Monday, November 30, 2015

Around the island . . .



Freezing cold temperatures this past weekend, but the sunshine was enticing, so we walked around Langley, out to the Coupeville wharf, and watched the fog slowly glide across the bay, also from the wharf. No wind, lots of sun, yet the streets were rather slippery. Two out of three ain't bad.

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Thanksgiving dinner . . .

Yes, nothing like sharp-shinned hawk for a Thanksgiving meal! Not as fattening nor filling as turkey, don't you know . . .

We have friends here on Whidbey Island. And they have family elsewhere, mostly in southern California. Lots of family. And they were all up here for Thanksgiving and kindly invited Chris and me to share in the chaos festivities.

There must have been 30+ people, ranging in age from newborn to hmmm, maybe 75. Wonderful folks, all of them, very welcoming, very kind, very generous. We immediately felt at ease, at home.

Well, except for the children part.

You know me and kids (well, you probably don't), but I tend to avoid them whenever possible. Especially when there are roving gangs of them. One or two at a time, that's okay. More than that and I just want to get out of Dodge. But this was fun! Great children, all of them.

Our friends have many nieces and nephews, and two of them, Casey and Chris, are falconers in southern California. They drove up here with their two birds, a sharp-shinned hawk and a red-tailed hawk. They let them fly earlier in the day, which I didn't see, but they (upon request) brought them out after dinner so we could take a close look at these beautiful birds.

I was shooting with a cellphone in a darkened dining room and Chris's pink shirt was in the background, so I tweaked the heck out of this shot and it's still horrid. But ooh, look at her eye! So pretty.

The guys were knowledgeable about the birds -- it was like listening to Ranger Rick during "Raptor Encounter" at a park somewhere. Very, very cool. I asked about owls. Anybody do any hunting with owls? "Hunting with owls is the most boring thing in the world." Me: "Even if you were to maybe just toss out a mouse?" "Nope. They sit on their perch for hours until they're in the mood. Boring!" Okay. Learned something new.

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, full of raptors, no mice.

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!




Friday, November 27, 2015

iPhone photo du jour . . .

The coolest teapot was sitting on the table at a Chinese restaurant the other day, all heavy and metal and textured and worn. The table was a brownish-red color and had glare on it, glare that wasn't visible to the eye, but really stood out in a "normal" cellphone photograph.

I opted for an app called Camera Awesome and selected the (yet again) Lone Star effect, which negated the glare, got rid of the strident background color, and emphasized the shape and texture of the teapot.

I then brought the photo into Photoshop, toned down the Lone Star effect, which to me looked too red, added an edge sharpener from Topaz, and came up with this.

Kind of cool, the sort of things one sees while waiting for potstickers to arrive . . .

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you peace, love, health, and happiness, this day and always.

Carol Leigh
Chris Smith
And Abby the Psycho Cat

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Around the house


A few years ago I gave a presentation at the Sandhills Photo Club in North Carolina. They treated me like royalty and we had a great time. Lots of laughter, lots of good photographers, lots of photo exploring. I found a magnolia seed pod and some other things on that trip that wouldn't fit in my suitcase, so I mailed them home.

As I was unpacking boxes in the studio this morning, I came across the box. Oh, boy! Cool stuff! I set the magnolia pod on the studio table, glanced down, and loved how it looked. So simple. Just sitting on the table. I got out the iPhone, selected the Camera Awesome app, opted for the Lone Star effect, and here's the result.

In the first photo you can see "Ramses," my oh-so-Georgia-O'Keeffe ram skull, who doesn't have a home quite yet (he looked especially handsome on the fireplace in Palm Springs), books, boxes, and a tripod/camera in the back.

But look at how cool the pod looks there on the table. I did take some overviews, but I particularly liked this close-up.

And people wonder why it's taking me so long to unpack? Well, sometimes you just have to stop and have a bit of fun while you work.

Technical stuff: Although I used the iPhone and some apps to make these photographs, the Lone Star effect can create a lot of contrast, washing out lighter-colored areas. I brought both photos into Photoshop and created a duplicate mask, used the "Multiply" blending mode to darken the entire photo, inverted the mask, and then used a brush to let some of the darker "Multiply" areas come through, specifically on the ram skull and horns. I should have cleaned things up on the table before taking the photos, but these were snapshots, nothing more.

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!


Saturday, November 21, 2015

Foggy morning




The fog moved in, and suddenly the surrounding trees became mysterious, quasi-silhouettes against a slightly brighter background. Yellow leaves on one tree appeared to hover in mid-air, their tiny branches obscured by the mist.

All was quiet. All was still. The air fresh and cool.

But I'm not stupid! Way too cold for me to venture out in just slippers and a T-shirt! So I grabbed the DSLR and stood at the windows, as close to heater vents as possible, and photographed.

And then, just because I could, I took one more photo using the iPhone and the Brush Stroke app.

The fog broke and the "real" day began. Spell broken.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!


Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Latest work: "Fiery Red and Indigo"


Storms have been coming through, creating power outages around Whidbey Island. Lights flickered, power went out very briefly a few times, but no four-day outages as we had a few months ago.

During a lull in the rain (but not the wind) I considered walking down the driveway to get the mail, but since pine tree boughs were flying through the air like javelins, I figured the junk mail and catalogs could wait until things calmed down. Don't want to die knowing the article would read, "Island resident impaled by falling pine branch. Died clutching soggy Pottery Barn catalog."

But I digress . . .

Decided to make a few photomontages, sort of get the juices flowing again, and so I combined hand-painted papers and some ink swooshes and swirls to come up with these two images. Love the bright color combination and the overall texture. If I ordered these from Fine Art America, I'd request them printed on metal so that the colors would really pop.

Wishing you clear (and javelin-free) skies today!

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!



Saturday, November 14, 2015

What I saw . . . What I made


I found all these metal tubs in a boat yard in Oregon and the first thing that caught my eye was the repeating pattern all the stacked "edges" made.

But what I really liked were the handles. It's one thing to have a repeating pattern, it's another to have a focal point or a design of some sort.

So I found three (rule of thirds, don't you know!) handles that were sort of bunched together and that's what I focused on.

As you can see from the overview photo, the light was harsh. If I were to do this again, I might also concentrate on incorporating some handle shadows as a subject.

See the bottom-most tubs? See how the shadows hang down against the smooth surface? There are some photos to be made there, too.

Oh, sure . . . the moment I move away from Oregon I find something I should have shot when I lived there! Typical.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Friday, November 13, 2015

Not doing so well . . .

Abby the cat is fine. Well, as fine as she can be. What's not doing so well is my quest to take better cellphone photos and to use the apps better on my iPad and iPhone.

I wanted to use the Brush Stroke app and the Camera+ app with the Lone Star effect on this photo of Abby. Paint it. Sepia-tone and texturize it. That's it.

Well. It didn't turn out the way I planned and the quality is awful. Somehow the sepia toning and texturizing got lost when I e-mailed the final result to myself so I could open it in the desktop computer. (And yes, Rich, I know I need to use the Cloud to do this . . .)

Abby looks good. She's very photogenic. But my app usage leaves a lot to be desired. Just thought I'd share a bit of failure with you today.

The solution? Concentrate on one thing at a time. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. Right now I have an idea for some photos I want to take of weeds, some ideas for monoprinting, collages I want to make, and a photomontage I began at 4:30 this morning that's not coming together as quickly as I wish.

Can you relate? Yeah. I thought you could.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Dockside . . .




Up at the docks in Anacortes with Chris and our friend, Craig C. . . .

The brightest red boat ever was reflecting in the water. The brilliant color caught my eye first, but then I also liked the contrasting row of black tires up above and how their shadows were red as well. Cool stuff!

A bluish-black anchor also grabbed my attention, looking rich and luscious with just a few bits of deep red and bright blue to highlight things here and there.

Another boat reflected its colors in the water. It helped that the sky was a clear blue to add to the mix.

And, finally, a turquoise-colored boat provided a vivid background for an even more vivid reddish-orange bumper.

Boats, nets, buoys, colors, blue skies, deep green trees and a cool breeze were just a small part of the equation. Being out shooting with someone who was equally enchanted by all this was a bonus.

Thanks, Craig, for being such a delightful house guest. Sorry about the smoke detector loudly beeping every 39.6 seconds this morning. I can't figure out how to turn it off!

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Bunker art . . .





A huge percentage of photographers love to be out there in nature, photographing extraordinary sunsets, reflections in lakes, herds of zebras, etc.

But give me old army bunker walls and I'm like a kid at Disneyland!

The textures, to me, are just amazing. The sensual curves of railings in interesting juxtaposition with all the hard edges of a military structure. And yet the hard edges can come together cleanly and simply (and appealingly) as you see in the last photograph.

This is my project for the upcoming year: to create a series of interesting, provocative, and mysterious photos of these structures that were built to protect the coast in the Pacific northwest.

What's made it especially fun is that Fay from southern California was in the area recently -- just as passionate about these buildings as I. And then Craig, too, here from Bend, Oregon, got into the madness the other day as we oohed and ahhed over shades of gold colors, drippy things that looked like jellyfish tentacles, and iron rings set into concrete, cameras repeatedly firing.

Maybe you have to be really weird to get excited about all this grunge. Luckily, I know a lot of weird people!

P.S. Looking at this particular post on various other devices, the photos appear really dark, especially the last one. Do they look unusually dark on whatever monitor you're seeing them on, too? Let me know. Thanks.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Monday, November 9, 2015

Around the island . . .





We have our first house guest! What better excuse to get up, get out, and take a look around? He's a photographer, too, so it's great to be able to shoot the photographic breeze, learn a few things, and share some cool visual experiences.

Now that I've found my battery chargers, I can use the digital SLRs, but these were taken with my iPhone, using the Camera+ app and the Lone Star effect.

In between showers we visited Fort Casey, drove around the Coupeville-Port Townsend ferry docks, then to a marina (where it seriously rained until we scurried back to the car, when it promptly stopped), Langley, and then back to Coupeville. We head out again this morning after breakfast. Hoo ha!

And what did I learn last night at dinner? That CMD>L in Bridge will enlarge the picture big enough for me to determine if it's worth keeping or if I should trash it right then. This is probably the first thing one learns in Bridge, but nope, I never knew . . . much to our guest's amusement. Smart-ass.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Quiet evening ...

Lying in bed with the windows open, listening to a gentle rain, and hearing two great horned owls hooting back and forth to each other. I love the Pacific Northwest.

Friday, November 6, 2015

Turning a photo into a sketch


In Jim Zuckerman's latest issue of "Photo Insights," he shows how to change a photograph into a sketch. He points out that there are a variety of painterly programs that can do this for you, but there's also a way to do it in Photoshop.

So I thought I'd give it a try. I'm using Photoshop CC.

I began with a photograph of the "Capt. Raleigh" as it headed out toward the mouth of the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon. It was a foggy day and the red hull stood out nicely.

In Photoshop I opened my photo and then created a duplicate layer.

I then went to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and moved the saturation slider all the way to the left.

I made a duplicate of that desaturated layer. I then went to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Invert. I selected the "Color Dodge" blending mode.

Next I selected Filter > Other > Minimum. Jim recommends choosing a radius of 3 or 4.

Flatten the image and then use Levels to make any other adjustments. I didn't add color, but Jim suggests giving it a try by going to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance.

As you can see, using this formula to create a sketch-like image removes a lot of detail, making your picture look rather stark. Will I use this for anything? I don't know yet. It might be a classic "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" sort of situation!

It's nice to have this in my arsenal, though, just in case I do create something and think that this might be just perfect for the effect I'm looking for. One never knows, does one?

So take a look at Jim's magazine. He publishes it monthly and it contains a lot of cool stuff and excellent information. Quite inspirational. And if creating sketches of your photos is something you do and is something you like, let me know. I'd love to see what you're doing with the concept.

©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Throw pillows . . .


Fine Art America enables me to offer my photographs as throw pillows (cushions), so I've ordered these two to use on the beds in the guest room. Once I receive them, I'll let you know how they look! They are 20x14 inches in this format.

©Carol Leigh



Monday, November 2, 2015

Boatyard Art




Chris is having a tough time. He was involved in a bar brawl (no, he didn't start it this time), went to do a karate kick, and ended up tearing a ligament in his foot. Can't walk without a lot of pain.*

So we're spending a fair amount of time here in the house doing not much of anything. Which is fine because it's been a bit rainy.

The result is that I'm scrounging around in old photographs, seeing if there's anything interesting I've shot in the past but haven't processed yet.

These three were taken in a boatyard in Astoria, Oregon (one of my favorite places) in 2012. There were a few old vehicles off to one side and, naturally, I had to take a closer look.

So I leave you to reflect on reflectors while I go check on the patient.

*Nah, not a bar brawl. Did it getting out of his truck. But the bar brawl makes a much better story. Especially if you know Chris!

 ©Carol Leigh
All text, photographs, and other media are ©Copyright Carol Leigh (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Carol Leigh. Thank you!