Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Poppy Forest

In Westmoreland neighborhood about 10 blocks from our house.  Post in Snapseed for limited focus, levels, contrast.  

Friday, May 24, 2013

Stone Wall With Window

From our Mother's Day hike with the family in Forest Park.  This stone cabin ruin is usually our turning around point.  I decided to use the old camera layer along with a blur layer.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Dogwood Days of Spring, The Sequel

We are getting into the next phase of blooming dogwood in the Pacific Northwest.  These dogwood trees flower all summer. The flowers are fresh right now--newly bloomed.  They get looking pretty ragged looking by late July.  Ah, Oregon!

Friday, May 17, 2013

Local Resident Decorates His House

Moku Hanga makes this birdhouse look more like an artist painted flourishes around the entrance.  Actually, it's bird poop.  You can't fly a few branches away to take care of business?

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Rain And Roses

After a long dry spell, some rain.
Okay, I know this one below isn't a rose but whatever it is, I love it!

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

First Day, Farmers Market

Not to rainy; not too sunny.  Our Westmoreland Farmers Market is back in business for another summer.  Hooray!

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Snail Crossing

It was rainy and misty yesterday on our walk.  I was lucky to photograph this bronze colored snail just before Maggie scared it and it shrank into a much smaller posture.  Snapseed is the post processing app I find the most helpful and it made this little snail into a more fascinating image, I think.  With Snapseed I was able to crop and rotate, add a grunge layer, adjust white balance and levels, add sharpening, burn the shell hot-spot, and add vignetting plus a frame.  Whew!  A very handy app for lazy photographers like me who are coming to hate cranking up Photoshop for art making.  You can see my original photo below for comparison.


Monday, May 13, 2013

Ever Expectant

Miss Maggie, waiting on her rug for her breakfast.  Post in Snapseed, Etchings, and Phonto.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Hudson Icon

Found a 1940 Hudson Pickup truck parked in our neighborhood.  Quite rusty.  This is the emblem  above the bumper.  You can see trees reflecting in the pitted chrome.  I would love to have had a straighter on shot than this but another car was pulled up touching the Hudson's bumper so I had to settle for the long-arm reach-in shot.  Alas.  Still, with some post-production in Snapseed and close cropping, the photo turned out kind of beautiful.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Food Blogging

We had wonderful light inside the restaurant at The Farmer's Feast Cinco De Mayo Dinner last Sunday at 3 Square Grill restaurant.  The dishes, prepared by Chef Kathryn LaSusa Yeomans, were SO tasty and eye appealing they were destined for capturing on my iPhone.  
Above is a greens fritter with a spicy red sauce, radishes, and pickled jalapeƱo pepper with onion.
Here you see Kathryn's morel mushroom tamales along with Tamworth Heritage Pork smothered in green chilli mole sauce and sprinkled with elder flowers.  Yum, yum!!  Yum!

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Ah! She Said.....

Last Sunday at the Canby Spring Fair, I felt awestruck by this exquisite leaf.  I have no idea what plant name belongs here.  I just loved this leaf and this plant and the sun lighting up the universe in it.  Ah.....

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Patio Chairs

Looking at repeating patterns and colors in the hardware store display.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

More Dogwood Days Photos

Gorgeous neighborhood trees in varying light--the pink dogwood tree.





Sunday, April 28, 2013

City View-Spring

From Oaks Bottom. Taken with iPhone. Post in Snapseed.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Dogwood Days Of Spring

It's a breathtaking time of year now that the pink dogwood has bloomed. Here's one.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

1956 Pontiac Safari

Saw this beauty parked on the street near our house. Beautifully restored and in showroom condition.

I made two versions in post using Snapseed. One in color and one in black and white. It will take me awhile to decide if I like one better than the other.



Monday, April 22, 2013

Mt Hood On A Sunny DAy

Scappoose, Oregon, where one can view Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Hood from the same intersection.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Lichen and Cherry Blossoms

Walking the dog on the long, flat streets of Seaview, I found a great cherry tree thick with intense pink blossoms and heavy lichen. This photo tries to sample the beauty of that tree.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Any Treats For Me?

Miss Maggie turns on the cute doggie eyes.

Great Glass

Glass fish bottles, a plate and a window ornament on the kitchen window sill at dear, sweet Flotsam. I've been trying to take this photo for several years but have never been satisfied with what I've come up with. Today, it struck me that perhaps I've been trying to photograph too much. I'd been trying to make compositions out of the whole window scene, or else use various components in "arty" arrangements. Instead, I found what I was loving was the just overlap and intersection of the various glass colors, textures, and their placements on the sill.
In making today's photo composition and then cropping, adjusting color intensity, light, etc., I found another element that's called to me but, until I found Snapseed (that almost perfect ipad app), I couldn't bring out. That missing color element was the rich brown of the neighbor's shingles. Once I was able to enrich that element, the minimal composition really started to sing to me.
I hope it sings for you, too.




April 20: Tried this composition, cropping out the left side so you can only see the hourglass shape of the glass bottles. Rule of thirds, you know. I'll need to look at the two for comparison for awhile to see if I think this one is "better" or not.




Thursday, April 18, 2013

Tulip, Too



Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Golden Globes

Tulips lighted by late afternoon sun.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Welcoming The Sun Back To Martins Street

The sun is marching north so quickly at this time of year that right now it's lining up almost exactly with the line of our street. Sunset time is particularly beautiful as you can see. Post in Snapseed for cropping and leveling. Simply HDR HD for HDR.

Birthday Treat

Our grandsons took us to Chuck-E-Cheese yesterday to celebrate Sean's birthday. I confess I never enjoyed the place when my own children were small. Now, it's the perfect venue for two grandparents + two grandchildren to spend an hour or so gathering tickets for splurging on cheap bendy straws, miniature colored pencils, or raspberry twizzlers. Afterward, we ate self-serve yogurt with toppings to completely wind the boys up before we handed them back to their parents.

Post: Snapseed for filter, HDR, cropping



Thursday, April 11, 2013

New Growth

How can a photographer take a walk in spring with her dog without becoming a crazy photo snapping person over every cool new plant they pass? The answer is--she can't. Between Maggie's constant sniffing and my constant snapping, it's a wonder we walk two miles in an hour.

This photo is of some latest green thing with amazing leaves. Hostas maybe? I dunno. But there was a problem with the shot as the ground was crummy looking. Great leaf shapes; crummy ground. But Moku HD changed all of that into pretty purple with the landscape filter, black boost, and saturation boost.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Ceiling Art, Rotunda, LA Central Library

Just now catching up on photos I made in LA earlier this year. I had a great day at the LA Central Library and loved taking photos of the ceiling of the south entrance rotunda where the directories are located. The dome shape came into better view using the fisheye Olloclip.

Below is the original photo I made of the rotunda ceiling.  Above is the art I made from it using Etchings app with a texture layer, Snapseed, and Phonto.


Tic Tac Crow

An homage to my photo teacher, Carol Leigh, and her crow photos and photomontagery.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Miss Maggie

Feeling grateful for this little girl today. Here we are after a long walk looking for "snow" blossoms on the grass.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

At Wacker and Wabash

Building texture of Hotel Monaco and The Steakhouse, Chicago.  The Monaco is a great hotel!  Perfectly located on The Loop, great staff, excellent hotel restaurant.  Try to get a room that looks over the Chicago River.  Post:  Moku Hanga, Snapseed, Phonto.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Meeting Clock

The museum area of Macy's in downtown Chicago displays this face of one of the retired, outdoor meeting clocks.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Alphabet Bar And Reflection

I'm still finding interesting shots to process from my time in Chicago. From Salvage One, this is the back of the bar, a collection of random sign letters set in front of a glass block window. It was a tricky photo to figure out how to make into a good composition. I'm still unsure I did it well. With so many apps now for iPad, one can spend as much time (or more!) working with an image as in Photoshop, I think.

In the end, I settled on a black and white image to make it more silhouette-y. Then I added a "moonglow" layer and a grain layer to make the glass brighter behind the letters.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Mostly Hank

Beer and country music on a Friday night.


Austin Under Wraps

Found this on my morning walk with Maggie. This car, at a house near ours, has been under cover until today. I love the hooded headlights and the partially scraped off paint. It reminds me of one (or more) of the characters in Cars. A bunch of junk is piled all around the car so I added a vignette layer in Simply HDR HD app to condense the focus more onto the "face" of the car.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Tiffany Dome, Chicago Cultural Center

Another What's On The Ceiling shot from Chicago. I'm not the first to have made one like this, I bet. This is the second stained glass dome in the Chicago Cultural Center, formerly the Chicago Public Library, done by Louis Comfort Tiffany. You may have heard of him. When Tiffany was selected for this project, he had just finished redoing several rooms in the White House for President Chester Arthur.

A few details:
• The Tiffany Dome is 38 feet in diameter.
• 30,000 pieces of glass fill its cast iron frame.
• It is the world's largest Louis Comfort Tiffany glass dome.
• Only about 2% of the glass pieces had to be replaced in the restoration project.


Sunday, March 24, 2013

Wedding Venue

Salvage One, Chicago wedding venue tre cool.

Healy and Millet Stained Glass Dome, Chicago Cultural Center

One of the grand surprises of my trip to Chicago was a visit to the old Chicago Public Library, now the Chicago Cultural Center. Opened in 1897, the building is an art jewel box with not one but two stained glass domes. This is the dome in the Grand Army of the Republic Rotunda. Shot with my iPhone using Olloclip. Post in Snapseed and iWatermark.



Friday, March 22, 2013

Piano Man

My Sweetie practices the piano before Carrie's wedding last weekend.

This is actually a photomontage on an iPhone photo I made at the wedding venue site, Salvage One.  The original was too bright and stark;  the warehouse clutter in the background too distracting.  I cropped it way, way down to the juice of the shot.  Then I added a watercolor texture image I made years ago,  manipulating it until it gave an overall warmth to the photo and toned down the highlight on the top of the piano.  



Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Way You Look Tonight

Feeling sentimental today about our BIG weekend in Chicago for my daughter's wedding. Here's one of my best captures of the evening.


Oops!  Forgot to say post was done in Snapseed except for the ©.  A feature in Snapseed I love is the ability to click on a spot or area on the photo and change the selective brightness and (I think I remember it right) the detail visible there.  You can also scale the size of that spot up or down.  That's cool because I liked that I'd gone to the trouble of composing the crooning DJ into the frame but he was so dark you couldn't really see him unless you knew to look there.  With the Selective Adjust feature, I clicked on his upper body, dialed up the brightness and he appeared!  Not too bright; not too dark.  Just right.  Thank you Snapseed and, oh, I LOVE you!

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Mt Hood On Approach

Flying out of the cold and beginnings of snow in Chicago and into the sunny spring skies of Portland yesterday we saw this delicious treat:

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Cultural Center Pano

This is a first serious attempt at making a panoramic photo with my phone camera. The Grand Army of the Republic Rotunda in the old Chicago Public Library begged for experimentation. You can see Hugh and our excellent walking tour guide waiting for me to make my 360 so we could continue the tour.

Art!

An installation in the old Chicago Public Library, now the Chicago Cultural Center.