A very good week

It has been a very good week.  Work has gone well, I'm finished year end accounting, month end reports and all accounts have been analyized, ready for the audit.  Seven working days to complete it all, not bad at all. The healthy eating has been going well, drinking lots of water and on Friday I got back on the scale and lost a whole pound.  Whoo hoo, but at least I didn't gain a pound.  I'll continue on and I'm sure some day I'm sure I see positive results.

Last week did bring some good news.  I joined a group on Flickr, 52 in 2014 where each week has a theme and voting for your favorites  Week one's theme was Abstract and my Bubbles placed in the #3 spot.

Week # 2 ending, today, here's my entry for Bokeh.  This was taken with a lens baby composer and 4x macro filter.  The shaped bokeh is done with the lensbaby bokeh kit and a tin foil background.

It's been nice getting back into photography.  The past few years I've done a 365 with it slipping during the past year.  With family, work and life getting in the way I hoping this 52 group will get me shooting again. I hope you all had a good week and next week is even better.  Thanks for stopping in.

Lensbaby Pansies

Wake Up at 5:30 am

Post daily photo

Shower

Eat Breakfast

Leave for work at 7:00 am

Work

15 minute break at 9:15 am

Work

Lunch break at noon

Work

15 minute break at 2:15 pm

Work

Leave work at 4:30 pm

Arrive home and start supper

Husband home at 5:45 pm

Supper at 6:00 pm

Process photos, watch TV

Bed at 9:30 pm

For the past four years that was my daily routine.  Very structured and organized.  My work in accounting was also very structured and creativity during the day was really something that did not happen.  Bad things happen when one gets creative with accounting.

When I got my first DSLR, 3 years ago, my photos were also very structured.  As I had taken a few courses in photography, I knew what DOF was. f2.8 gave out of focus photos, but when you spend good money on a sharp lens, why would you want to use anything but f14. To me f2.8 was something you used when you needed more light.  My photos had to be sharp and in focus all the time.  A photo copy of reality is what I was after.

A couple of years my husband gave me a Lensbaby Composer for Christmas and I called it my “play” lens.  Great for shots of the Christmas tree and lights but I didn’t use it much.

During the past couple of years, being part of the Daily community on Smugmug, I began to appreciate f2.8.  Now, the majority of my photos are taken at f2.8 or f4. My new job is less structured.  I still don’t get creative with the accounting, but there are no buzzers to tell me when to take a break and when to eat lunch.  I’m starting to feel a little less like a trained mouse.

Sunday morning I woke up to a beautiful day and I put the Lensbaby on the camera and decided to play with the pansies in the yard.

 

My first thought was that the rain drops were ruining the photos and then I began to see everything a little different. I added a little star from the bokeh kit to see if I could catch a few out of focus drops.

And came across the wet leaves of a daylily.

Again back into the house to add a macro filter to the lensbaby.

It’s now Tuesday and I still have the lensbaby on the camera.

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Texture Tuesday Lilacs

"As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion." Jasper Johns

 Kim Klassen's latest texture "Confusion" seems to fit my state of mind lately. I was thinking I was getting old, but now I see it as to too many paths to take.


 Hover over with your mouse and you'll see the before and after.

 

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i heart macro

 

 Texture Tuesday

 

Grandma's Phlox

A sure sign of summer in the garden is the pink phlox blooming in my wildflower garden.

At the same time, the lilacs bloom, the Swallowtail Butterflies return and summer gardening begins.  The phlox has always been one of my favorites for the macro lens. The tiny delicate pink flowers contrasting with the green stems make them perfect for a shallow depth of field and they appear to float above the greenery. 

The little pink phlox reminds me of my Grandma and makes me smile.  The gardens in her neighborhood always contained these beautiful mounds of pink flowers.  She was an avid gardener, first on the farm out of necessity and later in the city because of her love of gardening. When we moved to the acerage I had asked her for a little piece of this flower to plant in my first flower bed.  I didn’t realize it at the time because she had so many flowers, but she didn’t have any phlox in her yard but the library down the street and the neighbors did have mounds of it. 

I never did find out where mine came from. Grandma’s been gone for many years now, but I’m always reminded of her when the phlox booms.

And speaking of wildflowers, I found this little guy sitting on one of the wild violets.

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Texture Tuesday and Yellow Mums

This weeks theme over at Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday is free and easy.  Any photo, any color, any texture.  In my Easter centerpiece I used egg shells for little flower pots and they haven't hit the compost bin yet so I thought I'd get a little more use out of them.

Two layers of kk_paperlove, one set at multiply and one at overlay.

Two layers of kk_paperlove, both set at multiply.

  

One layer of kk_paperlove and one layer of kk_stained linen both at multiply.

   

  

Macro Monday Mums

"Nobody sees a flower, really - it is so small we haven't time, and to see takes time"

                                                                                                                                                                                                    

                                                                                            -- Georgia Okeefe

Macro Monday and a mum

Friday night I bought a little bouquet of white mums from the grocery store to help get me through another winter weekend.  It's been my practice lately, when I've got something new to photograph, to start with a lens and capture every angle I can, change lenses and start all over again.  With this little bouquet I first brought out the macro lens and placed a white background behind the flowers to try and get some white on white shots.  Technically, none of these are macros but close ups.  I just didn't think Close Up Monday sounded as good as Macro Monday.

Nuking a CD

After reading a blog posting by Fotomom about Rainbows I was intrigued by the idea of placing a CD in the microwave.  Not sure if I should put it on a paper plate or a glass plate I opted for the glass plate.  If you try this make sure to use an old plate as I don't think the burn marks are going to come off.  We've all done photos of the light refracting on a CD and placed the water drop to catch the rainbow, but this does have a new and interesting effect. The cracking of the interior of the CD, I guess this would be gaps in the data, produce beautiful lines almost like a spiderweb.

This first photo was taken with a 24-70 lens and the light was produced with a little Ikea desk lamp.

In Photoshop, the Oilpaint option from Pixel Bender was added

Lastly, the Poster Edges filter was added

I then added a few little drops of glycerin and changed to my 105mm Macro Lens.

Added the Oilpaint option from Pixel Bender

And finished off with Poster Edges in Photoshop

Texture Tuesday - The Cyclamen

This week's challenge for Texture Tuesday is to use a layer of Kim Klassen's texture Embrace. I used it last week for landscape photo's as I love the texture and depth it gave to the skies. This week I tried it on a photo of a Cyclamen to give the background a little more interest.  I used 2 layers of Embrace followed by a layer of Sweettart.

Here's a screen shot of the layers in CS5

Here's a few more, because it's hard to stop at one flower shot.

Anthuriums at The Enjoy Centre

Images Alberta Camera Club held an outing yesterday at the Enjoy Centre in St. Albert. This outing was one of the major reasons I joined the club. An opportunity to go into a greenhouse with a tripod and shoot flowers and giftware for the day, a little bit of heaven for me. Joining the club has turned out to be so much more, but I did enjoy the day. My favorite exotic flower has always been the Anthurium and to my delight Hole's had these, begging to be shot. I now only realize that I treated these as I would have shooting a flower in nature, touching nothing and trying to maneuver the camera to get the shots I wanted. If I were in the greenhouse to buy a plant I would have touched all the pots and moved the flowers to get the one I wanted. I'm sure I missed a lot of different colors and shapes but, oh well, next year.

Hoar Frost Macros