Today I finally took some time to walk around outside with my macro lens attached to my camera. Macro lens- oh how I’ve missed you! I found some flowers and plants I’m not familiar with- maybe someone (Carol, Debbie?) can tell me what they are.
There is a huge spiky plant in a bed out front. It is past the blooming stage (you can see the faded red flowers still ).
I love this one- I think it’s probably an annual.
When not unpacking boxes, it seems all we do is look at the sky here. Here is sunrise viewed from our front porch this morning.
The movers arrived Sunday morning at 8:00a.m. during a steady rain that kept up all morning. It was an exciting and exhausting day- and we wouldn’t have made it through without the help of our good friends, Dale and Debbie, who are moving experts. Dale arrived with a toolkit, Debbie with an exacto knife in her pocket. And where were the Andersons’ exacto knives? Packed in moving boxes of course! We haven’t moved for 26 years- we’re out of practice.
Here’s a progress report at the end of Day 2:
The office is up and running! Our desks and supplies are organized (roughly), and the computers are hooked up and waiting for cable internet (currently getting by with our mobile wifi).
The master bedroom is arranged (Debbie made the bed!), but our closet is still a disaster (most of our clothes are not unpacked). Our bathroom is organized if not decorated. The other two bedrooms are full of boxes.
The garage is a work in progress; a lot has been accomplished.
The kitchen is fully functional- although it was a comedy of errors as I taught myself how to cook with a gas stove today! We had our first sitdown dinner tonight (thank goodness for Trader Joe’s frozen goodies), although we still have to sit surrounded by boxes.
We’ve hardly made a dent in the unpacking, but there is no deadline, right?
We had monsoon rains accompanied by thunder and lightning in the late afternoon and evening. I took this shot from our back patio after the rain, but while thunder was booming. I continue to be fascinated with Arizona skies!
This little guy still won’t let me get close. He has no problem buzzing around my head- basically telling me to BACK OFF from his feeder. But he won’t come near the feeder itself unless I’m 8-10 feet away. He is basically king of the yard this summer.
My whole family left today, and I’m alone in a very empty house- which will go on the market soon. Endings and beginnings.
I’m strangely un-busy and am using the time to edit and organize the 1700 PLUS photos taken over the last two weeks during my daughter’s family’s visit, as well as catch up on my blog and last week’s assignment for Beyond Beyond.
One of our Beyond Beyond assignments was to use a beach photo taken by Kim Klassen and edit it however we wished after watching a video on using the tone curve to bring out different tones in the image. I decided to use one of MY recent beach photos, which is similar to hers except for having my grandson and son-in-law in it. I attempted to make a cold day at Bodega look sunny and warm by adding magenta and yellow with the tone curve, as well as some split toning.
Another part of the lesson was using layer styles in Photoshop. I added a sepia layer (at reduced opacity) to this photo of Henry and then added type with a metallic style added to echo the metallic background. The photo reminded me of an illustration in a children’s board book, so I used a primary looking font.
The main part of the assignment was to create a photo using your own style. I thought the above photo showed my background as a first grade teacher; however, clean editing (often in black and white) is really my style for my family photos. So I decided to go with a family photo for the assignment.
My daughter was at a conference all day Friday, and my husband was working- so I had the kids from the time they woke up until bedtime. We did laundry, worked a bit in the yard, blew bubbles, and then it was time for lunch- a PIGGY PICNIC in the backyard!
Spring is definitely happening in Benicia, despite a brief rainstorm. I’ve been a bit under the weather lately and haven’t done much photography except around my yard. Thank goodness for flowers, always around waiting to be photographed!
Trader Joe’s had some little pots of lavender for sale, so I snagged one that was wilting rapidly in the afternoon heat yesterday. It has perked up nicely today, and it is now blogworthy! I do love lavender, and am so happy to have it in my yard again!
Taken with my macro lens and texured with Kim Klassen’s 1301 and sybil textures.
My husband loves to plant geraniums in pots on our deck- they are colorful, they live forever, and they can take a lot of neglect. Here is a macro of some tiny geranium buds- if you look fast, they almost look like roses, don’t they?
Textured with 2 layers of Kim Klassen’s 1301 and one layer of Cora.
Yesterday I had a wonderful morning photographing flowers and plants in our backyard and then editing them with textures. This is why I retired!
Textures are from Florabella.
I got out my macro lens again, this time capturing some of the bits of Spring around our garden.
I wandered around outside with my macro lens today. This is a tiny detail of . . . pine needles?- some evergreen, anyway. There was enough sunshine for some great bokeh. The shallow depth of field with macro always amazes me – this was at f/10!
We had a really fun lesson today that would have been so useful in my teaching and scrapbooking days. Maybe I’ll be inspired to get back into digital scrapbooking or at least more card-making. The lesson had to do with finding a bunch of objects in one color, taking a photo, and then making a layout using color swatches from the photo. Really, really fun! There was also a lesson on creating presets of color hazes, which I actually already know how to do, thank goodness. I used one of my haze presets for the first photo.
Because I was waiting for my houseguests (Debbie and Dale!!!) to arrive, I wanted to get my homework done quickly. I actually skipped the first step of taking a photo and found two photos to use that had lots of shades in the same color family.
This is from our visit to Balboa Park in San Diego; I almost stopped traffic to get this photograph!
And this one is from our own backyard (last week).
I realize now that I shouldn’t have used a white background for the layouts- stretching the image to make the space at the bottom was half the fun for me! I also figured out where to find square brushes- I don’t use many brushes in Photoshop. As I said, a fun lesson!
I found this little guy in among the leaves the other day. Spring seems to be on its way!
I am taking some time this week to catch up on some of the challenges for my Daily Challenge Flickr group. Since I stopped doing a Project 365 this year and am no longer constantly searching for new photo subjects each day, I haven’t been so dependent on this group for new topics. But, it is still fun to participate a couple times a week- I always love seeing what this creative people in this group post.
One of the topics this week is UP- as in looking up or view from above. We are having gorgeous Spring weather here, so I just had to look outside for inspiration.
Texture- Sonata by Florabella
It amazes/amuses me to see bare trees with just a leaf or two just hanging on throughout autumn and winter when the rest have all fallen and been swept or blown away. There’s a lesson there somewhere. . .
Textured with Anna from Kim Klassen’s Downton Abbey collection.
melinda anderson photography 