Early morning shadows

I create folk art primitive paintbrushes and have them on display here at the house. I like the way the early morning sun created strong shadows, both from the brushes as well as from the mullions on the windows. 

Do I paint with these? Pssshhhhh. No. (Well, with one I did, second from the right.) But I do make cool brushes! 

 ©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!

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!

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!

Courting danger in quest for Internet access . . .

We live on a dead-end road. For the last three days, what's separated us from "civilization" and electricity has been a tree that fell across our road, taking an electrical line with it. And for the last three days the tree has been sagging more and more, with less and less clearance for a car to pass underneath.

Yesterday afternoon, after the house generator stopped working, for reasons yet to be discovered, we decided to take a chance, zoom as quickly as possible under the tree, and head to Coupeville Coffee & Bistro for soup, sandwich, coffee, and a fast WiFi connection. Not necessarily in that order . . .

This place is great. Good food. Good coffee. Comfy atmosphere, and free Internet access.

As I was sitting there, just looking around, iPhone at my side, I thought I'd take a few shots, again using Camera Awesome and the "Lone Star" effect.*

First thing I found was my empty coffee cup. It would be better if you could see actual coffee in it, but I still liked that I was able to focus in on their logo.

And then you see my view from my chair, just a simple overview of the place.

I then looked up at all the graphic elements in their overhead lighting and took a photograph of that.

And finally a shot of the doors leading to the restrooms. All this from my comfortable armchair.

I'm hoping that tomorrow I can show you before and after shots, of what the scene looked like without the special effect and then with the effect. Why? Because it's what I do . . .

Wishing you a stress-free and electricity-full day today.

*I know I'm overdoing the "Lone Star" photo effect. But instead of jumping in and using every app and effect I find and then remembering none of them, I'm being more methodical, working with something I like, learning it well enough that I'm not constantly fumbling around with it, and then moving on to something else, always keeping this current effect in my mind so that I can switch over to it when I think it particularly appropriate. 

©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!

iPhone photo du jour . . .

Photo taken yesterday afternoon from my "Knead & Feed" restaurant window table in Coupeville, Whidbey Island, Washington. Good view. Good food. Then walked a couple of miles on the beach to hopefully work off some of that good food!

I may be getting tired of the "Lone Star" photo effect, but I still find little glimmers of joy using it. It works especially well on already-old subject matter (would love to use it at Bodie Ghost Town in California's eastern Sierra), or to make classic subject matter look old (like the ferry photo I took the other day). A lot of the time, however, it's just annoying! Kind of like me, I guess . . .

©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!

iPhone photos du jour . . .

Washington State Ferry and a photo of late afternoon light on the front porch. Both were taken using the Camera Plus/Camera Awesome app and then processed with Snapseed.

I particularly like the ferry shot because it just looks old.

I like the porch photo because of all the repeating lines. Look at the vertical lines on the railings, the horizontal lines of the siding, the wooden deck, even on the overhang, and then the strong shadows leading your eye this way and that. This is a scene that I believe I'll be revisiting as the light changes throughout the year.

Yesterday, as we were waiting in line to catch the ferry back home, there were a lot of fishing boats offshore, big nets, lots of activity. We asked the ticket-taker what they were fishing for.

"Not sure. Probably humpies, you know, pinks. It's too early for the silvers." We nodded like yeah, we understood. We didn't. But we thought maybe he was talking about salmon.

A quick check and yes, pink salmon are also known as "humpies" because the males develop a hump on their backs during spawning. But get this, their spawning runs happen only every other year. This from the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife: "In Washington, pink salmon runs only occur in odd-numbered years. Pinks have a very regular life history, living for two years before returning to spawn the next generation. This is why pink runs in Washington only occur every other year; there are no one-year-old or three-year-old fish to establish runs in the other years."

Don't get it? Just nod like you do and then go look it up!

©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!

iPhone photos of the day . . .

Last December I bought a book called The Art of iPhone Photography by Bob Weil. The other day, nine months later, I decided to read it. I got as far as maybe five pages into it when I saw it mentioned various camera applications.

One of the apps mentioned was "Camera Plus," which I've also seen as "Camera Awesome" and, simply, "Camera!".

And that's as far as I've gotten in the book.

I went to download the app and discovered I'd already downloaded it into my camera, but had never used it.

Are you sensing a pattern here?

So I played around with it, completely ignoring the book. I walked around the house, trying this, trying that. I used it at the local nursery to photograph the leaves of a banana plant (or maybe it was a giant bird of paradise).

The app does a lot, has a lot of different features, but I just worked with one effect, something called "Lone Star." All of these were taken using that effect.

What I'm showing you here are the photos that I particularly liked. There were a lot of dogs. I threw away a photo of a fern, a hydrangea blossom, and a number of out-of-focus gerbera daisies. A pathway leading into the woods from my yard looked horrible with this app.

What I like about the app is the softness, the sepia toning, and the texture.

My definite favorite is the banana leaves up at the top. I like the repeating lines, the various diagonal lines, and how it just looks artsy to me.

Next is a shot of a fishnet float given to me by my late friend Juanita, who actually found it floating past her and her husband's boat north of Seattle. I have it sitting on the windowsill in a bathroom and I like the slight texture of the window screen behind it.

The two ceramic glove molds took on an eerie appearance with this app. They sit on a brick mantel of sorts and I shot slightly up at them.

Then I went over to a wall where I have a "gallery" of eight of my photos, some are photomontages, some not. I zoomed in on a photomontage, taking a photo of a photo, which is a photo of an actual collage, isolating just a section of it. I like how that one turned out, too.

Then, late yesterday afternoon, I went out to the front porch where I have a funky old chair in one corner and where I've placed things I've collected here so far, such as a bird nest, a crow feather, some driftwood sticks, and some dried seed pods from the summer's columbine plants. Nothing's artistically arranged; I just throw the stuff there because I've nowhere else to put it at the moment.

The light was lovely, the chair is a rustic one (another gift from Juanita), and I liked how the composition came together.

Would I make prints of any of these and frame them? Yes, I think I would. Not the chair photo, but some of the others, yeah. Will I think the same in a few months? Maybe the banana leaves.

But this could easily become a "what the hell was I thinking?" sort of situation. (I remember an enhancing filter, the Celestron 1000mm mirror lens, the Vaseline on the UV filter for soft effects trick.) Happens all the time!

And that's the fun of it. This is TOTAL PLAY. No expectations. Lots of surprises. Cool results. I'm a happy photographer right now.

©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!