AROUND THE HOUSE . . .

Because we're "isolating in residence," I spend a lot of time just wandering around the house with the iPhone, looking for things to shoot. Sunlight coming through the skylight over the stairwell looked pretty good, so I created a few simple compositions, liking the overall monochromatic look with just a bit of blue here and there. Lots of angles, too, to play with.

Copyright ©2020 Carol Leigh

 

Around the house , . .

This morning's coffee.

Copyright ©2019 Carol Leigh

Lather, rinse, repeat . . .

Lather, rinse, repeat . . .

The cat sits on his lap as he reads.
He moves.
The cat leaves.
Cat returns,
And sits on his lap as he reads.

Copyright ©2019 Carol Leigh

Around the house: tulips

It was a gloomy, misty morning yesterday and as I was sitting, reading, having coffee, I noticed the tulips. Tulips always make me feel great -- colorful, sunny, spring-like -- so, without moving at all, I took an iPhone shot.

The resulting photo (the second one) is pretty much how the overall scene looked. But it didn't express how I feel about tulips.

I brought the image into Snapseed and purposely overexposed the image to the point of yes! Are highlights blown out? Yes. But that didn't matter. It was the look and feel of springtime that I wanted (and got).

It's an iPhone shot and the quality is bad. But it sure improved the quality of that little moment in time yesterday morning.

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.

Around the house . . .

There's a small pottery bowl sitting on a cabinet where I put little treasures, including a rock I wrapped in Japanese paper and added a metal button. Thank you, June, for the bowl. I love it still.

©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.

Around the house: binoculars

Binoculars on the windowsill, just in case an eagle, a boat, a bunny, or an owl should soar, sail, hop, or swoop past.

Taken with an iPhone 6+ and tweaked using Lone Star effect. Kinda like how the binoculars really stand out black and bold against the sepia softness.

©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.

Around the house: Chinese lanterns

Thanks to Janet and Ira (The Bears) for bringing me a big bunch of Chinese lanterns many, many years ago. Their bright orange colors have faded over time, but I still love how they look.

Taken with iPhone 6+ and tricked out in Photoshop a little bit.

 ©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: kitchen art

When I was conducting online photography classes, one of the assignments I offered was "Kitchen Art." Like most of my assignments, it was primarily about seeing rather than technique. Anyone can learn technique. Not everyone can see.

So when I saw this tea kettle on the burner, I was struck by its rounded forms and the way it sat so starkly against the back wall.

And now that I see it here, I know exactly how I'm going to approach it again. And again. There's a lot here to work with that might not be apparent at first. So yeah, you're going to see this kettle a number of times in the near future.

Taken with an iPhone 6+ and modified with Topaz Simplify 4.

 ©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: beach treasures

Whenever I go to the beach, I always bring something home with me, some treasure that caught my eye, a little surprise, something interesting.

Right now, in a little turquoise pottery bowl that June White gave me (thank you, ma'am), you can see a heart-shaped rock, a couple of agates, some smooth stones, a stripey dark rock, and a couple of rocks that have small barnacles attached. The agates are from Oregon and the barnacles are from Whidbey Island.

Hoping to make this a daily routine, a daily post. Wish me luck!

Taken with iPhone 6+, Lone Star effect.

 ©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!

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!

Around the house . . .

Early morning shadows on the living room wall. As the sun begins moving farther south, shadows in the house are constantly changing, appearing here one day, there the next, nowhere the next. On this morning, the sun peeked through all the trees and their shadows, as well as the window details, all showed up on the wall. For just a moment. Shot with iPhone 6+ and processed with Snapseed. The shot was incredibly noisy, so I used Topaz DeNoise to smooth things out a bit.

The studio? Funny you should ask. It is so close to being ready to paint that I'm champing at the bit. But the work schedule has been sketchy. And it's making me crazy. We cannot unpack anything more until the work is done. They're going to be here at 9 this morning. Crossing my fingers.

©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!