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.
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.
Big Sky- and Good News!
We’re discovering that Montana isn’t the only Big Sky Country; Arizona is too! There are ever-changing cloud formations in the Arizona skies. I think this was the first night since we’ve been here that there hasn’t been lightning, thunder, and a little rain. So we headed to the mall near sunset so I could capture one of Prescott’s beautiful sunset skies.
Here is my husband waiting patiently in the car as we waited for the sun to set. Even the eastern skies eventually got a pinkish hue tonight. I edited this one in Perfect Effects 4 to give it an almost HDR look.
And here is sunset over the mountains. To me it almost looks like a bay with islands.
Now for the good news: tomorrow we check out of our hotel and start moving into our new house!!!
The moving truck doesn’t arrive until Sunday, but we will sleep in a bed that will be delivered tomorrow for one of the guest rooms. We are beyond excited!
Blooming
Last week’s visit to Benicia’s Community Garden yielded some nice flower photos- here’s one of my faves, edited with 3 layers of Kim Klassen’s 1301 texture. I used all three of the “tweaked” textures I created for Sunday’s post.
Sunset in Benicia
Although we aren’t leaving Benicia quite yet, we went down to the water last night to say good-bye to sunset over the Carquinez Bridge. Although we are looking forward to new views and experiences, we will miss seeing the water every day.
Fondue Fantasy
We made the drive to Rocklin last night to finally visit Famous Mo’s at night. My friend and college roommate Carol, along with her friend, Jesse, own Famous Mo’s Coffeehouse and Theater, which is a coffee and lunch place in the daytime and a theater showcasing musical acts several nights a week. Last night we had a great time listening to “yacht rock”- the soft rock and funky sounds of the seventies sung by Fondue Fantasy, who style themselves as a bunch of over-privileged, too cool for school, Harvard guys with names like Chadsworth and Winston (and, mysteriously, Kanye. . .). They were witty and entertaining, and the music was great!
I kind of wished I was HER- but not really- I would have DIED!
They brought down the house with Rosanna! Here they are leading us in the chorus.
Meet you all the way– Rosanna- yeah!
Among the Vines
I went over to my friend, Kathryn’s yesterday to help her learn some photography basics so she can move beyond AUTO on her Nikon D60. We had fun shooting with different settings, and I especially enjoyed photographing her backyard vineyard. Kathryn is a quick learner, so I am looking forward to seeing some of her photos.
I added a couple of Jessica Drossin’s textures to this image, which give it some warmer tones and a nice vignette.
Beyond Beyond- Day 19
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!
Beyond Beyond- Day 18 Mixed Bag
Kim presented a mixed bag of Lightroom and Photoshop tips, as well as some iPhoneography tricks.
Here is my grandmother’s sewing basket (decluttered!) and with some of her mother’s buttons in the foreground- and her darning egg. I desaturated the image and then added the kk_desert texture, which did a great job of masking the scratches on my old dining room table by adding new ones from the texture.
I don’t usually do much with my iPhone photos. I use the camera when I don’t have my regular camera, and I do edit them in Snapseed and PicTapGo- but then they tend to stay on my phone or go straight to Facebook. I decided that I would use an iPhone image for this blog post, so took a shot of flowers by my doctor’s office. I loved the tip Kim gave us about adding a black and white filter in PicTapGo and then fading the adjustment to just slightly desaturate the image. However, I went with a punchier edit, because it was the bright colors that attracted me to the flowers in the first place. I cropped in Snapseed and played with the Bright adjustment in the Drama filter- but ended up just leaving that alone. In PicTapGo, I warmed up the image a bit, added some “crispity-ness”, and then went full strength with color burn. And here we are!
CM Monthly Challenge- Shooting Through Glass
This month’s Clickin Moms blog link up challenges us to shoot through glass. Off and on during the month, I would think of the topic, but never seemed to be anywhere where an idea just jumped out at me. I did a few lame attempts at home, and finally settled for some shots at my church this week. But I do offer up these photos from LAST month’s trip to San Diego where I took a few shots of the spectacular view of downtown San Diego from my son’s apartment. I did not use a tripod (tsk, tsk) and shot at a very high ISO (6400!) so yes, there is digital noise! And what did I learn from taking these photos? Use a tripod! Check for reflections (they are almost impossible to edit out). Do it right the first time- our son has since moved to a new apartment, and I will never have the opportunity to retake these photos.
To keep myself honest, here are a few photos I did take this week. They are through glass, but not quite with the dramatic view. . .
Flowers as shot through the sliding glass door of the sanctuary at church:
This is almost the same view- but with the focus on the door. Hmmm, the glass isn’t quite clean!
And here is the stained glass over the door, shot from inside:
There are some wonderful creative photographers in our blog circle. If you click on each link in each photographer’s blog, you will be able to make the complete circle and end up back here. Start with Jennifer Bantle’s blog!
Beyond Beyond 14
Our lesson this week had so many great tips and tricks! We learned animated GIFs which I had tried once before, selection tools in Photoshop (including one that makes me want to upgrade to CS6), working with curves in Lightroom, and extending the background on a vertical photo so that it fits better on your blog.
As you can see, I really took that last lesson to heart. Here is a vertical image, nicely extended into a somewhat horizontal one, which fits so much more nicely on this page. What you probably can’t see is that I played with the Lightroom curves tool, adding haze and lightening some of the colors, AND I took it into Perfect Effects 4 and added a sky with clouds (with much reduced opacity so that it blended in with the original sky)! Although I haven’t made a new animated gif, I feel like I got my homework DONE!
By the way, this photo is from our trip to San Diego in March.
Famous Mo’s!
Last Friday, my husband and I finally got to visit Famous Mo’s, the new coffeehouse and theater in Rocklin opened by my college roommate, longtime friend, and photo buddy, Carol Smith. We were not disappointed- great food, a cool atmosphere, friendly staff, and fabulous coffee! We were there in the daytime, so missed out on the nighttime music scene, but we will definitely be back!
Carol had just learned to make lattes the day before, and this was her first made for a customer- me! It was delicious- better than Starbucks’ (sshhhhhh. . . )!
Carol and her business partner, Jesse Horn have created a terrific place to go have coffee, lunch, or snacks during the day and to experience great entertainment on weekend nights. Carol’s creative touch is evident in the menus, signs, and even the photos on the walls. Check out Famous Mo’s website and Carol’s photo blog to find out more about Carol and her great new coffee and entertainment spot!
More Beach Photos
Today I’m posting a few more photos from when we went over to Bodega a week or so ago. I don’t know why these poles were sticking out of the sand, but I love the lines against the sky, ocean, and beach.
We watched this surfer for an hour, and he never made it upright. The waves were huge, and it seemed to take forever for him to get out past the big ones (which you can’t see in any of these shots).
I said no seagull photos- but here is one anyway. . .
Summer in Winter
Ahhhhhh . . . sunshine and sand and ocean waves! We spent a lovely hour and a half at Salmon Creek Beach on Saturday- just watching the waves, the gulls, and the people. I don’t know the official temp, but I’m guessing seventy something- shirtsleeve weather.
We got there early, set up a blanket, and just enjoyed the scene. I had a camera battery with a distressingly low charge (yes, I had charged it- no, I didn’t see that it was actually not charged when I put it in the camera- no, I won’t be using that tricky outlet again), but had decided that I would just take whatever photos I could and would shoot “intentionally”- one of my 2013 goals. No snapping away. And definitely no seagulls- I can photograph them any day of the week in my own town.
Of course, I couldn’t resist the seagulls- they were everywhere. But this photo is the one I like the best- the light, the clouds and the expanse of beach. I’m not convinced the footprints add to the photo- but they were there, kind of leading to nowhere. I am using the photo in response to a Flickr challenge about using leading lines to guide the viewer into the image. But the lines I was seeing when I composed the photo were the stripes of clouds and the surf.
I think this photo also works as a black and white. What do you think?
UPDATE:
I took out the footprints! What do you think?
Country Drive
I thought I’d share a couple more photos from our drive last Saturday. After our walk in downtown Suisun, we drove some of the backroads between Fairfield and Vacaville. These two shots were actually taken right across the road from each other in the fading light, as the sun had already dipped down behind the hills. There is a haze in the first image from smoke we could see in the distance. I reduced clarity to blur the image a bit, enhancing the hazy quality.
I liked the shapes of the bare branches and fence on the hill across the road silhouetted against the cloudless sky. I converted it to a black and white in Lightroom and then added back some color on the tree and hill using a texture.
melinda anderson photography 