bookmark_borderSoft Floral
Category: Photography
bookmark_borderMoss and cobwebs
I took this back in April of 2013. While we lived in this house this was one of my favorite subjects. It is a window on the outside of our barn and had this moss on the outside and some kind of green weed growing just on the inside. The glass panes were grungy, the frame was chipped and peeling and I just found it so incredibly photogenic.
bookmark_borderLilacs after the rain
May 23, 2014. I love the combination of purple and green. And I love water droplets on flowers. Didn’t really need to do much in the way of editing this photo. Just a few boosts and tweaks to bring out the color and contrast.
bookmark_borderBlack and White Daisies
I love daisies.
I picked a bunch and spent an afternoon photographing them and editing the photos back in July of 2016. This was the high-contrast, black and white version.
bookmark_borderPlumeria Blossom
These were the first full blooms from my husband’s daughter’s plumeria cuttings. They are pretty special because they were grown indoors in the northeast in a house that was pretty cold most of the winter.
We were very proud of these blooms, and I took a lot of photos of them. August 4, 2016.
bookmark_borderEarl the Chameleon
This is Earl, a panther chameleon owned by one of my husband’s students.
In January of 2014 she brought him in to visit and get some healing. He climbed up to the highest spot and the light from our living room window was perfect to completely illuminate him and darken the background.
Some really simple editing eliminated the background entirely and brought out his gorgeous colors.
bookmark_borderBee on Leek Blossoms
Another leek blossom photo from 2014. I forgot I took this one. I never did anything with it at the time but liked how I was able to edit it today, so I include it here. I softened the flowers and background and enhanced the bee just enough to make her pop.
bookmark_borderWinter Lanterns
This is another image from February of 2014. This one I left in color because of the pretty colors of these particular lanterns.
bookmark_borderSunny Day Lilies
I’ve always loved this image. Super simple and I didn’t have to do much to make it pop. Took it in July of 2016.
bookmark_borderAhura and Xercei
I know I said I wasn’t going to put much personal stuff on this site, but this is an exception because it is one of my favorite photos ever. It combines two of my favorite subjects and I love how it came out.
This was actually a more-or-less candid shot. Xercei is only 4 weeks old (August 23, 2019) and he had just figured out that he wanted to keep her. He had been bonding with her laying on his chest and I was photographing the other puppies. I turned around and he had lifted her up to his face to talk to her.
The editing was so simple for this one, everything came together perfectly. The background was already fairly dark so I just darkened it further and eliminated any small distractions in Photoshop. I translated it to black and white and boosted the texture a little bit to accentuate his skin and tattoo.
This is one of my favorite photos I have ever taken and is very special to me.
bookmark_borderBleeding Hearts
I don’t even remember taking this photo (May 29, 2014).
But I like it.
I tried editing it to give it the tone I wanted. I’m more or less happy with it, but I still feel I didn’t quite hit the mark on what I was feeling about it.
I will probably go back and edit it at another date.
bookmark_borderWedding Flowers
They’re not actually. They are just the common weed Queen Anne’s lace laying on our porch railing. But the way I edited the photo reminds me of lace and romance and weddings.
This is another example of an image I took awhile ago (July 12, 2016) and found a new way to edit it today.
I like this result a lot more than the original, which, though still pretty, was dark and didn’t evoke the emotion I really wanted from it.
bookmark_borderIllumination
I took this on Valentine’s day 2014. We actually had these outside on our deck to celebrate the Lantern Festival around Chinese New Year. This particular lantern is black, it was (obviously) dark and the snow was white; I felt it was best rendered in black and white. The little tealight provided all the light for the photo. I used a tripod and a longer exposure to capture it.
bookmark_borderGod Light
This is one of my favorite images.
For starters, iris are one of my favorite flowers. Especially purple ones. I also–since early childhood–have always loved sunbeams. This image combines colors I love (purple and green together), slanted light, blurry background, bokeh and the gorgeous tiger striping on the iris petals.
I shot SO many pictures of these flowers in this light before I wound up with something I was happy with. I just re-edited it today to bring up the saturation and make it warmer, which is what I feel it was missing all this time.
Edit: And I never even noticed the little rainbow at the bottom until I posted it just now!!
bookmark_borderSucculent Shadows
This one I took in January of 2014. One of the first times I experimented with shadow and shape. I really liked the combination of the shape and varying tones of the shadows cast by the plant and my window frame and the texture of the painted wall they fall on.
It was a photo I took on a whim that I never wound up doing anything with, but I find that I actually really like it, despite the fact that it’s a departure from the kinds of photos I generally like to make.
bookmark_borderLovely Dead Crap
I have been trying to be active on Instagram lately and recently started following a profile called Lovely Dead Crap, which I adore. It’s mostly artistic photos of dried flowers and outdoor plants that have gone by in autumn. As soon as I found the page I thought of this photo.
I took this in June of 2013 because I found myself drawn to the strangeness of the flowers that had fallen into the water. There was something beautiful and sad to me about them. I took the photo and played with it in Lightroom but always felt strange about sharing it so I’ve just been sitting on it all this time.
I figured now is a good time to do something with it. Maybe someone else will like it too.
bookmark_borderLeek Blossoms
This is one I took back in July of 2014. It was the first year we planted a garden and I let my leeks overgrow and bloom. I love the shape and color of the flowers, so unusual!
I overlooked this because there were others I liked better at the time. But when I came across it today I saw its potential and lightened it up and adjusted the color and tone a bit. I’m happy with the result. It’s a simple photo but I really enjoy the structure of the flowers and the color of the overall image.
bookmark_borderReflecting on the past
I was playing in Lightroom today and going through some of my older photos to see if I could make them better now that I have a little more editing experience under my belt (and since Lightroom has improved).
In the process, I realized that I have a lot of photos that I really like! Not only that, but the majority of images on this site are from my practice month and don’t necessarily represent my better work.
So I’m going to upload some of my better images, even though they are older, so I can populate my site with work I like!
I had considered post-dating them to when I actually took them, but I’ve decided against that. I’ll just post them as I go and write what date I took them.
So, to start (and in no particular order) here is one I took in July of 2016. It is the back window in a barn where some little opportunistic plant had taken hold inside and grew happily throughout the winter. I liked the combination of the darkness, texture and reflections from the glass and the color and texture of the moss in front, all framed by the grungy, peeling window frame. I edited it to enhance the contrast and textures.
bookmark_borderCosmic cosmos
Sometimes it’s just about what we like. I like cosmos. And I like this image.
Nor much more to it than that.
bookmark_borderSkeletal leaf
Sometimes it’s about eliminating distractions.
I really liked the idea of this image. I saw the leaf in the mud and loved the texture and color. I took my time and arranged it just so. I photographed it from a number of angles.
But when I went into Lightroom to edit it, nothing felt right to me. Black and white, sepia tones, vignettes, desaturated, various presets; something was just off about it each time.
I eventually gave up and went on to other things. I just came back to it today (a week or so later) and realized what it was I was missing.
There were little bits in the background that were distracting me (and, frankly, pissing me off). The little bits of green grass clippings didn’t belong.
So I removed them!
How easy is that? (sometimes the simplest things escape me…)
There are probably still lots of things that could be done to improve this image (and, like many of my other images, I may revisit in the future when I’ve got some more experience and work with it again) but I’m much happier with it now. It looks more like I wanted it to.
Sometimes all it takes is just eliminating small distractions, tidying up so that the bigger picture makes sense. I have found this to be true in my day to day life as well, so this was a poignant lesson for me today.
bookmark_borderPlaying with color
I’m always a little self-conscious when I put up a photo that I like “just because”. I always think Is it good enough to display? Will people think I’m amaturish for putting up such an image?
But what does it matter, really? Taste is subjective. We like what we like and there isn’t always an explanation for it. I choose subjects that speak to me. Maybe they don’t speak to you the same way (or maybe they do; if so, cheers!) but something about them is beautiful to me.
This image caught my eye this morning as I was making breakfast. I love this plant and I had placed these little cuttings into a tiny terracotta pot on the kitchen window, in hopes that they might take (they have). Something about the light, the colors and the distant, pastel background really struck me as beautiful.
I actually used it as a practice piece in Lightroom, as I wanted to tweak the colors a bit more to accentuate them (it was the color that got me in the first place). I used the Color and the Calibration sliders to get the feel I wanted. I also ran it through Photoshop to remove a couple of small elements that I found distracting.
Here’s the original:
I wanted a warmer, brighter, summer sun feeling. I’m pretty happy with it, though I feel it could be better. But I’m learning, and that’s what this project is all about!
bookmark_borderMaribou on grass
I took one of these on my iTouch (you can see it on my Instagram page) and decided I wanted to see what I could do with it from my camera in Lightroom.
It’s exactly the same image, just taken with a different camera and edited in a different program (I use Snapseed on my iTouch, Lightroom and Photoshop on my computer). I wanted to see if I could bring out the texture in the feather while keeping the background blurry.
Just a fun experiment!
bookmark_borderWhite campion wildflowers
You know I like flowers. I won’t apologize for the amount of flower images you will see on this site.
These little guys are in bloom right now all over our property. The nice thing about photographing wildflowers to put up on line is that I have to do some research to find out what the heck they are.
Turns out these guys are an alien from Europe but are now widespread over the US. They don’t seem to have too many uses, but extracts from their roots and leaves are extremely toxic to mosquitoes.
You learn something new every day.
bookmark_borderI see your red door…
…and I rather like the color, actually. No need to paint it black.
Photographing subjects we don’t normally photograph is a great way to train the eye to see differently in order to improve our art.
I am naturally drawn pretty things (like flowers, and butterflies and plants) which tend to be easy to make nice images from. But there are so many other subjects out there that make interesting photos.
It doesn’t always have to be pretty to make a compelling image.
This is why the photograph-a-day challenge I did a few years ago was so valuable to me. Because I was disciplining myself to take and upload one photo a day I was forced to overcome my “photographer’s block”. I learned to see things differently and wound up with photos I never would have taken before–some of which I really liked!
Photos like the one above are a good example of something I wouldn’t normally think to capture. It’s not pretty. It’s not a subject I’m particularly interested in (it’s a door. And a wall. And a… thing.). But it is still a compelling image because of the lines, the texture and, of course, the color.
It may not be something people are going to come in droves to admire for hours, but it’s useful for training my eye to see the world around me differently so that I can learn to make more compelling images overall.
What kinds of images can you make that you wouldn’t have considered before?
bookmark_borderFeather and water droplets
Another one of my favorite things; feathers. Normally grungy tattered feathers would offend me (I like my feathers pristine, straight and clean!) but they are uniquely photogenic. I discovered this one in the mud after a rainy night and the combination of the lines, holes and sharp points displayed in the feather and the roundness of the water droplets (plus that dark, dark background) was compelling to me. I think it makes an interesting image.
bookmark_borderDid I mention I love daisies?
I can’t help it. They are what is blooming right now and I am constantly drawn back to them, no matter how many photos I’ve taken of them already.
I love their bright sunny faces.
I just remembered that they are from the family asteraceae, which includes sunflowers, calendula, echinacea, chrisanthamums, dahlias and zinnias, all of which I also love.
Guess you’ll be seeing a lot of asteraceae images from me.
bookmark_borderSusans in black and white
I love daisies!
All kinds of daisies and daisy-like flowers. I love their colors, their flat faces, round centers and perfectly radiating petals. They evoke in me an almost childlike delight. For years Gerbera daisies were my favorite birthday flower and I always had to have some on my day.
I love the colors of these gorgeous orange/golden black eyed Susans but more than anything I simply adore the shape of them. So I chose to render this image in black and white.
But I couldn’t just ignore the original colored one, so here it is too:
bookmark_borderBlack eyed Susans forest
I really like this image, but it feels like something isn’t quite right to me…
I got excited photographing these because of the shapes and the early morning light and the lovely smeary background (thanks to my new 50mm Nikkor lens, which I ADORE). I had something in mind for how I wanted to process them, but it was a rather nebulous idea and I wasn’t able to match what I was feeling during the editing process.
Does that ever happen to you?
I had this image in my head that was bluish and very moody but nothing I did seemed to evoke that feeling so I gave up and just went with what what I felt looked best.
I still really like the image, it just didn’t turn out the way I had expected/hoped/tried.
Maybe I’ll visit it again at a later date with new eyes (or more experience) and match my vision for it.
bookmark_borderLuna Moth on My Hand
Here’s that luna moth again.
I took quite a few pictures because it’s so rare to see them and I wanted to make sure I got a good one. The only ones that I really feel are worth showcasing are this one and the one I took as a self-portrait. The others were more so I could get a clear image I could isolate in photoshop and use in other projects.
bookmark_borderThrowback Thursday – Last Roses of Summer
This is one of my favorite images that I’ve made. Not because I think it’s a spectacular image or anything, but because of what went into it.
I took this photo way back in September of 2012. It’s special to me for two reasons:
One, is that it was one of the first images I really worked with when I got Lightroom. It was a game-changer for me! I realized that even if i didn’t get the image just right in-camera I could do a lot to make it beautiful in Lightroom. To prove it, here’s the original:
I was thrilled that I could transform an image so drastically to make something I really liked.
The other reason this one is special to me is because of the roses. We had two rose bushes at our place at the time; one red and one white. They were the first time I had ever had roses. They smelled amazing. The previous year we had picked them as they bloomed so the following year (the year I took this picture) they bloomed like crazy. I spent the entire summer harvesting roses and made my own rosewater (which I still have!) and a jar of infused rose oil from a gagillion dried blossoms (which I called “rosebush oil” because it contained nearly a entire bush’s worth of roses).
These two roses were the very last full blooms of each bush and I treasured them sitting in their little cobalt bottle on the sunny, West-facing window of my office. It thrilled me that I was able to capture them in an image that I liked so much.
bookmark_borderA New Day
I’m going (to try) to make this as uncomplicated as possible. I figure if I don’t impose too many rules on myself about this blog from the beginning, I am more likely to keep up with it and let it grow organically into whatever it is going to be.
In case you’ve been looking around but hadn’t noticed the dates of my posts, they are pretty varied and pretty far apart. Way back in 2014 I had set myself on a picture-a-day photo challenge and uploaded my images to a private blog that nobody could see but me. Last summer I thought I wanted to make it public, and even wrote a few new posts, but it turned out I wasn’t ready so I abandoned the project.
But now I’m ready.
(…well, I’m not really, but it seems that it’s time to do it anyway so I’m making myself ready)
So I’m starting the project for real this time. I’m taking off any expectations I may have about what I want it to be or what it could turn into (though I’ll keep dreaming about it making me rich!) and make it public so that I can’t back out of it this time.
deep breath
For now, I will just upload photos as individual posts and write what I feel like writing. I will do this where and how I feel like it in the beginning, just to get the ball rolling, and we’ll see where this goes.
The idea is to make my images available for people to see. To keep me accountable to creating my art so I can get better and eventually be able to make the kinds of images I really want to make.
So here it is; my first uploaded image of my (newly redesigned and remade) photoblog.
This is an image of my breakfast I took some months ago. I like capturing images like this because it was something completely everyday and ordinary, yet, when seen from a certain perspective (and with a certain amount of editing in Lightroom), it became something beautiful.
This is how I see life–I tend to find beauty in completely normal, mundane things–so it pleases me to be able to capture that feeling so I can show it to others.
And that’s my first (REAL, public) photoblog post. Phew!
Thanks for reading!
bookmark_borderBy Appointment Only
In continuing with photographing regularly, I went for something that caught my eye today. Someone must have picked up the fallen sign and placed it on the bench (the whole sign needs to be replaced, it fell and split in two with all the wind and snow we had midwinter). I have always liked the texture of that bench in black and white and I like the lines and perspective as well. Not one of my best images (I rather like it though!) but good practice for rendering into black and white.