Popping in here with a little boost of graphic color for your Monday enjoyment.
I went to an iris garden with some photographer friends yesterday, and photographed everything BUT the iris. (Well, maybe just a few…)
I particularly loved these alliums. They have such a cool shape! I’ll have to play around with these images some more.
Along the edge of the trail yesterday, I noticed the wild iris blooming. I love these small, delicate flowers. They are like the quiet cousin of the typical varieties you see around in gardens.
I got up close and personal with my iPhone, but the images just weren’t capturing the essence of these beautiful little flowers on a gorgeous spring morning.
So I looked for the light… and there it was.
Hello, spring.
I love it when a plan comes together! When I captured this photograph of lotus flowers*, I knew immediately I wanted to do a painterly edit. No doubt this desire was influenced by my love of Monet’s water lily paintings!
So I was thrilled yesterday morning when I played with the image and came up with this final result. Perfect timing to share with Paint Party Friday too!
I love the way everything seems to radiate out from the grouping of flowers. There is an energy I feel when I look at it, even though the edit softens things up. It’s dynamic and yet beautiful at the same time.
* What flower I actually photographed seems to be up for debate. There is a difference between lotus and water lilies, but I don’t know enough to tell. All I know is the native Singaporeans I was with called these lotus. Does anyone know the answer? Here’s the original photo for more clarity.
One more parting note: I will be doing a giveaway of a space in my upcoming A Sense of Place online class in my email newsletter coming out this weekend. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter if you aren’t already a subscriber, so you can enter.
On Saturday morning I was up and out early to meet up with some other photographers in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. I had mentioned I was interested in photography at work, and was introduced to Kok Hing (in white, below) who arranged for an outing with some of his photography friends. They go out every Saturday to photograph different things, and this day it was macro bugs in the gardens. It was great fun to meet them and learn more about their photography. It made my trip that much more interesting.
Of course, for me it was trees. Turns out I enjoy photographing trees with leaves too. And the leaves themselves. And the flowers. It was all good! I would like to get back over to the gardens again before I leave, if I can. Maybe an early morning excursion is in order.
Enjoy a bit of the beauty of the gardens with me today!
As a side note, the iPhone is really a wonderful tool for travel photography and sharing. All of the images I’ve shared of the trip so far, and the blog posts, were all created with my iPhone. It’s a powerful tool and I’m finding it a great companion for travel along with my dSLR. I wouldn’t want to be without either one!
There has been an interesting development for me lately. After months of not participating in Paint Party Friday, suddenly it’s getting difficult to decide just what to share! Now that I am considering my digital artwork to be “paintings” I find that I am creating too many to share just one day a week. Before, with traditional painting, I was doing good to pick up the brush most weeks. I think I have finally found my painting medium.
I have discovered another thing, the ones I want to share for Paint Party Friday have become the ones where I’d like to share how I created the final piece. It must be the teacher in me, but I get questions on how I did something and I can’t help but want to share with you so you can try it too. So here I go… with this week’s painting: Winter Flowers.
Winter Flowers
The painting starts off, as always for me, with a photograph. This was captured with my iPhone5 using the Slow Shutter Cam app, which allows you to mimic a long shutter speed. You can get some cool blur effects this way. Be forewarned though: You will have to experiment and take a lot of images to get one or two usable ones, but it’s worth it!
This image has some of the softness I was going for, but I wanted to enhance it further. I pulled it into the Glaze app and tried different glazes. This was my favorite:
Do you see the subtle color shifts that happened, along with the painterly edges? It seemed to deepen the shadows and make for a more dimensional image. Very cool. I didn’t like the regular looking brushstrokes that happened along the petals though. Time to pull it into the Iris Photo Studio app, and blend it back with the original photo:
This adds a little bit more structure back into the lines and brightens things up, but it didn’t get rid of the regular looking brustrokes, so there was one more step. I opened the image in Pixlr Express PLUS and applied a texture. The great thing about this app, as opposed to the similar and simpler Pixlr-o-Matic from the same company, is that you can adjust the amount of the effect that is applied. So I toned down the texture a little bit to make it more subtle. Here’s the final image again:
Winter Flowers
I am really happy with how this one turned out! I am going to print it to see how it looks on paper. I hope you are enjoying these and starting to get some ideas for creating digital art this way. The possibilities are endless, and tons of fun!
Oh, and if you don’t have a smartphone to join in with all of this app fun, I’ve run into a couple of options online to play with editing your photos this way. Check out pixlr.com and psykopaint.com. Have fun!
Do you have people in your life who rub off on you when you are around them? I definitely do. I pick up a little bit of their happiness or enthusiasm when I’m around them. Whatever they have going on, I just can’t help but be swept up in their excitement. I’m continuing on to London today, sharing one final story of creative connection with a person who is like that for me: Kirstin McKee.
I’ve known Kirstin for a couple of years now. I first met her online through the Mortal Muses and we spent a weekend with her family in London while we were living in Italy. Since this trip back to England was all about connection, I was excited to reconnect with Kirstin. I stayed with her and her family for a couple of days between workshops. When she suggested we go to Whitstable, a little coastal town about an hour’s drive from London, I jumped on the chance. I’d never visited the English seaside! We lucked out with a gorgeously sunny day for our excursion.
Photo by Kirstin McKee
Kirstin is fun to be around because she is so full of enthusiasm for photography. Whatever she does, she does with gusto. She’s gotten into film the last year or so, and raves about it. It makes it hard for her to decide what cameras to bring though! On this day trip she carried four cameras: dSLR, 35mm film, Polaroid and iPhone. I was a-goggle with all of her camera bags! But it was fun to watch her choose between one camera or another, to hear why she would choose each one, and to see the outcome later.
Kirstin and her camera bags
We wandered along the shore and through the town, following our interest and whatever captured our eye. We spent a good long time at this house with the gorgeous blue shutters, which reminded both of us of Greece. She even had to run back later and photograph the window again, since her original Polaroid didn’t turn out quite right.
I look at her photographs, and I’m just in awe of what she does. And she is so humble about it too. She creates because she loves it, and follows her joy. What a great example for the rest of us.
Photos by Kirstin McKee
After wandering around for a while, photographing all manner of interesting things, we wrapped up our day with an amazing lunch at the Whitstable Oyster Company. There is nothing like a fantastic meal in a lovely setting to cap off your day.
The whole thing was so much fun. This is the best kind of photography excursion to me: Visiting a new place along with a friend who loves photography as much as I do. My photographs from this day are some of my favorite from the trip.
Photos, and Photo of Photos, by Kirstin McKee
Kirstin’s enthusiasm definitely rubbed off on me. While I haven’t quite caught her bug for film, I can appreciate what she sees in it. And after she saw me using my iPod Touch, she pretty much made sure I got onto Instagram while I was with her… and you all know what’s happened from there. A whole new world has opened up for me with mobile photography.
Kirstin posting to Instagram
Thanks Kirstin, for a lovely day, and for the enthusiasm you share with all you do. It was a wonderful reconnection and I already can’t wait for the next time. Where shall we visit next?
As I wrap up this series of posts, I am excited see how each of the creative connections I made on this trip string together into a story of influences. I can observe what I gained from each one and how they each are a little stepping stone on my creative journey. I would not be in the same place today without them. Thanks for joining me as I revisited my connections in England the last couple of weeks! I look forward to sharing more of my England photos over time.
