the garden

forsythia

Between me and the neighbor's barn
where a small forsythia grows
is a Russian olive that is just beginning to leaf out.
A soft rain falls for most of the day.
The telephoto feature + high iso = a chunky image
that prompted me to mess about with pixels

February 27th

i took a photo
of a single willow stem
and didn't like how the main subject looked
but there were all sorts of marvelous things going on behind it.

It is
don't you agree
very often the way it is with photos?

It is something i used to notice in the darkroom
but had little facility patience for playing with.
Photoshop has changed all of that.

i do find that i must make decisions about minute
adjustments with levels
that is a bit like painting or drawing and trying to determine
when it is time to stop.

i feel as if these images reflect how i've viewed this world
for a huge part of this winter:
i see light
and lots of glorious colors
but it's all a-tangle and unresolved
and yes
there's even great beauty and range of hues
in the shadows.

The metaphor seems all to obvious:
i did not see any of these things in the viewfinder
while composing the shot.
The eye cannot.
Not until the light gets translated into pixels
via something defined (at least one way) via lenses
into circles of confusion
(i kid you not
that's what physicists call the "spots" formed by
cones of light rays passing through a lens.
sorry for this digression if you already knew this
but the metaphor is just buzzing and buzzing in my head
so i had to burp it out.)
'nuf of all this

i like these photos and have been refreshed
here in PhotoShop with what my eye did not know
it was asking the camera to capture.

Please forgive all those metaphor meanderings
but it helped to unload them here
and then end with color and light.

Thank you, camera, computer, and Photoshop
for these moments of play and delight
before thoughts rushed back in.

Thank you dear visitor for indulging me.

the larger views (click if you like) reveal so much more
Willow stems #6:

Willow stems #1:




Willow stems #2 and #3:

the little dancing man in 3 delights me:

            

Willow stems #4:

experiment 13

Quick! look away, click to another page if blurry images hurt your eyes.

Yes...this post looks like the image as i created it.

a miniature spruce with glowing maple:

experiment 11 & 12

P.S. Monday afternoon:

due to some technical difficulty i cannot control, the images originally posted were, as Marly points out, "vertiginous." To the point of giving me a headache when i looked at them this morning. Strange, that i did not have that experience last night while making them.

oh well.

i save one...just so you can see what we are talking about.

My apologies...look at larger version if you wish to feel as though you are on a wild carnival ride while in a still image.

Yes, i tweaked contrast on this
but the image was created in camera, not in Photoshop

this next one is a replacement

much less motion
thank goodness.
Both are still the same maple tree featured in yesterday's experiments

 

i guess this all brings up the question: "what are you trying to do with these experiments?"

answer: see things differently...find new ways of interpreting beloved imagery into new, but still pleasing patterns.

experiments 6,7,8,9 & 10

i've been  playing with light and color again

a maple tree in brilliant morning sunshine
(larger versions should open, with a click)

January 2nd

not to worry
'tis the photo
not your eyes
unless, that is
you have the same attack of the sniffles
that have landed in my head
and are looking out a window
like mine
where the world appears
to be melting.

i pulled a photo from the archives
to mess with until it could communicate
foggy brain
foggy eyes
foggy woods

October 19th

until i can carve out time to learn how to paint
i'm having a lot of fun being a photshop impressionist.
it looks pretty good larger

June 15th

click on photo to enlarge

i don't know what happens to film sometimes.
i think it must be the processing
that perhaps with all the focus on digital
the labs aren't as careful as they used to be.
i don't know.
i tried sooo long to color correct the
original image into a traditional photograph
because i really liked this little house
but i finally gave up and dove into
PS filters, yet again
i think it works
in a "Neverland" kinda way.
but hey
if wishes were fishes
i'd swim right away!