last weekend we took a short walk along Lynx Lake, where we watched an osprey fly around and a heron circle and land. People were fishing, canoeing, and kayaking- and we were content to sit and watch it all. A beautiful way to spend a sunny Saturday.
Beyond Beyond- Day 29
This is seriously fun! I have played around a bit with textures before using Photoshop brushes and was never satisfied with anything I did. This time it was frustrating at first, but I kept at it- and finally created a few I might actually USE.
I took macro photos around the house of a few textures- rocks, tile, clouds, carpet, window blinds, screen etc. Then I brought them into Lightroom and Photoshop and played with them- for 2 days off and on. I changed colors, blurred them, painted over them, added text, used blend modes etc. etc. The test was to layer them with a photograph and see if they actually did anything wonderful to the photo. As I mentioned in my last post, this is where I ran into trouble. Some of my textures were too light to even show up. But I played some more today and ended up with some decent ones. I want to do this again, but I have so many textures I’ve bought or collected over the years (and they are so much better than mine)- that I wonder if it is something I will actually do. It is fun though.
The textures on top are from a rock and a window blind combined with clouds.
The bottom two textures are both from a tile on my hearth (with different tints).
My husband wants to know what I’m naming my textures. The Downton Abbey collection has been done already by our mentor, Kim Klassen. I have some ideas- I’ll keep you posted!
Weather
I’m making a slight attempt to catch up with my Flickr and 2B (Beyond Beyond) challenges today. The 2B challenge I’m working on is creating textures. Kim Klassen makes it look so easy, but my first two attempts have been epic FAILS. The test of a good texture is that it should enhance a photo, right? The two I created were fun to do and looked okay until I added them to photos. Back to the drawing board, er… wacom tablet!
One of my Flickr group’s topics this week is weather. Since I’m a bit obsessed with the weather in my new home in Northern Arizona, I kept that topic in the back of my head. Last night I had just joined my husband on the couch to watch football when he said, “Now there’s some clouds for you to photograph.” (he is always pointing out things for me to photograph). I looked out our east-facing window to see lovely puffy, pink clouds, a reflection of the sunset in the west, behind our house. I saw all this explained on the Weather Channel, but don’t remember how and why it happens that way. I grabbed my camera and went out front to take a few shots. Then I turned around to go back in. Oh. My. God.
Echinacea part 3
I might like this one best- black and white with a bit of matte processing and grain. The screen somehow gave it a textured vignette- there’s no added texture.
Echinacea part 2
Love those coneflowers! This one has no special processing; the background is grass seen through a window and screen.
Echinacea
While I was in Yellowstone, one of my daughter’s friends gave her a small bouquet, which included coneflowers (echinacea). I love photographing coneflowers (never knew they were echinacea!), because of their spiky centers. This photo I textured with Kim Klassen’s ruemarion and simplistic for Texture Tuesday.
Just a couple more. . .
Grand Canyon sunrise
Look where I went!
Thanks to our friends winning tickets for the train from Williams, we spent two days and a night at the Grand Canyon! This was a first for both my husband and myself- and it did not disappoint! We stayed on the South Rim and, yes, the hotels are really right along the rim. Magnificent!
We took shuttle buses in both directions, stopping off along the way to admire the views and take photos. I kept complaining about the harsh light and lack of clouds the first day, but sunrise and plenty of big puffy clouds made up for it on day two.
We only had two mishaps. The first was on our first stop on the first day- a gust of wind lifted my Tilley hat right off my head and into the canyon. The second was an hour later, when a bug on her hand startled my friend, Debbie while she was taking a photo. She screamed and threw her iPhone over the railing onto a tiny, scary ledge below. A young, hunky European (?) guy crawled through the railing and down onto the ledge below and retrieved it to our amazement. He then walked even further along the ledge and stood with toes at the very edge in a King of the World pose. Yikes!
Here are two of my many photos, the first taken at sunrise by our hotel.
melinda anderson photography 