Still feeling a little under the weather today I decided to head in to the tiny studio and drag out my seashells to play with. I think this one would look good printed large and hanging on the wall of a modern beach hotel.
And once more John O’Donahue hits the nail on the head:
When we devote some calm time to the heart and come off the treadmill of stress and distraction, we can enter into the beauty within.
So, this started out as an experiment that took on the life of the Energizer Bunny. It all started because when I bought the Omni filter system I had envisioned being able to use it with my Lensbaby lenses. But no, in their infinite wisdom Lensbaby included step down lenses with the device but none that fit their standard filter size. No worries, B&H had what I needed to get the job done. So this was my first attempt to mesh the Omni with the Velvet 56. I used two filter wands, one that gives a stretching effect and the rainbow wand. The sand dollar was sitting on the window sill of my studio. The sun is bright and it came out a little over exposed. But I persevered. It has a high pass filter, several vibrance and saturation layers, at least two textures, and several trips though Topaz software, most of which were aborted. Bottom line, I’m still not very happy with it but I am tired of playing with it. I can see that the Omni has a lot of potential for creative effects but it is a bit of a three ring circus trying to focus the lens, adjust the filters, etc, etc. The good news is there is a whole set of new Omni tools coming out and my name is on the list. I don’t think they will get here before the 100 days is over but more fun on the horizon.
I may have mentioned awhile back that I would be getting a new Lensbaby lens for my birthday. What with travel and jet lag and trying to catch up from being gone it has taken three weeks to get the new Velvet 56 into my hands. With a minimum focus distance of 5″ this lens has the most macro capability of any of my Lensbabies. I’m currently taking an online class in color so I set out to kill three birds with one stone by completing my color homework, testing the new lens and getting something done for the 100 days project. I’m not sure I succeeded, at least from the color standpoint. To my eye the burgundy cloth and the burgundy hydrangeas were about the same tone. But the camera wanted the flowers to be pink and the cloth red. So, I adjusted the color toward blue and added two bluish toned filters to try to bring it back to what I was seeing in the studio. I used the little bucket and a tin ceiling tile for neutral tones to play against my color. One thing I have noticed so far is that while the velvet 56 can stop down to f1.6, I haven’t been able to get anything in focus at that aperture…it may work better in full macro modes, we’ll see. In any case I look forward to playing with my new toy some more in the days ahead.
I’m back from the coast but don’t have the energy to download and transfer today’s images so I thought of this one that I shot at grower’s market about a month ago. It didn’t seem appropriate to share at the time but now it is perfect. I just bumped up the exposure a little and added a high pass filter, some clarity and vibrance.
It was a busy day and while I did stop by North Mountain Park on my way home I never got around to downloading the images. So, I decided it was time to turn to the archives. I found this chess set at the barnstormer’s vintage fair. I knew as soon as I saw the raw image that it wanted to be black and white. I added a light vignette and a border. This was shot with the Sweet 50 by the way.
I’ve been a little annoyed with Facebook lately for insisting on telling me what activities my friends were interested in attending. However, this weekend was the Barnstormers Vintage Fair at the Expo and I would not even have known about it if my Facebook friends had not expressed interest. So score one point for Facebook’s invasion of my friends privacy.
I decided to take the little walk around camera with the Sweet 50 Lensbaby attached. Sweet 50 is arguably my favorite Lensbaby. It gives sweet spot of very sharp focus and then fades off into blur. But just to make things interesting you can swivel the lens to determine where the focus will be so it doesn’t have to be right in the center.
I cannot ever walk by an old typewriter without taking its picture. So I have images of at least 5 or 6 typewriters along with many other interesting things from the fair. The Sweet 50 gave them all an interesting twist. I also scored some fun props for still life photography so stay tuned for those to show up somewhere along the line. I had to limit myself to what I could carry back to the car in one trip. Otherwise, I might have gone bankrupt! (I know I’ll be kicking myself for not grabbing one of those vintage windows when I had the chance! But they were heavy and it was a long way back to the car.)
Anyway, this typewriter (which by the way was sold right after I photographed it so I’m glad I pulled the camera out of the bag when I did) took a trip through Topaz Studio 2 to enhance the vintage look. Then I used Nik Color Efex Pro to add a grungy border.
It was pointed out to me this week that I haven’t been posting much lately. I acknowledged that this was true. But when I went and looked at my files and realized I hadn’t taken a single picture in February and the month was half over I resolved that something needed to change. Between the weather and a ridiculously busy schedule for a retired person I just haven’t had the time or opportunity to do what I love. So, this morning I headed into the tiny studio with some sea shells and a flashlight to see what I could come up with. I rested this sand dollar on top of the flashlight and was pleased with the result. As always I thought I didn’t need a texture but when I put one on it did seem to improve the image.
It’s been a busy day and I had at first thought to post something from the archives but I got another new toy today. and had to try it out though at over 100 degrees I did not want to go outside so I clipped a flower from my black-eyed susan from the nursery and took it up to the tiny studio. My new toy is another lensbaby lens. This one fits on my mirrorless camera and gives me three looks a twisty background, a velvety look like the velvet and a sweet look like the sweet 50 but at 28mm. It took me awhile to figure out how to make it work but I’m excited about the possibilities. On this one I used a lightroom preset to desaturate it a little and added a texture.
In spite of it being Nature Photography Day I have been playing in the tiny studio again. I was inspired by an online workshop in still life photography. The background is from a photograph I printed and put behind the scene. My Dad’s old Brownie Camera and a book my Mom gave me when I first started taking pictures at about age 12. Took it through a couple of Topaz programs to get the vintage look. I think I may have to print this one to hang on my wall.
I spent some time last weekend rearranging the furniture in my guest room in order to make the tiny studio more functional. At the same time my Hydrangea was bursting forth in full glory and I got a new 24-70mm zoom lens with macro capability so I took advantage of this cosmic alignment to create this still life. I added a couple of textures to give it a more arty look.