My Old Self

Snapseed

By 10:30 Monday morning I had:

Baked 18 banana oat muffins. 

Baked a pan of healthy seed filled bars.

Had a pot of tomatoes etc simmering on the stove for spaghetti sauce. 

Had a small pot of homemade tomato soup simmering for lunch.

Chopped up a bag full of tomatoes for the freezer.

Watched several videos for a class on making canvas backgrounds.

Washed and folded two loads of laundry. 

Oh, and I stopped to take this selfie. Five tries with the the timer and finally removing items from behind me. 

Snapseed

By the afternoon I had:

Made it to two grocery stores, two banks, Home Depot, the post office, back to the house for my lunch soup, THREE trips to the office, painted 1 large backdrop, 1 medium sized and a gorgeous piece of linen.

For the first time in awhile I feel like my old productive self!

The key is not to go near any mobile devices or computers first thing in the morning. Ha! Ha! Ha!
(So true though)

Taste Crisis

I feel like I'm in the middle of a 'taste' crisis. I browse the digital scrapbook stores, seeing varying styles and none really seem to appeal at the moment. Not enough to buy any which is good for my pocket book for awhile. 

I look at my friends art, totally enamored with some yet not knowing how to begin to do something similar.

I'm feeling very unsettled. Perhaps I should be out working in the garden...

Today I cleaned the desktop of my iMac. I've always created a folder on the desktop titled "Desk cleaned (date)". My current folder was titled Feb 2016. Inside it was various files plus a folder titled Desk Sept. Inside that was another titled On My Desk July. Inside that was another for May 2015. Besides all these folders a ton of files or photos were randomly scattered throughout. 

They haven't all disappeared but I threw a ton of stuff in the trash and backed up others. Right now those folders are still there but I think I'll put them all in one called To Put Away and save that for another day.  (This is to say nothing about the stuff stacked up in my Downloads folder.) Can anyone relate?

I am proud to say that as I cleaned my current desktop off, nothing was added to that folder.

It was nice to look back at some old work with new eyes, even back to 2009 (not sure why some of those things were there.) And I sure looked a lot younger 5 years ago. 

This was a try out of Picsart on my iPad.

It will add layers but not show them for editing after the effect is applied. Sort of similar to iColorama. I'll be exploring it more.

Putting Yourself Out There

When you do self portraiture you are putting your self out there.
However if you give a presentation of your own self-portrait work You are really putting yourself out there. Not just your work, but you personally.

Silly me, I volunteered to do a program for the local camera club that I've been member of for 7 years. Why? Because next months Show & Tell category was to be Selfies/Selfportraits. And I knew I had quite the collection I could share and offer some interesting info on the subject. So, why not share?
When I started skimming my Lightroom Library to gather the goods I was actually quite amazed at the number I had. Not just from my iPhone but from some semi-serious Canon shoots, most of which were in 2012. As I made preparations I really got excited about it. These were strange feelings. I'm usually so nervous and stressed but this was fun.

I narrowed it down to 100 photos, then added some of my friend Sarah's that she offered and threw in a few from a guy at the last minute lest the men feel left out.
You see a good percentage of this club is men over 65 and I had a feeling a lot of them might stay home. (In fact afterward one guy told me he almost did and was glad he decided to come.)
For some reason the 'feeling of vulnerability' never did rear its ugly head. I talked about it and all the reasons why we shy away from selfies but I felt like I was in a bubble of protection. (Oh, thank you God!)

The whole thing went well. After our one hour of technical difficulty when my Macbook Pro wouldn't talk to the projection system, I had to load everything to a jump drive and use their PC. Thankfully Kathy had a few vague memories of how to use a PC and she helped with the slides. Thank you so much Kathy. And she even showed up on her birthday!
Here is a link to a movie I had created in a class that was a selfie shoot in 2012. I included a lot of not so great photos because I wanted it to just be real and normal. Self Shoot

Perhaps I'll do a little series on selfies this month......

The End of 59

Today is the last day that I'll be 59. Tomorrow I cross over into old lady-hood. Sometimes there's a part inside me that screams with agony about getting old. Other times I feel a gracefulness and peace about it. 

Last month when I colored my hair I just did lowlights rather than covering all the white (which is closely approaching 100%).

This girl has the capability of enhancing both these extremes. "Sit here. Come, get under here." Sorry, the body can't do that as easily anymore. On the other hand, she helps me get into 'play' mode which, as an adult, is hard for this serious old coot to do most of the time.

We went to the Garden and Art Center for our yearly photo shoot. Spent most of the time in the shade rather than the flowers battling mosquitoes. But that will be for another day.

I think I will celebrate today perhaps more than tomorrow.

Mobile Art Monday No. 16 Double Exposures

I took a fabulous class last week from Vivienne McMaster on double exposures. The app I used most for mine was Diana Photo App. (iPhone and Android) 

This edit was my first attempt. I actually captured the photos in the app camera rather than choosing from my camera roll. This perfectly portrays my mornings at my computer with coffee, iPad and the wrapper of my gluten free bar. It's a classic.

Diana has a random button that can give some interesting results or at least starting points. One of the best features to me is if you like one of the photos and just want the other to randomize… hold down on the one you want to keep until a lock shows and the other photo will then be changed when you click the dice. That's how I ended up with so many versions with the photo of me walking away by the tree. 

When I came across this sunflower and saw how it framed me perfectly I tried all the filters and ended up liking a lot of them. To change filters, just swipe to the left or right, or press on the screen until the filter menu comes up and pick the one you want. (You can't see what you're getting but after you've used the app a lot you'll know which ones do what.) 

I love how the top looked on this one so thought I'd crop it. I may do some more editing to it…(who ever knows when to quit right?) Many of you know what a sunflower freak I am so this may be my summer avatar.

Although the class wasn't about self-portraiture, I took this opportunity for some selfie edits because I hadn't done any in awhile.

I thought this one seemed a little creepy but I liked the color.

A couple of my granddaughter...

I couldn't have found a more perfect shot go with the binocular photo. Those binoculars are so heavy she almost falls over every time she looks straight up. 

And a few others. 

I just realized why I'm so captivated by double exposures… They have an element of fantasy about them. (You know I like to live in La-La Land right?)

Right now I'm wishing I'd done my 100 Days Project with double exposures. They are just too much fun! I'm sure you'll be seeing more of them from me in the future.

Mobile Art Monday No.1 Best of 2014 Slideshows

I love using Flipagram for slide shows on my iPad or phone purely for it's simplicity. Most of these mobile edits are from my Instagram feed and since my purpose was to post my Flipagrams there, I had to limit them to 15 seconds and I tried to limit the photos to 20. So watch fast… and enjoy!

Still Life 2014

Nature 2014

Selfies 2014

Check back later for my favorite Hipstamatic shots. I have more than 20 so I'll be looking for a different format.

One of my intentions this year is to begin posting Mobile Art every Monday.

Hoping your year has gotten off to a great start!