The soundtrack for this blog post is Bonnie Raitt’s Have a Heart (can’t get it out of my head- and I love her!).
Did you see the heart?
Linking up with Friday Finds today.
And for your listening pleasure. . .
This version is less up-tempo than the the one in my head- but it’s Bonnie! And any song that begins with “Hey, shut up!” certainly gets my attention!
I’m getting a lot of mileage out of this week’s bouquet. I thought I was done with it, but walked by yesterday and noticed the light- the rest is history!
It is FALL, but still no beautiful fall leaves. So here is some Fall COLOR for you. . .
This week I was going through my antique dental cabinet and discovered some seashells that I hadn’t seen since the move to Arizona. I had always kept my father’s shells from his tour in the Pacific in World War II in the cabinet, but didn’t realize that MY small collection had been put in there too. I KNEW they would turn up somewhere! I have photographed the little green one before, but felt compelled to shoot it again, because, well, I was just so happy to see it again! So the shells are this week’s Friday Find.
And, of course, here is a black and white version.
My grocery store sunflowers are starting to droop and turn brown on the edges, alas. I took a bunch of macro shots- and then turned two of my favorites to high contrast, split-toned black and whites, which I then textured with Kim Klassen’s golden.
Linking up with Texture Tuesday today.
Arizona monsoon season!!! What a difference rain makes! Our brown hills have turned green, and, after this week’s huge storm, I went outside and actually found raindrops left on plants from the night before. If you look closely, you’ll some tiny refracted images of flowers in some of the drops.
Linking up with Friday Finds today.
I have just one photo to show so far from the last BeStill 52 lesson on light. The challenge was to photograph spoons with the light hitting them from different angles. You would think this would be easy for me, as I have many, many spoons, but the light was the problem- the sun kept going behind the clouds, which took away the shadows I was trying to capture. Perhaps I’ll get it right next time!
I chose to photograph a few spoons from my grandmother’s souvenir coffee spoon collection from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. I used to play with these spoons when I was a little girl, and I still treasure them today.
Photographing a feather we found at Lynx Lake last week was fun with my macro lens. And then I varied the processing- more fun for a rainy day!
A clean edit.
A warmed up black and white.
An infrared preset- check out that grain- whoa!
Textured to the max!
I am lucky enough to have a couple bags of shells my father brought back from the South Pacific after World War II- from the island of Eniwetok, to be exact. Alhtough I’ve used some of them in other photos, I got them out again yesterday to shoot with my macro lens.
I wanted the shells to be on a wood background, but I don’t like how the grain of my dining table looks in photos- and, truthfully, I didn’t want to lie on the floor. I haven’t bought any kind of tray for still life (still plan to) or wood to use as a background, but I came up with something that for me was a brilliant solution, if I do say so myself! I took the little drawer out from the dental cabinet where my treasures are housed, turned it over, and scattered the shells on top. The wood you see in the photos below is birds-eye maple, which is used for the inside of the drawers in the otherwise mahogany cabinet. I used side lighting from the sliding glass door- and a wide aperture with my macro lens to create shallow depth of field (BeStill 52 lessons).
All the images are textured with two layers of Kim Klassen’s simple or simple1 textures.
Linking up with Texture Tuesday today.
Look what my husband found in the yard the other day (I have trained him well!)! It’s long and striped, but it’s the little fluffy part I was attracted to for this macro shot.
Linking up with Friday Finds today.
My husband and I took a walk at Willow Lake yesterday and discovered that our favorite trail was now surrounded by beautiful golden weeds, waving and billowing in the breeze. I took a couple iPhone shots and brought home a handful to photograph with my macro lens. One of my current Flickr challenges is STARS, which I’m seeing everywhere in nature this week. The iPhone photo below was edited in Snapseed and PixlrExpress.
This might be my favorite star photo of the day, edited in Snapseed only.
At home, I noticed stars within stars within stars in this flower (Queen Anne’s lace?) that I’ve been using in still life compositions (you’ll see them later this week). I took the photos below with my macro lens on my Nikon.
Linking up with App Happy Wednesday!
I seldom used portrait orientation when taking photos until a couple of months ago. Now I seem to be doing it regularly! I may have started turning my camera in my bathroom “studio” to avoid getting towels and bathroom fixtures in the shot, but then I continue to use it- especially when I want a shallow depth of field in front of, as well as behind, my subject. My 50mm lens does this beautifully, as well as my 85mm macro lens. I would love to own a LensBaby some day to play with moving the focus around! I did order one for my iPhone (coming in August through the kickstarter deal), which will partially satisfy my desire for this cool lens.
Here are two shots with a vertical (portrait) orientation. The first was taken with the macro lens. I took the photo with both orientations, and liked the vertical one best (those blurry berries in the background and a small unfocused slice in the front). There is some texture added to this image (a bluish one from Kim Klassen- teal?).
The one below was taken with my 50mm at 1.4 to give a very narrow field of focus- with lots of blur in the front. It was actually taken for a Be Still 52 lesson on side lighting. The cup was placed on the floor by the open front door (on the left for light)- with a piece of white foam board for a background. There is also a bit of lighting coming from the patio door farther away on the right. I used my Warm Black and White preset (some split toning) for the black and white conversion.
Yes, I’m talking about the weather here in Prescott!
Dozens of these (very photogenic) little things blow up to my front door every day.
And now we seem to have a mini- tumbleweed on the front porch settee.
Bring on the monsoon- we need rain!
I was uninspired yesterday, but was in a photography mood. I had been intending to photograph some huge leaves that came in a Trader Joe’s bouquet, so set them out and started shooting. When it was time to edit, nothing really appealed to me. I ended up merging two photos and adding a Flypaper texture to create the image below. It is nothing like the leafy, green, backlit shot I envisioned, but I like the contrasting shades and textures.
The second photo practically begged to be taken! I was planning to do a photoshoot with an old milk bottle on my dining table (and I sorta did. . .). But for the first time in this Arizona house, I was captivated by the light! I love the contrast of the light and shadow as the late afternoon/early evening light came pouring through in the sliding glass door. This is why I love photography- it’s those unexpected moments!
The feather that may or may not be an owl feather has been found again! My husband found it on the bedroom floor, where I’ve looked before. All I can say is that the ceiling fan must have been blowing it from place to place. So here’s a new shot, taken on the bathroom counter using my macro lens with a long exposure.
Textured with kk_0303.
melinda anderson photography 