Spring Miscellany

At the Garden and Art Center

The smell was heavenly.

They looked like crepe paper.

A cloud of fluffy white purity.

Pink sweetness reaching for the sky.

A delicate sea of tiny blue dots.

I recognized his call right way. He looked and looked around but his mate never showed.

Hope your weekend is full of spring beauty.

Spring - the Crocus Edition

I've been so lazy with my photography lately but I made myself do a couple things this week. 

First I ventured out to the Garden and Art Center because I knew the spring flowers should be blooming. (Although with our higher than normal temps, spring is 3 weeks early this year.)

Second, this morning I watch a video on how to use Topaz Texture Effects which I've owned since it came out and have never used it.

This is my first trial run. One thing fabulous about this software is that you can scroll over the textures and see what it will look like on your photo. You can also scroll over the blend modes for previews which makes it so much faster. (You can even access your own textures through it.) Tons of presets and oodles of tweaks to your hearts content.)

Products used, My Watercolor Brushes, Anna's Script Tease Nature, and my Sketchy Loops which will be in the store real soon.

I used Pretty Presets Lightroom Luminous on this shot. (Rose petals)

Another with that preset.

And another that I decide to mirror for my new header.

Dark and mysterious, edited with Kim Klassen's Chocolate.

All shots were taken with my Canon 100m Macro. I experimented with some focus stacking to see if I could get four flowers with four different focal lengths combined in one image to all be in focus.

Quite fun. Maybe not perfect, but it was a great exercise. 

If you want to try this out. Go shoot some images with focus variations. In Photoshop...

File> Scripts> Load Files Into Stacks

 Browse to find and select your files. Choose Open.

 Before selecting OK, check the box 'Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images'. It does a good job, but because of the blur from the macro lens I had to do a bit of my own adjusting. A tripod would  be advantage in most cases.

Now the masking begins on each layer. It's easiest to start at the bottom and work your way forward.

 Start with a black mask and 'paint in' the sharp areas. If you're not familiar with masking... ask Google.

Crop your image to clean up all the edges. Viola! Now if I want to I can load this back into Lightroom for further editing. I did do a touch of editing before I exported them to a folder on my desktop. (before the stacking)

I'm so glad spring is here. It's even raining a bit today. Ah... that fresh smell!

Finding Peace

This is what I wrote on Wednesday morning in my journal…

March 25, 2015

Some days I wish I could just 'let go' and get it all out. Just kick and scream and have a holy fit. Instead my frustrations get buried deep inside. Sadness, lack of motivation, withdrawal, total apathy. Somehow I believe the lie of hopelessness.

I pull into the driveway from a trip for coffee and see the birds playing in the yard. I nearly cry and am reminded of  the scripture in Matthew 6:26 of how he even feeds the sparrows. "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?

My days of funk has been numerable lately. I'll call it mild depression. 

One day, about twenty years ago, I was quite depressed and the Lord spoke very clearly to me. In a nutshell He said, you are depressed because you aren't getting 'your' way. Things aren't going the way 'you' think they should. That alone was so freeing. And ever since I'll be reminded when I get in this depressive funk it's because things are NOT going the way I think they should. And sometimes I DO just want to kick and scream (because I know it's in there somewhere.) Because that's just how I feel.

No, a lot of things are not the way I would like them to be. But I must choose to not let them have so much power of me. After all, 'They're not the boss of me." But then there are many other things that I am sooooo grateful for.

Often times a little photography meditation helps.

I drove around town and stole some branches. The best pink ones were between McDonald's and Bank of America. We pay them enough interest I figure they owe me a few blooms.

I went prepared… A plastic tub with four pitchers filled with water and my snippers. And not a day too soon because the wind blew everything off the trees that night.

Hipstagram shots on the iPhone…

DreamCanvas film, BettieXL lens

DreamCanvas film, BettieXL lens

Jane film, Blanko C16 lens

Flowers for you, my friends! Have a good weekend and I hope you find your peace when things don't go the way you prefer they do.

Linking up with Kim for Friday Finds.

Texture Tuesday Tax Day

Perhaps I should have posted my 1040 Tax Extension and put a grungy texture over it? Maybe I should have sent it in that way too, no?
Yes, I woke up this morning and just realized I have to file an extension and send in some money. Where has my brain been. On vacation to the max, I guess. Maybe this post will go up later today because I'm also booked heavy at work. 4 cut & colors plus 3 haircuts.
This is my version of perfectly imperfect for Texture Tuesday. It's definitely from the archives, but the rest are all new shots with my Lensbaby.

kk_clarity Colorburn 100%, kk_postale Overlay 60%

kk_0603 Overlay 21% and Color Burn 100%,

Come Here Mr. Cardinal

As we came home one night this week my Friday Finds was flying around in the front yard. For the first time EVER I saw 2 cardinals in our yard! I was yelling "red birds, red birds!" as hubby stopped at the end of our driveway so he wouldn't scare them away (he is so good to cooperate with out asking). I snuck into the garage and peaked out the window to see where they were.
I was able to grab only one photo that his beak wasn't too far behind the branch. Then he flew off to catch up with his buddy. Probably looking for girls. I was excited beyond measure.

Only once before had I been closer to a cardinal and that was last year about this time when we were in Corpus Christi. I was in 'birding' heaven. I felt a little out of place with a camera when everyone else in the park was sporting binoculars. The next two shots are from there.

I think the females are very striking in their own way.

It's a shame I haven't ever processed the photos from this trip. (except for a bunch on my iPhone and iPad.) They are keyword-ed however. I think I got side-tracked by a grand-daughter's first birthday and processing a million shots. I AM getting better about deleting so so photos these days! (Or so she thinks.)

Come check out what everyone has found this week at Friday Finds.

Have an awesome weekend filled with signs of Spring!

Spring Flowers

Time for Texture Tuesday with a few shots from the yard (and the neighbors trees.)

The theme is 'quiet' this week and this shot is about as quiet as it get around here. (Although I could have textured the white pear tree blossoms, but that was an after thought)

kk_0603 Overlay 48%, kk_simple Linear Burn 22%, PhotoBlends Frame by Cottage Arts Color Dodge 38%.
ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/180sec

I loved this sweet little viola peeking out through the yard art.
ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/250sec

ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/350sec

ISO 100, f/4, 1/350sec

All shots taken with Canon 7D, 100mm Macro
Come join us at Kim's for some awesome textured photos.

Friday Finds March 14

It's time for Friday Finds and Random 5 Friday so here are a few finds around the house this week.

Now that the daffies are up I can say it's officially spring. Didn't I say that last week?

The sun is coming up closer to 'straight from the East' now and with daylight savings time I'm getting to see the beautiful morning light out my kitchen window. (Yes I'm a bit lazy when it comes to getting up in the morning.)

I saw these birds on my evening dog walk.

I learned something this AM while loading these photos. Notice the difference in the background of these next two. In Lightroom, the photo looked like the second one. When it loaded in blogger, I noticed it looked like the first. Why in the world did it lighten the background so much? I checked my exported file on the desktop and sure enough, it was light. How strange. I went back and lowered the black point nearly all the way to the left so it would export appropriately. 

This was a "I'm sorry" bouquet from my hubby last weekend. My thoughts were, 'Yeah and It's going to sit right here and remind you of what a jerk you were til all the petals fall off." (It's still looking pretty good. LOL) 

We had a dirt storm on Tuesday. It was hard to take photos of the dust clouds as I walked through the grass the next day. My friend said she couldn't even sweep her patio it was so thick she had to use a shovel. That night reminded me of howling blizzards growing up in North Dakota. So I went to the basement to sleep.

Come check out what everyone else has found this week.

Tools

One thing I believe.
You get what you pay for.
Having good tools is important to me. Whether it's gardening tools, sewing machine, scissors, drills, or graphics programs. The quality of work (or should I say 'ease' of work) is generally far improved when good quality tools are used. The experience is more pleasurable also.
In my early years I picked up gardening tools at Walmart and such places, but then I wasn't a serious gardener either. Now they are purchased at nurseries and last many years as opposed to one or two. Here are a few shots from the yard this spring that I just happened to have a couple of my favorite tools in. The little long handled hand hoe is not being made any more, sigh. I've had it more than 10 years.

A lot of texturing going on this week.

Linking up with Tuesday Muse.

NancyCleas_elizabeth Colorburn 29%

RoxiH_Warmth Softlight 100%

Slight Saturation adjtments

RoxiH_Photo Textures_Fawn Softlight 65%

More curves and dodge and burning.

ps1-78-UnderThePier-KellieMize Multiply 83%

JoanneBrisebois_Harvest1912_Paper5 Overlay 95%

All layers merged set at multiply 27%.

Text: Dutch and Harley, Myanmar MN.

Added cooling action with just dark and light blue layers and darkening edge.

InPursuitofLiberty06__MichelleColeman Multiply 100%

Some levels and curves and masking.

Crackle-X-JosephFrancis ColorBurn 55%

Crackle-DD-JosephFrancis Color burn 69% 

Hue Sat Adj Layer -20

Most of this is homework for a class I'm taking at Digital Scrapper.

What's blooming? Well, this one sunflower plant has made quite the display against the corn. And the pumpkins are coming along nicely. They always seem to have trouble for some reason.

Hope your garden is well this year. We got a little bit of rain last night, a welcome relief. So my hair is curly today. ha!

By the way, this is my 200th post on this blog that was begun early last year as a result of signing up for Kim Klassen's Beyond class. The journey has been very cool indeed.

Texture Tuesday -Pop

Today's Texture Tuesday's theme is 'Pop'. Mine is pop out! Which is what the flowers are finally doing.
Textured with kk_3003-2 and kk_may.

250/4.5/100

250/4.5/100

250/6.7/100 (Brush, Fragments)

I planted this lovely gerbera daisy from seed about 14 years ago. It is such a nice clump and will have up to 12 flowers at a time. Dare I dig part up and move it?

A few more pops from the garden this week.

350/4.5/100

125/4.5/200

All images processed minimally in Lightroom. Mostly a little extra exposure here and there to eliminate distractions.Taken with a Canon 100m Macro.