It's June?!

How did it get to be June so soon?  It was just April last time I checked.  What have I been up to?  Let's see....  I was at First Thursday at Art Central in April and managed to sell a few paintings.  Then I was in Minnesota visiting my sister and her family and managed to squeeze in a class for 12 youngsters on abstract painting (that was very fun but very exhausting too!).  Sat through two tornado warnings.  Came back home to find a weird sound in my vehicle's steering wheel - got that fixed.  Then an eye appointment to confirm whether or not the bleed by my optic nerve was worse or healed - (healed!  If you said it in your head like a TV Evangelist, you get two points.)  Had my lawn power raked and some landscaping done - then fought over the cost to haul the debris away (so much fun).  Taught some kids how to make a Mother's Day card.  Went to Nanaimo to look for a place to buy that we can subsequently rent out... looking at a long term solution to our many vacations there.  Got outbid on two places (and got quite pouty about the whole thing).  But stayed at a great place right on the ocean.  Came back to a bevy of appointments and clients and meetings and lunches and drinks with friends.  Got the garden up to snuff and planted my annuals (love love love portulaca).  And finally, just had a Saturday filled with Garage Sale-ing and got 10 easles, 1 brass platter, two sidewalk blocks, and two mid century modern chairs.... all for $3.  I know.  I'm amazing.

And along with all of that I've also managed to paint paint paint and take some photos.  And then add a photo to a painting commission I did.  The client wanted an Alberta storm, so I did that.  But before I put the rest to her painting. I took a good image of it.  And when I wandering around my photos from the summer of 2010, I found this one of the cattle run.  So I added the two together in PhotoShop.  Gotta love PhotoShop.

why I do what I do

I went out this morning in -18degrees celsius weather... at 8:30 ... in the morning.  On a Sunday.  And why oh why did I do this?  A friend/client wanted photos of her family and that was the time that worked, with snow in the background.  And so up I got and out I went... to the wrong location.  Phone friend.  Rush to proper location.  Pop out into the cold again.  Place them just so on a small hill.  Click off a few dozen photos.  Change position a bit.  Take a few more photos.  Realize the 3 year old is going to freeze shortly and decide we're done being outside.  Really done.

So then I come home and check out the few photos we did get.  Hmmm.... She let me know which one she liked the most.  I picked the one I liked the most, and then one showcasing her boy.  Fiddle around in Photoshop Elements, pulling from textures and frames and wordart I've amassed over the past 5 years, and apply a lot from what I've learned from a few classes regarding digital scrapbooking. 

And then, with trepidation (because I used so many layers and techniques and slightly grungy textures and I wasn't sure if she was into that) I emailed the samples off to my client.

And this email response, this is why I do what I do (which, like voodoo, I do so well - sorry, old song reference.)
______________________
Hi Michelle,


So I actually got tears in my eyes when I saw these, I really love them!  I love the snow flakes and the border! I really did get emotional when I saw the picture of just my little K. and the let it snow, so beautiful! Can’t wait to see the finished product!


Thank you!! Sooo much!!!!!!


J.& K.& K.


And then a little later....
__________________
I'm still smiling!!!
J.



So if I ever wonder why I'm doing what I'm doing, remind me about this please.  Thanks.
M

Geronimo

I love cows.  I love their lowing, their plodding, their slow way of moving, their great bulk.  So this challenge from Kim Klassen was just fabulous since she supplied the image!  I've never taken a great picture of a cow - they're generally not in the city, and if I'm in the country I'm usually just passing through.  But maybe next time, I'll stop and take a few shots, just to see if I can get them to look at me.  (And please cows, no pooping while I'm taking the picture.)

I used Kim's texture 'ladder' and then took a painting of mine (well, the first run at it) and layered it over the entire thing, with a strong blue hue adjustment.  And then I need a quote, of course!  The rebel cow - no enclosures will hold her back from her dreams!

love - texture tuesdays

I used Kim Klassen's 'Fall In' texture with an overlay, which warmed up the photo and added some grunge to the edges. 

I love this photo because.... that's my nephew and I just showed up at his Spanish immersion school to read a story to his class and he hung off me the entire time I read the book ("Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda" by Margaret Atwood - yes she has some children's books!).  He's such a sweetheart and is all about getting hugs (no kisses, Auntie Shell, you have girl germs) and holding hands and giving me a whole bunch of love.  Which, of course, I return in spades.  And I'm so excited because I get to go and visit the whole family next week!  Maybe I can get a picture like this of my niece and I too!

soar confidently

Okay okay, so I've been away from the blog for quite some time.  I've popped in to share an image I took last year, and I think it applies to Kim Klassen's request for us to provide an image on the theme "do" and use her Autumn texture.  Here are a friend and her daughter, caught in extremely low light, hence all the shakiness and blur.  However, it illustrates beautifully how KA chases after M to capture photos on this lovely All Hallow's Eve, and even more so, what she wishes for her daughter, as the quote illustrates.  If you can't tell from the blur, M is a butterfly, and she's carrying her little trick or treat bag.

Surfin' the Net, finding textural gold!

Kim Klassen Cafe

So I’ve stumbled upon a fellow Canadian, and a prairie girl to boot, who does amazing things with Textures in Photoshop. I must admit, I have not been at the computer forever, due to all the crap that 2010 has been, and my focus is totally off – I’m running every way but loose. However, all that being said, I think I will concentrate on Kim Klassen and her Cafe in the coming months. These Textures and what they can do for the average photo are just too cool to not play with!

Thought you should know about them too. 

So I played around with a photo I took of Ji-Sun at her wedding to my brother-in-law, Harrison. 

Who could get a more perfect model?  She's just stunning.

Then I took out the 'unwanted' elements in the background.

Then I added two of Kim's Textures, and played with the levels and saturation.

 Then I added a subtle border to the edge. 

Love it!

and so it is

Here we are at the end of an Indian Summer, waiting for the Globe Thistle to shed the last of the tasty bits the bees like to get at.  I must admit I'm feeling a little prickly myself.  We had an awesome Garage Sale on the 18th of September, and that night I came down with 'something' which turned into a cold, which became bronchitis.  I'm still coughing and sound like an old lounge singer who smokes a pack a day... and I'm half expecting pneumonia to be next on the list.  So far my antibiotics aren't kicking this bronchitis thing to the curb.  I've had to cancel a number of plans as well.  Just me and my dog napping on the couch leafing through magazines and ripping out pages to keep.  At some point, I expect I will start to not feel like a pile of poo, but I haven't gotten there yet.  So there you have it.  I'm as prickly as a Fall Globe Thistle, but still super cool.  :)

best shot Tuesday??

Okay so I was travelling yesterday!  That is my excuse for not publishing a photo on Monday.

What have I seen through my lens this week?  Well, a lot.  Mainly ... rose gardens.  And my Mum.  We're travelling down to Glen Ellen from Calgary.  That is quite a trek!  Along the way, we stopped at some gardens (well, not in Redding - it was too hot to get out of the car!)

I love the lens flare on this - an automatic vignette!

best shot monday

impossibly delightful??  This is a tough assignment.  Well, for me it is.  I'm not much in the mood for delightful.  I keep having health issue after health issue with no resolution to any of it.  "Uncertain medical significance" has been the term-of-choice from my GP.  Currently awaiting a myomectomy at 6:15am Tuesday morning.  I know some have it worse and handle it better, so I should suck it up or something.  But I'm not that resiliant.  So, let's see....  impossibly delightful....

Let's go with my niece last summer with the bubble maker toy.  I wish I had had a bigger telephoto to catch her pretty little face better, but she's in full jump/run mode, complete with her hair still falling down from her latest jump.  I find her impossibly delightful.

best shot monday

That's Mum & Ginger (@ 5 months) after Ginger got schooled (read: bit) by Sophie for being too annoying.  Ginger even had her paw wrapped around Mum's leg.  Very sweet.  And so was Mum & Dad for coming down that weekend and helping get the studio practially done!  With my appendix coming out, I wasn't exactly able to help much but they are workhorses and got it done, pretty much without me, but with Scott's help.  Now all I have to do is load all my stuff back in.  I'd like some garden gnomes in the middle of the night to come and do that for me too!

best shot monday

I spent the weekend up in Red Deer with Mum & Dad.  For some reason their lilacs have not yet fully bloomed whereas mine are already done.  Are our weather systems that different?  It's back to the grind today, with the studio in a bit of a mess, a project half painted, and a canvas of the proper depth yet to be found.  Cell phone is ringing, laundry is washing, and the grocery list is growing.  There are so many things to do on Monday when I take off for the weekend!  I guess I had better get to it!

Ginger

at only 4 months old, Dad's new dog Ginger is already huge.  All she wanted to do was carry the bucket.  Nevermind that is was full of water for her to drink and she had to knock it over and empty it first.  Silly girl.  Just look at those paws!  She's going to be a monster!!!

vote for me!

I did a digital scrapbooking page using their free digital kit and I've entered it in their contest.  Please vote for me!

happy Monday!

"You don't take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it." ~Author Unknown

I'm taking an on-line class on photography. I'm finding Manual mode to be challenging and my usual subject (my dog Maggie) uncooperative. So I took my weeping Buddha from his usual post and used him for this lesson on Focus Points. I look forward to the feedback (perhaps too much) and feel really happy to have received the comments from the instructor (below). It's nice to know it's not just myself who likes my photographs! (To see more of my photographs, you could go here.)

Class Exerpt
focus
K100D - pentaxAperature: f/5.6Shutter Speed: 1/350ISO : 800Focal Length : 55mm
I put my weeping Buddha on my Dragon's Blood Stonecrop and began taking shots focussing him on the left. It didn't look right, so I put him on the right and decreased the Aperature (the automode wanted f/5.6, 1/350). This could have a sweet quote off to the side, a texture and/or filter applied, and voila! Art.

candice*stringham
[Oct 05, 2009 at 01:01 AM]
Michelle, this is art as is. The focus on the Buddha is perfect, and from an artistic standpoint there are so many ways to interpret this photo: A tree was cut down to be carved into this statue, which is placed back into a natural environment. One can ponder why the Buddha is weeping. Typically when an item is "looking" to the right and is placed on the right, the viewer's eye drifts off the edge of the frame. However, since the Buddha's face is down covered by his hands, the viewer is stopped by the frame and is brought back into the photo. You have a great eye for combining color, texture, and composition in your photos.

summer wedding

Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that. ~Michael Leunig

My old friend Pat got married to a lovely lady this past weekend. Although I didn't get the best photos, I did catch a few that PhotoShop just made better (I love tweaking in PhotoShop). There was a scary photographer lurking in the background of this one, and I cloned him out of there, along with the wall sconces and the ribbons galore.

I tried viewing the wedding with my camera up to my eye, but still able to take in the moment as monumental in Pat's life. Although it was a little hard with the DSLR (it's heavy, and therefore distracting), I did catch a few really heartfelt moments that made my heart go pitterpat. When he pulled a tissue out of his pocket for his bride during the vows, when he closed his eyes as she said her vows, both of them fiddling with their rings after they were put on. And then I had the "ah, this is going to turn out great" moment when they gave each other a high-five after they were proclaimed and did the first kiss. A very intimate moment between the two of them (it's probably something they do all the time and never give a thought to it) and it was on display for us to see.

I didn't attend the reception - I was a B list attendee and as such didn't want to impose on them to pay for an extra dinner at short notice, nor on my husband to attend (he's not much for crowds of people he doesn't know). So I chatted a wee bit with the people I did know, and met a nice lady who made the cake (too bad I couldn't chat more with her; she seemed really nice!) and went on my merry way. A lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Congratulations, Pat!

new shoes

"take me wandering through these streets where bright lights and angels meet. stone to stone they take me on; I’m walking ‘til the break of dawn" Paolo Nutini
I have a zoom problem. I forget I'm on zoom and I go to take a self portrait with my DSLR and I get these shots. Although they're a little funny, I love them! All these shots were taken during my hiatus from life in March 2008 on Vancouver Island. This is class 13, so I'm assuming it's the last one. The only thing I couldn't get my project to do is the colour masking like she suggested, so I'll have to try that again. I just put the coloured photo ontop of the sepia tones adjustment layer. Worked!

fly - trio

“The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” Douglas Adams

The latest task in Jessica's class - a storyboard. We only did 3 images, but I'm guessing a person could do a whole schwak of 'em. I love the shots I got of the Blue Heron out in Parksville. Thank goodness for telephoto lenses!

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. Albert Camus

Day 11 - selective colouring. Way easier to do it Jessica's way than the way I was doing it! Only a few more days left of this class and I would rather it didn't end. :(

life is slow and easy

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” the Buddha

How cool are the rounded corners, eh? Jessica Sprague's class - this is day 10's class. A kind of culmination of the past week. We had to come up with a finish for "Life is..." and this photo reminds me of where I took it, when life was slow and easy. More like a dream now. Ha!

the sea

"Voyage upon life's sea, To yourself be true, And, whatever your lot may be, Paddle your own canoe." Sarah Bolton

Day 8 of the class - Day 7 was just a review so it was kinda boring. And although I add text to my photos all of the time, it was neat to add the texture of a folded up piece of paper over this photo. Gotta love free textures!