Summer’s Gone, But Not Forgotten- Weekly Photo Challenge

Summer may be gone, but a few flowers in the vase always brightens a gray winter’s day.

Taken with an iPhone5 using app Bracket Mode, combined in PRO HDR, then manipulated in Snapseed, RePix, Artista Oil, and Image Blender.

WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: this week’s theme is Gone But Not Forgotten. Check out other entries here.

Sunday Quote, 2013, Week 18, Charlie Chaplin

“I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood.  If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.”
– Charlie Chaplin

For no reason

Except just to be

Sunday quote, 2013, Week 16, W.B. Yeats

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting
for our senses to grow sharper. ~William Butler Yeats.

A view through the trees

Looking at clouds from other sides

Sunday Quote, 2013, Week 15, Pablo Neruda

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.
~Pablo Neruda

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote …

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

First Signs of Spring

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
(That slepen al the nyght with open eye)
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

~ Geofrey Chaucer

Linking up with Texture Tuesday.   A few layers of Kim Klassen’s texture kk_3303_2 and one of kk_cherish (which mostly was masked out of the final image).    As always, I appreciate your feedback on this image.

Just Playing Around

I have two Easter Lilies on my dining room table, waiting for me to deliver them.  While I’m it makes me happy to give them away, and I think that they look pretty, I can’t wait to get them out of my house.   Why?  Because the smell of two of them is overwhelming!

That didn’t deter me, however, from taking the opportunity provided by some beautiful late-afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows to take some snaps.  And, since I had just downloaded more iPhone apps to play with, this was the perfect time.  I was trying out both Camera Awesome and Camera +.  Awesome is free, + is not.   I’m not sure which one I like better, nor have I figured out whether they have the same features.

This particular shot was taken in Camera+.  After testing out many of the editing features — the usual iphone array of filters, presets and frames, I stuck with some basic edits for exposure and saturation.   I was pleased with the final product.   Then, I decided to experiment with another post-processing app I had downloaded:  Repix.   Think brushes.  Lots of brushes!   I tried nearly everyone available in the app.  Some I removed, some I left.   I don’t recall exactly what I kept, but it wasn’t until I was nearly finished that I discovered how to use the Erasure tool at a lower opacity and what awesomeness one can do with the “silk” brushes.  I was pleased with my final product — something that looked entirely different from the photograph that I shot.   I like the abstractness of this, yet it has enough definition (I think) that you can tell that it is a close-up of a flower.    Repix let me then open it in Instagram for posting.

I later brought it into Photoshop Elements.  Initially my intent was to simply add my copyright/signature, but I ended up playing with some additional filters.  It looks a little different, but I’m not sure which I like better.   I like the definition in the IG version; but I also like how the PSE version is more abstract.  I had applied the vignetting in Repix and it looks okay in the Instagram version, but it needs more smoothing in the PSE version.

Which to you prefer and why?   All feedback appreciated.

Easter Lily:  Instagram version

 

Easter Lily

Frame in the PSE version is made from two layers of Kim Klassen’s texture kk_2303, with lots of adjustments to the saturation.

 

 

I’m Solar-Powered …. and need a bit of Spring

9.25 was the number yesterday.   9.25 inches of snow, a 100-year-record in my area of the country for this late in March.   It was a year ago that I went to a friend’s home to photograph her garden because she thought she would miss it before she returned from her winter home in the South.  I went hiking one day in mid-March without sunscreen and paid the price.   All the Spring wildflowers had faded by the first of April.

But this year?  9.25 inches of heavy wet snow.  It started Sunday, dumping a few inches on the ground but not sticking to the roads.  By noon it had stopped and everything on the trees and lawns had melted.   I thought we had dodged a bullet.   Around dinner time it started up again with a fury, covering the ground within minutes.   Because Daylight Savings Time is earlier now than in past years, this may have been the first time I experienced a heavy snowstorm in the daylight — at 8 pm!

Monday morning everything was covered.  It was cold and the winds had picked up.  At times it was difficult to tell if it was snowing again — and often it was — or whether it was merely snow being shaken off the trees.  Every once and awhile I would see a robin.   This weather isn’t for the birds!   I bet that bird wondered why he had booked his return flight north so early.

I wandered outside later in the day, accompanied by my camera and my iPhone.  Since the iPhone is new, I thought I’d take a few setups with both.  Having a phone that was so old my family liked to tease me that it was “so last century” (hyperbole runs rampant in my household, but they were almost correct), I have been amazed at the quality of the photos this little wonder that fits in my pocket can take.

But you know what?  I’m bored with pictures of the trees in the woods covered with snow.   I’m fatigued by ice crystals slowly melting off the picnic table.  I’m no longer fascinated by the frost patterns on the windows and sidewalks.   I’ve seen enough of footprints left by woodland critters on the driveway.  I’m fed-up with the constant grey haze that permeates the midwestern winter.   I’m solar-powered and I need the sun!

And yet, in the midst of the white fluffy snow, there are hints that this Second Winter, Winter 2.0, or The Winter That Never Ends — call it what you want — will in fact melt away and soon there will be flowers and trees in bloom.

The flowers will bloom tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Can it please only be a day away?

I didn’t like any of the photos that I shot, but this one, with just a hint of yellow and green against the rocks reminds me to keep looking forward a few weeks to more enjoyable weather.  The photos weren’t as clear as I liked, nor were they exposed correctly (dark afternoon shadows and bright-grey light — ugh!).  So this seemed a perfect candidate for adding some artistic, painterly effects and some overlays.   I liked adding a texture (Kim Klassen’s Grunged Up 2) to the snow.   I’m over it looking pretty in its pristine condition. Don’t beguile me with your whiteness, ye blanket of snow!  When it doesn’t melt around here, it gets very grungy looking and so I thought this image deserved the same.    Pow!  Take that snow!   

Linking up for Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday.  This week’s theme:  Flowers.   New green growth with a few buds hinting at blossoms is about as close as you can get to flowers in the wild here and I wasn’t about to head out to the store in the snow!  🙂

Sunday Quote, 2013, Week 12, Thich Nhat Hanh

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.
                                                                 – Thich Nhat Hanh

Understanding The Nebula: The Cloud of Unknowing

Cityscape #1

Cityscape 1

I posted this as part of Brenda’s Third Thursday Challenge.  What is the 3rd Thursday Challenge?   To do something different.    This is a bit of a departure for me, although just a small one in terms of process.   I started with a macro image and played with several filters to amend and distort the original image.   It reminded me of a skyline, but of some non-existent, crumbling city.    The original image?   A badly damaged book taped together with Scotch tape.