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Expressing my vision

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Expressing my vision

Monthly Archives: March 2015

Glass three ways

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in courses, Practice

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

art, daily, fine art, glass, photo101, photoaday, Photography

Room with a view

The email was in my inbox first thing this morning from Cheri with the Photo 101 prompt for today:

“Incorporate a form of glass into your image to add a layer of complexity.”

I immediately thought of my photo above which was taken on a visit to a Barrington Court, a National Trust property in Somerset.

Looking beyond

Glass can also be used in a more artistic way, as above. Here I used a sheet of glass supported by food tins, placed a colourful sheet of paper about 20cm below the glass. I then put  a few droplets of water onto the glass and using my macro lens focused on the image in them. The possibilities here are endless and it is fun to do.

Odd one out

Marbles of course are made of glass and can also be fun to shoot, I love catching the reflections within, I often manage a unintentional selfie too when taking these type of photos.

Two for one

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in Before and after, Editing, Texture Tuesday

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

art, photoaday, Photography, Texture

Today being Tuesday I have edited another photo for Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday, this I chose to use two textures, revolution and plaster squared.

Well what I did was as follows:

  1. Adjusted the white balance in Lightroom 5 to warm the image.
  2. Sharpened the image slightly in Lightroom 5 (20%)
  3. Transfered to Photoshop CC
  4. Duplicated the background layer, high pass filter, hardlight @ 50% opacity.
  5. kk_revolution, multiply @ 25% opacity
  6. Created a Layer mask and reduced the effect of the  texture on the strawberry and the top of the jar, with the brush opacity at 65%.
  7. kk_plaster squared, soft light @ 50% opacity
  8. Created a Layer mask and reduced the effect of the  texture on the strawberry and the top of the jar, with the brush opacity at 65%.
  9. Text layer

The pre straight out of camera shot is here below

I would love to know what you think?

Treasures of the sea

23 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in courses, Practice

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

art, fine art, fossils, photo101, Photography, seaside, shells, treasure

The heart of the matter

I cannot believe that Photo 101 is nearly over, only one week to go, I will really miss the challenges 😦  I have therefore decided to join in with  an ABC challenge in April, how do you fancy joining in? It would be fabulous to see some of my new blog friends doing this too. 🙂

The prompt for today was “Show us something (or someone) you cherish, and get up close.” Well I LOVE being by the sea, walking along the coast  either on the beach or along the coastal paths it is just so exhilarating. These are just a few of the collection of shells and of course fossils my two kids have collected on our many visits to Dorset and Devon.

Sea treasures

Ammonite

Macro Monday: Make a wish

23 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in Macro Monday

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

art, fine art, macro, nature, photoaday, Photography, Postaday

Many beliefs involve blowing on the seed head to tell us something we want to know, and some of these are listed below:-

  1. If you blow hard on a dandelion seed head and all the seeds blow off, a wish will come true.
  2. Blow on a seed head until all the seeds are gone. The number of puffs it took will tell you what time it is. Alternatively, blow three times on the seed head and the number of seeds left will tell the time.
  3. If a woman blows hard on a seed head and all the seeds blow off, her lover loves only her. If seeds remain, he is not loyal.
  4. Blow on a seed head and the number of seeds left will tell you how many years you have left.
  5. Blow hard on a seed head and the number of seeds left will tell you how many children you will have.
  6. If you see seeds falling off the seed head when there is no wind, rain is on the way.
  7. Blow on a seed head and your wish will be carried to your lover.

Dandelion flowers also have beliefs surrounding them, include the following:

  1. If a child picks a dandelion flower off the plant, he will wet the bed that night.
  2. If you rub yourself all over with dandelion flowers, you will be welcome everywhere you go and your wishes will be granted.
  3. To find out if you will be rich, put a dandelion flower under your chin, and the degree of the glow on your chin will be the degree of your financial success.

This is the common dandelion, each flower head consists of hundreds of tiny ray flowers.

The flower head itself can change into the familiar, white, globular seed head overnight. Each seed has a tiny parachute, to spread far and wide in the wind. This is the part stage of the plants cycle that I personally think is most photogenic, hence the number of shots I have taken over the years!


Just a whisper!

22 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in Just because....

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

art, daily, fine art, flowers, photoaday, Photography, Texture

“If you want your kids to listen to you, don’t yell at them. Whisper. Make them lean in. My kids taught me that. And I do it with adults now.”– Mario Batali

When I think of whisper I think of dreamy, light and airy; white or pale colours…….a gentle breeze, a feather floating, leaves rustling in the breeze …. I think of my children sharing secrets with me….. I then thought of a whisper of colour and decided to edit one of my photos.

Vespers by A.A. Milne

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,

Droops on the little hands little gold head.

Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!

Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

God bless Mummy. I know that’s right.

Wasn’t it fun in the bath to-night?

The cold’s so cold, and the hot’s so hot.

Oh! God bless Daddy – I quite forgot.

If I open my fingers a little bit more,

I can see Nanny’s dressing-gown on the door.

It’s a beautiful blue, but it hasn’t a hood.

Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good.

Mine has a hood, and I lie in bed,

And pull the hood right over my head,

And I shut my eyes, and I curl up small,

And nobody knows that I’m there at all.

Oh! Thank you, God, for a lovely day.

And what was the other I had to say?

I said “Bless Daddy,” so what can it be?

Oh! Now I remember it. God bless Me.

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed,

Droops on the little hands little gold head.

Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares!

Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

Delicate Beauty

21 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in Just because....

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

art, butterfly, macro, nature, photoaday, Photography, poem

From Cocoon forth a Butterfly by Emily Dickinson

From Cocoon forth a Butterfly

As Lady from her Door

Emerged—a Summer Afternoon—

Repairing Everywhere—

Without Design—that I could trace

Except to stray abroad

On Miscellaneous Enterprise

The Clovers—understood—

Her pretty Parasol be seen

Contracting in a Field

Where Men made Hay—

Then struggling hard

With an opposing Cloud—

Where Parties—Phantom as Herself—

To Nowhere—seemed to go

In purposeless Circumference—

As ’twere a Tropic Show—

And notwithstanding Bee—that worked—

And Flower—that zealous blew—

This Audience of Idleness

Disdained them, from the Sky—

Till Sundown crept—a steady Tide—

And Men that made the Hay—

And Afternoon—and Butterfly—

Extinguished—in the Sea—

What a view!

20 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in courses, Practice

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

art, Canada, landscape, photo101, photoaday, Reflections

“There is no certainty; there is only adventure.”

– Roberto Assagioli

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Days end

The prompt for Photo 101 today was “snap a picture of a landscape. Focus on the gestalt — the entire setting as a whole — rather than a specific subject or focal point within the scene. The setting itself is the star.”

I thought for todays prompt I would just let the photos do the talking, please let me know what you thin? These were all taken on my last holiday to Canada (August 2014).

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Climbing to the top

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Reflections

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Bridge over still waters

Dreaming

20 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in Learning, P52, Playing with Light, Practice

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

art, backlighting, blogging101, Light, Photography, portraits

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

Well I am already on week 6 of my Light project and in this my second week of backlighting I have decided to look at portraits. One thing you must be careful of in general is lens flare. When you are shooting into the light, as you do with backlighting, you may get flare. This occurs when strong light rays go directly into your lens, hit the front element, scatter inside it and cause excessive lens refraction. The quality of the glass and the lens width contribute to the degree of flare. You can use your lens hood to help prevent such flare. Sometimes though flare can be a great advantage. It can dress up a photo, like the one above, which adds warmth and atmosphere.

Todays task for Blogging 101 is “develop a regular feature for your blog.” Which is quite apt considering Friday is the day I have been posting my year long project posts on “light sources”. It mentions creating a menu item or widget to highlight it, well I had this in hand already, so will be making this page live too now.

Until next week……….

Forget me not………..

19 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in courses, Practice

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

art, blogging101, daily, flowers, photo101, photoaday, Photography, scale

Forget-me-not

For Photography 101 we were encouraged to  “Insert something into a scene to highlight size, and the size relationships between elements within a shot.”

I have meetings all day at work during daylight hours so have had to revert to my vast archives yet again. I think my finger and thumb holding these flowers helps show how small the forget me not flowers actually are.

I am really enjoying doing these two courses, I have loved the themes so far on Photo 101 and cannot believe how much I have learnt about WordPress and blogging so far on Blogging 101. A further plus point is that I have stuck to daily blog posts, some days posting more than once (which has really surprised me!).

I may though have bit off a little too much doing both Photo101 and Blogging101 at the same time, as I feel that to get the prompts done I have had to neglect my photography research a little in favour of them.

Blogging 101 encouraged us to “extend your brand with one of the following: a custom Blavatar, a custom image widget, or a fan page.” I already have a photography page on Facebook which I started a while ago so will continue to update that. I then decided to have a go at doing a Blavatar, first of all I had to look what it was up as it was a new one on me!

I chose two of my photos and added a little text to them in Photoshop to personalise them a little more, hopefully they work. I really would love some feedback, which one do you think works best, or should I go back to the drawing board as they say and try again. I have uploaded the bee one for now, just so I had one, but do let me know which one you think works best?

blavatar bee

blavatar abstract

Childhood moments

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Karen in courses, Practice

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

blogging101, childhood, daily, lensbaby, photo101, Photography

“To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

Time in motion

I have often used a slower shutter speed to capture movement, as mentioned in the email for Photo 101 “movement is a great way to convey time and fleetingness”.

Since my two children were small I have taken photos of them. I do not want to miss any of the simple moments of childhood as they are far too fleeting. I embrace the ordinary, going beyond simply capturing birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. I am capturing their childhood! Toys left on the floor, homework being done, sleeping, waking up, eating, playing, happiness, tears, moods, you name it I shoot it. I think my kids are so used to having their photos taken now that most of the time they do not mind, often not even noticing that I have taken any.  🙂 Even my son who is not as keen as he used to be realises why I take photos and lets me (within a time frame) take them. He often looks back fondly on all the photos I have taken and the memories that they help keep alive.

The photos below were all taken with a slightly slower shutter speed with a Lensbaby, I love the additional sense of motion that the Lensbaby blur gave to the shots.

Playground to and fro

Fun and games in the playground

For Blogging 101 we are encouraged to enter another blogging event, I never knew there were so many, I will have to have a look through and see if any will work for me and my blog, so watch this space 🙂

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About Me

I am just an amateur photography enthusiast who enjoys experimenting with different genres in my quest to find my style. This blog is all about me sharing my photos and my love of photography.
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All photos are by me unless otherwise stated. Copyright © 2005-2015 by Karen Anderson. All rights reserved. No use of any photographs permitted in any form without the express, written consent of the copyright holder. Please DO NOT use my photographs for any purpose, or on any website, except via Wordpress's "Repost" feature, which means please do not download or screen grab images as in doing so you are stealing the image and infringing my copyright. Thank you.
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