creative pursuits
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
I did some experimenting with high ISO photography tonight photographing Galius. As it was even darker than in my office I bumped it up to 3500 and stayed in Aperture Priority on 5.6. Most of my images were blurry and the ones that weren’t he wasn’t in a good position (he was flaring at a blue cup outside his tank and was almost constantly in motion). So I took the blurriest one with him in full profile to work with.
This was another choice: 
Now that I am getting the hang of Photoshop I am realizing that I can do some things in Photoshop as well. I did some layers on this so that I could blur the background better and get rid of some of the distractions. And, uncharacteristically did not desaturate at all!
I spent most of the day playing with editing photos that I almost forgot to take one today! So here’s a closeup of a peacock feather spear.
Closeup of a peacock feather under my big compact fluo at night.
This is the top of a balloon weight I bought just because I love that pearly cellophane stuff. Happy to have captured the colors as they actually appear.
We got giant bubble wands today! I love the swirling colors in soap bubbles.
Sunday’s Easter eggs = today’s lunch! I just love those colorful crackle patterns in the egg shells.