In the setting sun….
Almost perfect … makes perfect.
This photo was textured using “Rainy Days”, a texture by Kim Klassen. Linking with Kim’s Texture Tuesday. Kim has a new site — and it is beautiful. You should stop by for a visit.
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. ~ Irish Murdoch
Comments Off on Wise Words
Posted in Sunday Quote
Tagged Flowers, Iris Murdoch, Nature Photography, Orchids
Bloom & Bottle
Linking with Kim Klassen’s Café for Textured Tuesday. Used one layer of Kim’s kk_cherish texture, using blend mode of Overlay, 50% opacity, removed from bloom & bottle, to add a little bit of color to foreground and background.
Ravenna, Italy
It is almost time for a new travel theme, but here is my contribution to last Friday’s Travel Theme, hosted by Where’s My Backpack. The theme is sweet and this is probably the sweetest things that I’ve tasted in the past week:
No quite Lemon-Blueberry Cake, With Peaches
For the Lemon-Berry Cake, I used a wonderful recipe I found at The Ranting Chef. I hate it when someone says “This recipe is the best!” but then states that they didn’t follow the recipe exactly. BUT….
This recipe is delicious, possibly the best, easiest, sweet summer treat that I’ve come across in a long time. BUT, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. I had every intention of following the recipe, but when I grabbed the blueberries out of the fridge — after I had already started the batter — I noticed that they were looking a bit too sad to use. I didn’t want to look too closely at them because I hate finding food adorned with fuzzy growing stuff. Into the trash can the berries went. A chimney sweep was cleaning the fireplaces (really! who does that in July? Probably nobody except bargain-hunters with fireplaces.) so I couldn’t dash off to the grocery for more blueberries. Next best option: use the blackberries in the fridge. They were so delicious and sweet and they worked great as a substitute. I think the blueberries, generally sweeter than blackberries, would give more of a contrast between sweet and tart, but this cake definitely rocks. As for those peaches? Well most of that bunch was gobbled up a few days ago. They were sweet, juicy, delicious; a perfect summer peach.
But, sweet doesn’t always have to mean something edible. I think this image is sweet too:
Roadside Bouquet, Old Pitcher
I might have broken some city ordinances when I pulled my car into the greenway parking lot the other day with every intention of grabbing these flowers. There are many disagreeable things about Indiana in the middle of the summer. Think: hot, humid, lots of mosquitoes and bees. But, the wildflowers along the side of the road cannot be added to that list.
I love the look of the orange daylilies, the white Queen Anne’s Lace, and the blue cornflowers that seem to pop up overnight by any roadside. They add beautiful touches of color to the parched fields. The daylilies and the cornflowers wither too quickly for cut flower arrangements, but the Queen Anne’s Lace blends beautifully with the vibrant yellows of coneflower, tickseed, fleabane, and swamp sunflower. The pinks and lavenders of coneflower, buttonweed, Indian Blanket and blazing stars are dazzling complements.
The wildflowers look wonderful in this old aluminum pitcher that I found while cleaning out my mother’s garage recently. She used this pitcher all the time when I was a child. The aluminum pitcher was perfect for lemonade or just plain ice-cold water. On any hot summer day, the sweat from the cold beverage that would form on the pitcher added to the quenchability of the drink.
Here is another photo that says sweet but not because of sweet champagne. If I know my mother’s taste in champagne, I can guarantee that what was in that glass was NOT dry. Although it looks like she might be about to baptize me in liquor, I’m pretty sure that was not the case, although the comments on the back of the photograph indicated it was taken at my baptism.
Still, I think this picture (found during the same cleaning expedition that unearthed the pitcher) is sweet. Though there were many times growing up when I didn’t think that my older sis was all sugar, I think this photo of us is adorably sweet. The photo was in horrible shape — aged, torn, speckled — but it was worth the hours it took me to clean it up in Photoshop. And can you believe that my Mama was wearing a stylish LBD and a strand of elegant pearls just two weeks after giving birth? I don’t think that the Duchess of Cambridge has anything on my mother in the “looks great postpartum” category.
Long Ago
Some other interpretations of Ailsa’s Theme – Sweet:
A masterpiece of nature:
A masterpiece — and masterfully peaceful
I love how a lotus flower in bloom seems to have an inner light shining. It is truly a wondrous piece of work by Mother Nature.
See how others have interpreted this week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge here. Below are just a few examples:
We’ve all heard it. It’s pretty simplistic advice for traumatic, real-life problems, problems that matter that can’t be cured by simple clichés. But….for those non-issue “problems” we run into regularly, it sure helps if you can pick up what you have and go with it.
So, for instance, when you’re standing at a mucky pond edge trying to get just the right shot without falling, camera in hand, into the water, you have to expect that you might need to deal with a little blur. Don’t hit delete immediately though! Get a little creative – there still might be something in the shot that will save it from the bit bucket, like a great composition and some amazing color despite the over-exposure. 🙂
Early Morning Bloom
This may not have been the picture I envisioned when I lined up the shot. It may be that I don’t have the ability to draw freehand and have the results look like anything recognizable. But, with lots of trial and error, I figured a way to make this image into something that I think is worthy. And I had a lot of fun creating it as well.
Original shot: Lensbaby Composer Pro with Wide Angle Lens, ISO 100, 1/2500, aperture = 0 I forgot to bring my Lensbaby aperture disks with me, so had to make do with the wide open lens. Once I was wet and having little fishes brush against my legs, I wasn’t willing to go back into the house to find those disks. So, I stayed with a fast shutter speed and tried to shoot in the shadows — except for this one shot, my first today with the Lensbaby, taken a few seconds before the realization that I didn’t have an aperture disk in the ComposerPro.
First I did some minor adjustments in Lightroom with exposure (it didn’t help much) and with saturation levels. Then, using PS Elements, I copied and inverted a layer, set blend mode to Color Burn, then used the filter for “Minimum” to bring out the lines in the flower. This is a variation of the “Sketch” effect that I’ve used previously. (You can find the entire process in a tutorial by Bill Barber here).
In a separate layer, I applied the artistic filter Smudge Stick and then applied a Gaussian blur to soften up the background which was already pretty blurry. Thanks camera shake and Lensbaby: without that blur this image wouldn’t be what it was — or became! Erased this layer over the surface of the flower. Set the blend mode to Overlay and merged the layers. Then, I added a solid color screen in a light pink hue to add some complimentary color to the background and erasing it over the area of the bloom.
Et voilá! I like the way this turned out. I would love to be able to create something like this with paper and pencil or pastel or something, but instead of calling it “Early Morning Bloom”, I’m afraid I’d have to title it “Early Morning Blob”.
I took several other photos. Hey – some of them were even in focus! I predict that a few of them will show up here over the next few weeks. The water in the pond was warm but it probably was a stupid idea to climb into the water with my camera. Everything turned out okay though.
And then I went inside and had some lemonade. Not because it is what life has thrown at me; (lemons have to be imported in my neighborhood) but because it is really hot here right now and lemonade was a perfect refresher.
There are always flowers for those who want to see them. ~ Henri Matisse
Leaf, Petal, Water
I didn’t travel far for this week’s travel theme, hosted each week by Ailsa. Nor did I have to click my heels together three times to find simplicity in my own backyard.
Simplicity: Lotus Bud
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin”.
But flowers aren’t really that simple are they? Look closely to see nature’s complexities. Those small white dots are small spider eggs – a portrait of nature’s glory: interdependent, simple, beautiful.
Below is a different edit of the same photo because I couldn’t leave well enough alone. Tomorrow perhaps the lotus will bloom and I can observe again the simple and the complex in the bloom of a flower.
Lotus Sketch
Have a photograph that represents Simplicity? Join the fun: post it and link to Ailsa’s blog, Where’s My Backpack. Here are links to just a few who are participating this week:
Tagged Flowers, Lotus, nature, Photography, Travel Theme Simplicity
Four Deer Oak 