Art – Page 10 – Jeanne Hoadley Photography

Day 62 – Petunias

Petunias

I was back to combing through the archives today. I took a webinar yesterday on using some software I have had for a while and don’t use much so I thought I should try to apply what I learned. I have a hard time with photographing petunias because they usually have a lot of blemishes and/or dirt on them. These were shot in Vancouver back in July and were in pretty good shape but the lighting was pretty flat. So after a little cropping to highlight just the three flowers, I took it into Topaz Studio and just started looking for something I liked. This setting emphasized the veining in the flowers which I really loved and brightened the whole thing up while giving it an almost cartoony look. Still not a masterpiece but my tribute to petunias.

Day 55 – Blanket Flowers with bee

Blanketswbee

I’m kind of excited about the idea of going back through the files and looking for ways to push the boundaries of creativity. Not that I won’t be going out to shoot, just not every day especially now that the flowers are kind of bedraggled from the heat and the smoke still has me hiding indoors with the ancestors. Anyway, I shot this one back in July at north Mountain Park with the sweet 50. That lens has a ball joint on it that allows you to point it in the direction where you want the focus to be and then blur out every thing else. So in this case I pointed at the bee and got maximum blur on the right. I then took it into Topaz impression and applied a Cezanne look and came back and masked it out over the flower with the bee and it’s neighbors. This one printed large on canvas would look great on my living room wall.

Day 54 – Rosebud

Rosebud

I was obviously going for an artsy look here. I started by converting to black and white and then overlaying a selection of just the reds in the bud. I then lowered the opacity on the black and white layer to let just a bit of green bleed through. Then I added a couple of texture layers to bring back just a hint of color and some texture into the background.

Day 51 – Rose with Beetle

Rosewbeetle

I’ve been thinking about getting back to the rose garden soon. So, I thought I wold take a look at what I might have from the last trip. I had to open the shadows way up while holding the overall exposure down in order to highlight the beetle. I added a texture to help with the edges but I think it might still be a little too bright on the right side.

Day 50 – Black Eyed Susan

BES

Well, look at that, half way done. I’m not sure whether to celebrate or shoot myself. This is another one from my tour around the yard yesterday. I tweaked the exposure, added a high pass filter to sharpen the edges and threw on a couple of textures.

Day 46 – Sunflower

Sunflower

It seems as if the only flowers that are thriving right now are the sunflowers and the black-eyed-Susans. I took a walk around the neighborhood yesterday and captured this sunflower that is growing all by itself in the middle of a vacant lot. I assume it escaped from one of the neighbor’s yards. I added a texture to give the background a little more interest but masked it out over the flower. This one was also shot with the new Sol45 lensbaby.

Day 43 – Sunflower

Sunflower2

I took a lot of photos today and very few of them were of flowers. None of them have been uploaded to the computer and I am very tired from driving down the coast from Bandon to Brookings and then home. So, I decided to do a quick and dirty from my last session with sunflowers. I really liked this one for the shape and texture of the petals and the soft blur of the Sweet50 but I thought it might be too much blur the first time around. But I decided to go with and then I added a texture which I thought I would not like but it added just that certain je ne sais quoi that it needed and I love it. I just made a new resolution to print something new to take down to the market each week so this may be the first!

Day 41 – Sunflower Impression

SunflowerImpression

I made a half-hearted attempt to go out and photograph my neighbors’ sunflowers this morning but the wind was not cooperating and I’m still struggling to find the sweet spot on my Sweet 50 lens. But this one which was completely in blur out of the camera cried out for some digital artistry. So after several iterations of Topaz software and several textures I came up this one which I rather like. Not sure I would hang it on my wall, but on the other hand, printed on wood? I might have something here.

Day 37 – Calibrachoa

Calibrachoa

I made it to my Mother’s house but didn’t have time to do much photography. I did snap a few pix of here pretty little Calibrachoa in the front of the house. I was in the mood to try something a little painterly so put on a texture then ran it through Topaz Impression and dialed the opacity back to about 50%.

Day 25 – Water Lily

WL2_BSim

So I set out today on my garden tour adventure. Since, for some stupid reason, I decided to fly to Vancouver from Portland I thought I might as well stop on the way up at Oregon’s own garden. Unfortunately it was about 1:30pm when I arrived and it was HOT. I have not perspired so profusely since last time I was on the east coast in summer.

But I had allowed myself an hour (silly me, one needs far more than an hour to do the Oregon Garden justice) and I did get some good photos but I was ready for some air conditioning by the time the hour was up. You might want to check out the first installment of my travel blog (yes, I am insane trying to keep up two daily blogs while on vacation) for this trip at http://jeannehoadley.com/Travel to learn more about the Oregon Garden.

This water lily sort of reminded me of stained glass the way the reeds divide the picture up. So, I ran it though a simplify program to try and push it a little further in that direction.