Peony

Peony

A neighbor gifted me with some beautiful peonies. So, of course, I took them straight to the tiny studio for photographing. I am also breaking in a new computer so it was a good test of whether I have everything working right. Aside from the brushes needing to be reloaded in Photoshop I’m doing well. But I just realized I’m going to have to load Notepad before I can post this to my website. Love the new computer. Hate the hassle of getting things back to normal.

Anyway. I shot this with the Lensbaby Velvet 85. Took it through Nik detail extractor, did some noise reduction, had to brighten one side so used masks on the part that didn’t need it. And I used the spot healing brush to hide some blemishes on the outer petal. Oh, and I cropped in to get rid of an ugly grey background. Overall. I’m pretty pleased with the result.

Japanese Lantern

SnowLanternw

They called this a snow viewing lantern. I don’t know why. I have been neglecting my image of the week postings because I am still up to my ears in processing photos from Japan and creating a scrapbook of the trip. But when I came across this photo I thought it deserved special recognition. Of course I am always a sucker for Japanese Lanterns. This was one of 15 in a garden crammed into a site less than a half acre in area. Paradise.

Fans

Fans

I’ve been falling down on the job of getting my weekly blog done. But I have been doing a daily blog of my travels in Japan so I think that more than makes up for it. I came home with over 2000 images so it was hard to narrow it down to one. But, a lot of the images are more about telling the story than being artistic. And some of the best images have already appeared in the blog. But I managed to narrow it down to these fans I saw in a souvenir shop on the way to a temple or some fabrics I photographed in the market. I only chose the fans because I am jet lagged and they were in front of me. So it goes. They have just been sharpened and denoised with a little added saturation. I thought about hiding the price tags but since there are not too many of them and they are in Japanese I decided they could stay.

Blossoms

Blossomsw

It seems like overnight we went from winter to spring. I had to wait a couple of days to get out without rain but the blossoms were fresh and lovely thanks to all that moisture. I used the short telephoto on the mirrorless for this shot because it has a closer focusing distance than the long and because I needed to be able to maneuver to get the best composition which the tripod would have inhibited. In post processing I ran it through Nik Color Efex Pro to add detail and a vignette to help highlight the blossoms.

Spring

Spring

Last week I went on strike because the weather had been so cold and gloomy I didn’t even get out to photograph. This week spring is asserting itself again. So I went into my backyard to look for signs of spring. Photographing  my blooming forsythia was a challenge but I also found the leaves on my hydrangea bush starting to unfurl. Crocuses and daffodils are blooming all around but this shot really spoke to me of the unfolding of spring.

Mandarin Oranges

Mandarinsw

I spent more time working on digital art than photography this week. But I finally got a background board I had ordered last month for doing food photography. Had to try it out and love the distressed white side. Shot this with my Lensbaby Velvet85. Processed it using one texture and a slight vignette.

Stones

Stonesw

I took advantage of some beautiful winter weather to take a mini retreat at the coast. While walking on the beach I encountered this pile of stones that someone left. I liked the colors of some of the stones but in the end it was the textures and shapes that really spoke to me so I converted it to black and white and added a high pass filter to really bring out those textures.

Crocuses

Crocusw

It was a busy week and weekend so I’m just getting around to the image of the week for last week. Didn’t do much in the way of new captures but I was inspired to start a new series from existing flower images using grunge textures and clipping masks. I started with cocuses as I have been starting to see them in bloom.