Desert Solitaire

It seems that over the recent weeks I have been pre-occupied with photography, but nonetheless I also was creative in some other ways. I created a few journals for my shop, am working on a canvas which I mainly hate (I put it aside for the time being) and also did a combination of photography and painting by creating this:

The photo was taken at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico two winters ago. It is a fascinating place (I wrote about it here) with endless white sand dunes, many soaptree yuccas and other desert plants that survive in these conditions and an unlimited sky. It was a photographer's paradise.

 

 

I was especially fascinated by the soaptree yuccas with their dried seed pods. They made a beautiful foreground to the sunset sky and just offered another dimension in the ever white sandy landscape. It wasn't enough for me to just look at the pictures on my computer. So I went through the photos and picked this one for my first canvas board - I hope there will be more to follow. The title came naturally - it's a book by Edward Abbey who worked as a seasonal park ranger in Arches when it was still a National Monument (nowadays it's a National Park as you probably all know). Very soon this mixed media painting will be available in my Etsy shop.

After I don't know how many weeks I'm finally able to link up to Paint Party Friday again. I also link this to Mandarin Orange Monday.

From Dull to Beautiful

I was meandering through the house taking some random shots. One was of the three big fat yellow candles on my coffee table in front of the big window. The image itself is rather dull, but I liked the yellow color. So I went through my textures until I found one that I thought would do "some magic" - and it did (Bonnie's texture "evelyn inspired" in hard light at 60%). It turned a dull photo into an image that I could use for a Christmas card! I guess this will be in my Etsy shop soon!

This is for August Break 2012 (#16 already!) and Bonnie's Photo Art Friday.

A Little Girl

"Gift/s" is this week's prompt at Bonnie's Photo Art Friday. What a beautiful theme - we all have gifts in our life, don't we? It can be a beautiful morning, an unexpected flower blooming in your garden, a cup of coffee brought to your bedside or a spectacular sunrise. The list is endless.

My gift - the best and biggest and most miraculous gift ever - is this little girl:

This is my daughter at three years old. Just two months before this image was taken we had moved to California from Germany. My daughter had attended only a few weeks of preschool before it closed down for the summer. Too short for her to make friends or learn enough of the new language to communicate with other people using words (she had many other ways, though, especially her killer smile). She missed Germany and her friends there, the little toddler group that she went to every afternoon. But still she kept her irresistible smile and her joy of life. Those first few months in the States were hard on both her and myself, but somehow we got through it and remembered to have fun every day. She was a real trooper.

She still is. The best gift ever.

This photo was taken with my film camera. I couldn't find the negatives anymore so I had to scan it from the scrapbook page I had created years ago. Thanks to Photoshop I could still work with it.

First I cropped it and then added the blur, taking the blur away in only those places I wanted to. Added Bonnie's texture "Autrefois" and blended it in soft light at 100%. Copied it and that's it.

Church Door

Bonnie's theme for Photo Art Friday this week is "doors". I have tons of photos of doors - but which one to chose?

This one - a little side door to a church in the Norfolk Broads in England, an area I visited many times. Unfortunately this photo turned out slightly blurred (I scanned it from a slide). However, playing around with textures, this wasn't a disadvantage. I love how it looks now, it has this weathered style which is exactly what this part of the church looked like (well, the entire church actually). I also love how the color of the foxglove is repeated in the old stone wall.

The recipe:
- layers adjustment and some sharpening
- Bonnie's texture "etched in stone" blended in linear light at 70% opacity
- hue/saturation adjustment

Photo Art Friday starts tonight - please check it out if you have time. This is also photo # 2 for The August Break.

Light

... is this week's theme at Bonnie's Photo Art Friday.

Immediately I remembered a visit to England back in the summer of 1997. It was a bit of a weird week. The weekend before Princess Diana had died, and the country was in mourning. Wherever we went, if there was a church there were huge piles of flowers, cards and candles. Sometimes even on the sidewalk at the village green.

We went to Gloucester and visited the magnificent cathedral there. While an entire wing of the cathedral was crowded with people waiting in line to finally get their turn to write into the book of condolences, we strolled around the otherwise very quiet old grounds until I stopped short when I saw this beautiful reflection at the foot of one of the mighty pillars. The sunlight fell through the stained glass windows and threw the colors on the old stones as if he was enjoying himself tremendously. I loved it then, I still do now.

Thank you, Bonnie, for another great challenge! Please visit her blog to see way more fantastic photos of light and more. Pure eye candy!

I'm also linking this to Mandarin Orange Monday - check out all the other ornage images there.

Fences

"Fencing" is the theme of Bonnie's Photo Art Friday for this week. I had to participate because fences are a favorite photo subject for me. I played around with some of Bonnie's textures or just changed the photo a little bit.

The top one caught my attention because I like how the jasmin curled around the fence. I used the "yesteryear" texture in blending mode Hard Light at 90% and did some levels and saturation adjustment.

The next fence meanders around the churchyard in Chipping Campden in the British Cotswold Hills, one of my favorite places in the world. Here I blended Bonnie's texture "vintage wine label" in Multiply at 66% and also did some levels and saturation adjustments.

Oh, the fences at the beaches on the East Coast! I loved them, so photogenic! Along the New Jersey shore there are miles and miles of these fences, a paradise for me. Bonnie's texture "everything is illuminated" worked perfectly in blending mode Linear Burn at 37% and a few levels and saturation adjustments.

I passed this beautiful fence in my old neighborhood almost every day when Kaefer still went to elementary school. I like the sepia tone.

Of course I had to go crazy on one picture. This is a very low fence around a graveyard in a small cemetery in Tomales. The texture is Bonnie's "Ephemeral" blended in Exclusion at 85% and then some heavy levels and hue/saturation adjustments. It was fun!

.

A Name Calling Owl

Don't get ideas when you read this title!!!

This is actually this week's challenge at Photo Art Friday. Since I hadn't participated for such a long time, I wasn't sure whether I would be up for it. Out of curiosity I checked what the challenge was for this week, and I was totally tempted. Bonnie asked us to "showcase a piece of photo art that references, in even the most oblique way, the title of one of your favorite books". Now, that sounds like a great challenge.

I chose my all-time favorite, a small book that I have loved for more than twenty years, "I Heard the Owl Call my Name" by Margaret Craven. It's the story of Mark Brian, a young Anglican priest who has not long to live and is sent to the Indian village of Kingcome in the wilds of British Columbia.

With all those pictures of the Great Horned Owl I took last year it wasn't hard to find "the base". I used two of Bonnie's textures, "Old Ornate Linen" and "cancel the cost" as well as some detail (an eye) of a piece of art by the First Nations that I saw in the Museum of Anthropology at UBC in Vancouver.

The recipe:
- crop the original photo so that I only have Mama Owl. Blur the entire photo (Gaussian Blur) at 100%, then use a layer mask and the brush tool to get the owl back.
- levels, brightness and saturation adjustments
- "Old Ornate Linen" in blending mode overlay at 100%
- copy, blending mode soft light at 100%
- "cancel the cost" in blending mode overlay at 54%
- add the text
- levels adjustment
- add the second photo (the eye) in blending mode exclusion at 64%

And... I recommend the book. It's a great read, done in a weekend. If you like "quiet" books, this is it.

Wordpress bloggers, please read: I have been unable to leave comments on some Wordpress blogs. It seems that Blogger users have to be enabled on Wordpress blogs to comment there. Since there are Wordpress blogs where I can leave comments without any problems, I assume that each Wordpress blog has to enable Blogger users to comment. It's sad when I can't leave comments...

Tulips and Books

As usual I am late for Photo Art Friday (yes, I know it's Sunday), but better late than never. For this week, Bonnie asked us to share a piece of photo art where we use one of her textures and then use a layer mask to finesse the texture application. It was quite a challenge, but I think I managed not too bad.

I used Bonnie's texture "desert canvas" in blending mode soft light at 100% and then used a layer mask in PSE to remove most of the texture from the tulips and their leaves. After that the tulips received some of the texture back, but lighter than before. It wasn't that difficult after all, it just takes some time and I had a harder time to decide when I was actually finished.

Bonnie's challenges help me to learn using PSE more and more efficiently, and I am very happy about that. Recently I have also taken more "still life" photos which is new to me and I haven't practiced very often. It actually also helps me to take better product pictures of the items for my Etsy store which is important to me.

I am also linking this to Life in Pictures at Coston Comba Photography, a photo blog I have just discovered.
.

Dew Drops on Smoketree

One morning I looked at the smoketree at my frontdoor and saw all these beautiful dew drops on it - of course I had to take a picture. And of course I had to add some texture!

Here's the "recipe":
- Levels adjustment
- Bonnie's texture "artist's easel" in blending mode color burn at 47% opacity
- copied it in blending mode soft light at 47% opacity
- some adjustment in hue/saturation and brightness
- Bonnie's texture "goodness" in blending mode vivid light in 55% opacity
- and a final levels adjustment

I love how the drops stand out and almost glow.

I'm linking this to Photo Art Friday - really really late this time (I missed it last week...)
.

My First Try of an Abstract

As many of you know, I love Bonnie's Photo Art Friday challenge. What I particularly like about it is that Bonnie's ideas really challenge me and often enough get me out of my comfort zone. One of those is to create an abstract, using three of our photos and at least one of her textures. Oh boy!!! That was way out of my comfort zone - and it shows.

These were my three photos:

I "merged" them into one image just like Bonnie told us in her tutorial, and then selected a filter "cutout". After that I added Bonnie's texture "abstract scratches" in blending mode "difference" at 75%; then added her texture "Monet's music texture" in blending mode "vivid light" at 67%; some levels and saturation adjustment and I felt I was done. I really didn't know what else to do.

Do I like it? Not really...

Perhaps I did chose photos that don't work very well for this project (probably). I wish I knew how to blend the edges of the photos more, so that the photos merge better. I don't like that you can still see the rectangle shape. I have no idea whether and how that is possible. Perhaps someone can tell me?

.

Three

Bonnie's challenge for this week's Photo Art Friday was something that connects to the number 3/three. Not only will you see three of my photos here, but each shows three of something - deck chairs, sail boats and trees.

This picture - originally a slide, like the two others as well -was taken at the beach in Brighton, England. It was a windy, partly cloudy day, and almost no one was sitting in these chairs. However, they had something very optimistic about them the way they were patiently waiting for guests to lounge there despite the English moody weather. The texture applied here is Kim Klassen's "warmsun", blending mode linear burn at 50% and copied once with some adjustments (levels, saturation, brightness).

With these sail boats - shot at the coast of Cornwall, England - I went a little bit bolder. The picture was taken in the evening with the sun already gone, but the clouds were still pink and the mood was nice, but quite dark. The original picture is a little bit dull, so I thought some "pepper" can't hurt. I first applied Bonnie's texture "dappled dawn", blending mode exclusion at 90%; did some hue/saturation adjustments; applied Bonnie's texture "mauve magic", blending mode color dodge at 25%; some more saturation and brightness adjustments; and finally I cropped the photo a little bit more. I'm in love with the color!

Finally trees - of course! Again, we are in the Swabian mountains in Germany on a cold winter day, a very cloudy day I should add, the original photo is just dark. I cropped it down to three trees; did a levels adjustment to brighten it up a little bit; applied Bonnie's "edited acrylics" (one of my favorite textures) in blending mode pin light at 85% with some saturation adjustments. I only used a part of the texture, the upper left hand corner, and I thought how interesting it looks when you drag out the texture.

What I really like about these challenges is that I try something new - blending modes I usually ignore, or playing around with the texture first before applying it. Every time I realize how much I still have to learn, but I love, love, love it.

.

Photo Art Friday

For this week's Photo Art Friday we were asked to create something with one (or more) of  Bonnie's textures that are available for free on her blog. Please go and check it out - her textures are awesome.

A few of her textures are more abstract, and since I had seen them the first time I wanted to use them, but never quite knew how. I'm not much wiser now, but I gave it a try with this photo, that has been on the back of my mind for quite a while. It's my favorite tree on the Schwäbische Alb (Swabian Mountains), about an hour's drive from Tübingen where I lived in Germany.

It was taken as a slide, and about two or three years ago I scanned it and saved it to my computer.

Inverted the photo

Hue/saturation adjustment

Bonnie's texture "Happy Day" at blending mode color burn at 54%

Hue/saturation adjustment

Probably you can do way more with that... but I like it the way it turned out. It gives it an "icy" feeling.

.



A favorite piece of photo art from 2011

After a few weeks of break we're back at Bonnie's Photo Art Friday. For this week, Bonnie asked us to share one of our favorite pieces of photo art from 2011.

Oh the choices. There were so many that I really like, but I have already posted them here and I don't want to bore you with repeat photos. However, I found one that I edited in PSE from an older slide that I took sometime in the early nineties. The texture I used is Kim Klassen's "kkluminous". It is not my best photo art, but I love the mood in it and it reminds me of the times when I was still living on my own and bought myself some fresh flowers at the farmers market every weekend. This must have been taken in May or June, the time when peonies bloom in Germany. Dark red peonies like the ones in the photo belong to me very favorite flowers. They look wonderful by themselves, but are absolutely stunning when you pair them with blue delphinium or purple lupines.

.

Rosehips in Winter

Last winter while driving along scenic Highway 12 in Utah from Capitol Reef National Park to Bryce Canyon National Park, I saw these frozen rosehips at the side of the road. I thought it might make a good pre-Christmas image.

Usually I only use one texture when I alter photos, two at the most. For this one, though, I tried using three textures and also played with blending modes I usually tend to avoid.

These are all Bonnie's textures.

"Soft Swirls", blending mode overlay at 75%

"Dear John Letter", blending mode difference at 33%

hue/saturation adjustments

contrast adjustment

"Acrylic as Texture", blending mode color burn at 23%

Warming photo filter (LBA)

final levels adjustment

Most times I shy away from this kind of exaggerated color, but for this photo I wanted to achieve something like this and really had to step outside my comfort zone. In the end, I had a lot of fun and actually quite like the result.

I'm linking this to Bonnie's Photo Art Friday, one of my favorite photo challenges.

Leaves, Leaves Everywhere

I tried something new here and used a filter > texture, blending mode multiply at 43%, some levels and hue/saturation adjustment. For Bonnie's Photo Art Friday.

We are having some pretty strong winds here, the air is warmer than over the past few days, the sun is shining out of an incredibly blue sky and there was no fog this morning.

I live in a neighborhood full of lovely deciduous trees. The wind has blown their leaves everywhere, and they cover my yard.

There are leaves in my empty pots,

hanging from the old redwood fence,

lying on some old wood,

fallen to the ground,

cuddling in the abalone shell,

resting on the ivy,

and keeping fresh in the little fountain.

Are there still many leaves in the trees where you live or did you already have the first snow?

Tuscan Grapes

Bonnie asked for this week's Photo Art Friday that we show an edited photo that has been sitting around in our archives and never got any attention. For this, I chose the photo above - and I have no idea how I edited it because at that time (a couple years ago) I never wrote down the recipe. Since the original photo is a slide that I had scanned I suspect that I edited it in Lightroom.

Nevertheless, when I found this edited photo I couldn't resist to tweak it a little bit more, this time using PSE. I added the word, played around with levels and hue/saturation, and then added one of Bonnie's textures "notes to myself", blending mode linear burn at 57%.

This was the original photo, SOOC:

The photo was taken in Tuscany, near the medieval town of San Gimignano.

Rosehips

A week ago a friend of mine brought me some roses, rosehips and hydrangea beautifully put together. I was so touched by this little gesture, that I wanted to keep it forever and therefore took a whole bunch of pictures. When I looked at the photos on my computer I thought that it must be a lot of fun to play with them - and so I did, using my favorite technique which is adding texture.

Here's the "recipe":

levels adjustment

hue/saturation adjustment

Bonnie's texture "Bonjour ma douce", darker color at 100%

Bonnie's texture "Dersert Canvas", saturation at 100%

hue/saturation adjustment

levels adjustment.

I like the monochromatic look of it - first time that I try this.

I'm linking this to Photo Art Friday, which always challenges me to try something new. It's a good challenge.

This is also today's Art Every Day Month.

Art Every Day Month 10

It's time for Photo Art Friday, and I tried something new again.

In Ann Baldwin's fantastic book "Creative Paint Workshop for Mixed-Media Artists" I saw her working with photos of which she used the negative. Luckily, on one page she explains how to get that negative look, because I had no clue but liked the look a lot (CTRL+i on a PC, or in PSE go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Invert). So I took a photo from a sunset in Bandon, OR and inverted it:

This is wonderful to use in a mixed-media piece (print it out on regular copy paper so that you can mess around with it). But I thought, there must be more that you can do to a picture like this. And I started to play around.

First I used Jerry's texture "Photo-Tints-Orange" (color burn at 100%), copied that (color burn at 50%) and then added Bonnie's texture "Acceptance" (darker color at 75%). Adjustment Layer for hue/saturation and I was done. I very seldom work with color burn or darker color blending modes etc., but I'm getting the hang of it - sure, the photos are exaggerated, but I do like the transformation.

At Bonnie's Photo Art Friday you can find many more super-talented photographers. I also link this to Art Every Day Month where you can find a whole bunch of wonderful artists.

Fishing for the Sun (Photo Art Friday)

Bonnie asked us for this week's Photo Art Friday to challenge ourselves with a new technique, effect etc. that we haven't done before and even might be slightly out of our comfort zone.

I always wanted to try merging two photos of mine and create a new one (I used to do that when I still took slides - just put two slides into one frame and got them developed this way. I think we used to call this "sandwich photo"). So this week's challenge was the right thing to finally get me motivated to actually try this - and then add some texture as well and play with blending modes I usually avoid.

My original photo was this one:

I "sandwiched" it with this one,

blending mode Overlay at 75%.

I added Bonnie's texture "Tangled Tendrils", blending mode Hue at 55%;

Bonnie's texture "Mauve Magic", blending mode Hard Light at 60%.

Some levels and hue/saturation adjustments.

As a last step I added the text.

This is what it looks like:

Not a masterpiece, but I quite like it.

.

Photo Art Friday on Saturday

I almost forgot about Photo Art Friday this week - the wonderful place on Bonnie's blog where photographers come together and show what art work they did in their photos.

This beautiful Celtic cross I found a couple of weeks ago in the cemetery of Tomales, a tiny place along Highway 1 between Point Reyes and Bodega Bay.

I did some levels and saturation adjustments first, then added Bonnie's texture "one life" to it (hard light at 72%), then copied it (multiply at 30%) and did another hue and saturation adjustment. At that point I really liked it, especially the warm colors.

This is the way it looked before:

Which one do you like better?