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A very Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Yavapai County Courthouse, Prescott, Arizona 2018

Multiple exposure play with surfers heading into the ocean

 

I’ve been working on a series of wabi-sabi photos for my photo group final, which has to be a series. I may not have enough photos for my series on the beach, so this is my Plan B. Here is one of the photos I am working on- my favorite wooden spoon and some star anise.  I had thought the series would be in black and white, but I really like this one better in color! There is a very slight reflection  and shadow on the cookie sheet background which don’t show up in the black and white.

 

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese aethetic based on acceptance of transience and incompleteness. Characteristics include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes.

 

When we were in Alaska this summer, we went to the street market in Anchorage, and I was captivated by the Japanese fishing floats for sale. I bought just one- this is a shot of a group. The effects are from Topaz Glow.

This guy came through my yard over the weekend and gave me a chance to have some Photoshop fun.

I played with Topaz Studio, which I am determined to actually learn to USE this summer. This preset is called bookbinder and, if I’m understanding this correctly, was one of a zillion filters developed by a “regular” person, someone in the Topaz community. I never ever ever use a filter over my whole image, but this time I did (although reduced opacity). Fun!

As we were leaving the beach, I couldn’t help but notice a little beach house that was dwarfed by its newer, more modern neighbors. It brought to mind a book I used to read to my first graders every year- The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton about a small country house sitting all by itself that over the years became engulfed by the city growing up around it. I wondered if something like that had happened here.

The little beach house was so shaded by its neighbors that I had to do a lot of camera work and post-processing to even get it to be visible- take 3 bracketed images, combine into an HDR and do some dodging after that. I started to see it as an illustration, so used Topaz Simplify to create this new look. One of our assignments in class is a book cover- so now I’m saving this image to possibly bring later on in case I can’t come up with another idea for a book cover.

Wonder what the title could be?

FYI-  here is the middle exposure of the three bracketed images:

Now I have to come up with another photo for next week’s class!