Author: jeannehoadley

Day 26 – Poppy

Poppy

There is a patch of poppies in the ‘hood that appear to have come up voluntarily. The trouble with poppies is that they don’t open up until after the wind starts blowing so it is very hard to get a good picture of them. I had to adjust the crop on this one as it moved after I had framed it in camera. I also opened the shadows to put emphasis on the center of the flower. I liked how the texture I chose not only darkened the corners but also added so genuine texture to the flower as well as giving it more depth.

Today’s quote is attributed to Pete Turner. No idea who he is:

Ultimately, simplicity is the goal in every art, and achieving simplicity is one of the hardest things to do.

Day 25 – Mr. & Mrs. House Finch

HouseFinches

I’ve been noticing that when Cody and I go for our second walk of the day there are always finches in the neighbors trees. So, I decided to hang out on my porch for awhile with the big lens this morning. Bird photography is such a good exercise in patience. Usually, by the time I get them in my sights and get the lens focused on them they have flown away. So, I was really lucky to get not one but two House Finches in this shot. I just had to open the shadows so you could see them better due to brightness of the sky and voila.

Today we hear from Antoine de Saint Exupery from The Little Prince:

“And now here is the secret”, said The Little Prince, “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Day 24 – Bee on Blossom

Bee

It was another one of those days when I was going “Oh crap, I have to go out and find something to photograph.” So, I took the M3 for a quick walk around the neighborhood. The light was harsh, the wind was blowing and I wasn’t having much success. I had it in mind to do a close up of these blossoms when the bee just happened along. I had to futz with the exposure quite a bit due to the white blossoms and backlighting but I think I finally got there. Added a vignette to darken the corners and help the bee stand out.

Our quote today is from Henri Matisse:

Merely copying an object is not art. What counts is to express the emotion called forth in you, the feeling awakened…

Day 23 – Home

Home

I noticed coming home from the grocery store this morning that one of my neighbors had added some prayer flags to her back gate. The Home sign was already there. Of course, I should have photographed it then and there as the morning light was much better than the afternoon when I finally got around to it. But it still almost meets my vision. I added a grunge texture and a border to give it a little more of an arty look.

Today’s quote is from Nancy Rotenberg my favorite photography guru:

“…all you need to do is create a mind capable of receiving and the images will come.”

Day 22 – Violets

Violets

Fortunately, I made a couple of extra images yesterday so I didn’t have to go out looking for something today. This was shot with the Lensbaby Velvet 85 so is intentionally a little soft in the focus. I just adjusted the exposure a little and added a very subtle texture to this one.

This week I am turning to Nancy Rotenberg’s book: Photography and the Creative Life for my quotes. For today, she quotes Carl Jung:

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work h ever yet come to birth.

 

Day 21 – Orange Tulip

Orange_Tulip

Happy Easter! I spotted this orange tulip in one of my neighbor’s gardens while walking the dog and knew I had to lose the dog and come back with a camera. I shot this at a variety of apertures and ended up liking the soft focus on the background but wanting more depth of field on the main flower. So I blended two images in Photoshop to get the look I was after. I started to put a texture on it but decided I liked it just the way it was. I also realized I had posted two day 18’s so I made the correction and now I’m one day closer to the end.

Today’s quote is from Lin Yu-T’ang from Roderick McIver’s book Art as a Way of Life.  I couldn’t agree more:

The proper use of imagination is to give beauty to the world… The gift of imagination is used to cast over the commonplace workaday world a veil of beauty and make it throb with our esthetic enjoyment.

Day 20 – Still Life with wine

Wine

I have to say I really wasn’t feeling it today. I finally decided to do something impressionistic with a wine bottle and a glass of wine. I shot it with the Lensbaby Velvet 56 wide open so it had a soft look to start with. Then took it into Topaz Impression for a Van Gough effect and finally added a texture with an artsy look to finish it off. The bokah from the afternoon light was just a little added bonus.

Today’s quote is from Ansel Adams:

Art is both love and friendship and understanding; the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things, it is more than kindness which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of awareness of the spirit. It is the recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the inner relations of these.

Day 19 – Mandarin Orange

MandarinOrange

Still feeling a little xenophobic about going to a public place to photograph but I’m getting a little bored with the neighbor’s flowers so thought I would try some closeups of citrus this morning. I started with a lemon but decided I liked the Mandarin Orange a little better. 

Today’s quote is from Robert Henri:

Art is simply a result of expression during right feeling… Any material will do. After all, the object is not to make are, but to be in the wonderful state which makes are inevitable.

Day 17 – Wooly Mama

Wooly

After being woken up at 3am by the roar of frost protection equipment I thought I would drive out into the orchards and see how the blooms are coming along. I had to stop and take a close look to see that the buds were barely beginning to break and not very photogenic so I kept looking for something to photograph until I came upon this field of sheep and lambs. Some had been sheared and some not. This mama called out to her lamb and he came running. Hope he was able to find the milk under all that wool.

Today’s quote is from Clarissa Pinkola Estes who wrote Women Who Run with the Wolves:

Some say the creative life is in ideas, some say it is in doing. It seems in most instance to be in simply being.