Photo layering

I have been playing yet again! I was busy recording tutorials for a workshop to be held on Wednesday when I managed to get distracted! Every day I enjoy reading the posts from DPS and sometimes becoming "inspired" to try one of the suggestions. The simple tutorials I had been recording led me from one topic to another and thanks to that Photography site, I started to think of textures and layering.
I am not sure if my "pupils" would appreciate this sort of manipulation so I am sharing it with anyone who visits my blog instead!
I started out with a blank canvas and using one of the bog-standard weird Photoshop brushes that I had never used before - it looks a bit like a dirty smudge - I made the brush huge and with two dabs created an interesting "background". Then I "colorised" it in Hue and Saturation and then textured it with a very large and deep canvas texture from filters. I created a soft vignette using the Lens Correction filter and came up with this.

Having a texture meant I needed a photo! I dug one out of my collection, it was a rather pleasant, quiet photo of an Australian pelican on the edge of the water. The texture was overlayed and all sorts of blending modes and opacities were tried. When I settled on one combination I liked I then used a mask to clean the texture from the bird.
So far so good - but not really as inspiring as I thought it could have been. What about some text?
Googled "Australian Pelican" and on a scrap of paper wrote down what was written on the site I opened.

I played around with the colour of the text and placed it over the image making it cover the entire picture. This time I used the Multiply opacity.
 Once again I erased the layer from the bird and this is what I ended up with.

I quite enjoyed experimenting but I am not sure if this example is dramatic enough. I shall have another go with a different texture and photo and see what I can come up with!
AJ

A dangerous hobby

While enjoying wandering around the Australia Day festivities with my Nikon D90 with the 50mm lens attached I also managed to grab a couple of little videos with my next favourite toy - the JVC blog camera. This camera is so small and light that it lives quite happily in my shoulder bag which means that it is always available to be used when something interesting happens.
The formation riding by the flag waving team on their identical brown horses was one of the topics and a few minutes of the bull riding were the other. The audience numbers were good so to be able to see anything at all I was forced to be behind people. Even if I was closer the double fences would have been a problem. After seeing the size of the bulls and the way they pranced and bucked when that rope was around their mid-riff I was quite happy that there was a solid fence between them and me!
I only stood and watched four different rides and two of the tossed riders required medical attention - a third one was unlucky to be underneath when his bull fell over but lucky in that he was not hurt. It landed on his legs. The announcer happily told the audience that it was a miss-ride and the boy would be given a different bull later!
Of the two that were hurt, one was kicked and the other (the last one shown), the bull stomped on his chest. The announcer reported that he was "just winded" so I hope so!
I have learned not to use the zoom on the JVC blogger - it is only a digital zoom so the picture becomes quite degraded.

After watching another of my shaky videos I bet you will vow never to become a bull rider!
To see this video in Youtube without the sides cut off, click on the title at the top of the video.
AJ

More from Australia Day

With my little blog camera I took a few seconds of a horse display and recorded the singing by one of the performers. I combined the two in Adobe Premiere Elements, converted to Flash Video and uploaded to Youtube. A slightly larger version can be watched in Youtube by clicking on the video image in this blog.

While not an outstanding video, this snippet does go to show one of the many free events that were put on for the public.
AJ

Australia Day on the Gold Coast

On January 26th Australians celebrate "being" Australian in many different ways. The date is believed to have been that of the first raising of the Union Jack at Sydney Cove in 1788, symbolising white settlement, when the first convicts from England were landed.
These days the people of Australia tend to use the day to show their patriotism. This fervour is shown by some in the way they dress.

The national flag is used to decorate cars, stalls and people

This is a day of "feel good" and friendliness.
On the Gold Coast we always have a fun "free" day in the grounds of the Council Chambers where performers entertain and hobbyists of heritage crafts demonstrate their skills to the public.

The Wood chop competition is a tradition for Australia Day and the handicaps put on the champion wood choppers seem to put them at a huge disadvantage. For this bout, one of the men had to wait for the count of 30 before he could start. A small crowd gathered around a man and his working sheep dog as he demonstrated how a series of whistles would tell the dog what he wanted it to do.

In another park I was drawn to where there were loud cheers and laughter. Yet another holiday tradition is back-yard cricket. This park was at the edge of the beach and everywhere there were groups of picnickers but in a good sized clearing a bunch of lads were belting a ball - with absolutely no style at all! The cheering became louder and my shot shows why, the "boys in blue" had been persuaded to join in and one of them struck out at the ball sending it almost into the sea!

Australia Day is also a rather special day for some people - This country is made up of people from every country in the world and there are Citizenship ceremonies many times through the year but for some lucky people their day is Australia Day. How special that must feel.
AJ

remote photography

I was trying something new today - and isn't it fun to do that?
A friend had given me his camera and laptop and wanted me to set it up so that he could take photographs remotely. He is writing a book about making jewellery and the photos he wants to take to be included are all very detailed. He finds it very difficult being sure of the focus using the viewfinder of the camera so wanted the software installed that would allow the image to be seen on the larger screen before it was taken.
Try as I could I had no success whatsoever on his rather dated IBM ThinkPad (it has a 25G hard-drive!) I couldn't even locate the software on the Installation disk for the Canon SLR.
 In desperation I put the disk into my own laptop and was very surprised to see many more programs available to be installed than were showing on the ThinkPad.
I installed the EOS Utility only and without much idea of whether it would work or not, set up the Canon 40D on a tripod and dug out a light-box that was once used for viewing slides before putting them into a cassette to be projected, and a table lamp.
The idea was to put a small object on the light box (just a small fluorescent light under cloudy, opaque glass) and illuminate the small crystal and so get the crystal without a shadow beneath it.
I started up the Camera and linked with the USB cable to the computer and started the program. To begin with the limited rectangle of information on the right of this picture was all that appeared but after clicking on a few buttons I found the one that I needed.

The tiny piece of opal could be positioned on the light box and the left and right arrows you can see to the right of the image control the focusing.
The small rectangle in the centre of the image was not clear to me straight away. But when I clicked on the magnify button I soon learned what it was all about! Fantastic!

That rectangle was brought up to the size of the monitor and precise focus could then be achieved. Once the focus was right on that bit the zoom box could be closed and the entire object was visible with that new focusing.
Taking the photo meant clicking on the button in that control box on the extreme right. I had discovered how to set the preferences to save a photo on the memory card in the camera as well as in a folder on the hard drive. So now I am in love!
I shall be playing with my friend's macro lens and exploring the small things around the place! The light box works a treat for taking pictures without shadows.
Here is a tiny little crystal in which there are little black dots - when I enlarged this picture I found out that the little black dots are tiny little black crystals with definite crystalline shapes.

That is how good this macro lens is! And how good this method of focusing on something small, is.
AJ

Changes

After all the rain and dark skies it was wonderful to awaken to a clear blue sky - so good in fact that after taking the dogs for a walk I had half an hour in the swimming pool with my husband. Wonderful! The water was warm too!
At last I could have some time with my camera. A house filled with visitors and so many things to do have kept me away from my favourite hobby. But once lunch was over and everyone had left the house I became very self centred! The Nikon was taken out and the garden explored! There were some new things to aim at such as some little pink berries on the Lilly pilly bush but it was the flowering gum that finally held my attention. I had willed this little tree to flower for Christmas - and it obliged! Although not very big yet it is giving me hope for a wonderful garden centre-piece for the future, and even the lorikeets have given it their lick of approval!

f/5.6  1/160  ISO200  55mm

This photo was taken about two weeks ago and I was not fast enough to be able to capture the bird actually in the tree! But as least I did get him in the picture!
Those flowers have now gone. They did not last very long, unfortunately. But in their place I now have some rather fun seed pods.

f/5.6  1/400  ISO250  50mm

The centre stamen will eventually fall out of all these seed pods but at the moment they look like ice-cream cones with a spoon stuck in them! The pods will become darker and woodier as they mature and then fall from their stalks to litter the ground below.
I did manage to find one flower that had lasted longer than all the others.

f/5.6  1/1000 ISO250  55mm

Finding the right place to take a photo of it required climbing over all sorts of prickly plants! Working out what to use in the background also involved squeezing between plants and taking care that I did not trample on them!
As I backed away and looked for other subjects I became aware of a rumbling sound. I thought at first it was an aeroplane but it was thunder! So the clouds rolling up became the next focus of my attention. The temperature had climbed to over 34 degrees and this must have generated a thunderstorm.

f/10  1/1600   ISO 250  50mm

The blue cloudless sky was being attacked from the south! At the same time the temperature was dropping quite noticeably.

f/10  1/200  ISO250  18mm

By the time I walked over to the path near the house and looked back at the garden the sky was completely covered in cloud. Not ominously black and threatening, but definitely less attractive than the blue we had earlier!
Now I am inside it is almost dark enough to turn the lights on and the temperature has dropped to 28 degrees. That is in only 30 minutes.
I will show you the other "finds" in my garden some other time!
AJ

Time of floods

Several of my friends living in different suburbs of the Gold Coast have rung me to find out if we are flooded out of our home. The local weather reported flooding at Mudgeeraba (my suburb) and even named the road that runs past our little Court (cul-de-sac) as being flooded.


Since you readers of my blog live in different parts of the world and may have seen television footage of the dreadful devastation by the flooding in Queensland I thought I had better show you how we are faring here.
 

Click on picture to see it larger

This first image was taken from the room in which I write this blog. I am looking over the top of the swimming pool and the lichen covered shade house and the corner of Colin's big shed is just visible. As you can see, the creek that runs (sometimes) at the back of the block of land has spilled over into our next door neighbour's land. A few weeks ago we had the creek rise and it came above the little shrub on the left of the palm tree over the fence, so you can see that we are in no danger of being swamped just yet.

You may wonder what those orange thing are! They are the lorikeets flying in for breakfast! I went out and stood by their feed dish to take this photo and they assumed it was food I had brought out with me!
From this picture you can tell how wet and boggy the land has become. My son tried to change direction with a trailer near the intersecting fence we have through the block and became stuck in the mud! We have a few very deep wheel ruts to flatten out!
In other floods that we have experienced here the waters have come right up to and higher than that old wagon wheel leaning against the big gum tree. So this shows you that for the moment we have nothing to worry about from that direction. So far we do not have water on our land. The water you see in this picture is a "spoon drain" which takes the run-off water from the road to the creek at the bottom of the block. It is a water easement that runs between us and our other neighbour.
Many Queensland towns are experiencing floods like never before and there will be a lot of broken people when they return to their homes and find how much damage the flood water has caused inside their homes. The plaster board walls will all have to be replaced because they will have swelled like sponges, the timber frames will be saturated and the smell - it doesn't bear thinking about.
So do not be concerned for AJ and Co. We are safe and dry.
AJ

Rainforest magic

Today I remembered to take my tripod with me when we packed the car for a run up the Numinbah Valley to a beautiful spot known as Natural Bridge. This is the other side of the mountain to the Purlingbrook Falls and is in the Springbrook National Park. To you international readers of my blog this will mean nothing, so I apologise for the confusion! I will make up for my blank statement by showing you why I love visiting this side of the National Park.

f/9  1/13   ISO400  26mm

This wonderful display of several different types of epiphyte (air feeding plants) is in the entrance to Natural Bridge and most people drive under it without even noticing it.
To take my photos today I had the camera in full manual control and increased the ISO to 400 at the start of my photo taking. I did not notice that I inadvertently change this back to 200 part way through the day!

f/5.6  1/5  ISO200  18mm

There are some truly beautiful sights in this piece of rainforest and after all the rain we have had during the last few weeks the creeks are running well. Thanks to the slow shutter speed the water splashes have been smoothed out but the speed of the running water is shown better this way. This part of the park is filled with draping vines of all thicknesses. Anyone with a good imagination would love to be here when there are no other people around!

f/5.6  1/15   ISO200  18mm

This photograph shows why people love to come to this park. The water that was shown in the picture before this one rushed over the surface and has cut a hole through the rock to fall ten to fifteen metres into a rock pool below creating a most spectacular sight. It is possible to walk into the cave that has been carved out over the centuries by this falling water but the spray was so great today that I stayed out in the open and tried several different vantage points. It is difficult to find the right setting to accommodate the brightness of the water and the heavy darkness of the cave and rocks - this is the sort of challenge I enjoy!

f/5.6    1/15     ISO200   18mm

Leaving the thunder of the water behind me I then walked through the rainforest to make my way back to the car and was brought to a stop by these magnificent splayed roots, rainforest trees are very shallow rooted and balance their massive size by spreading their roots out like webbed feet on tip-toe. Although my eyes were well accustomed to the lighting under the trees the camera needed plenty of time for each picture which shows just how dark it really is.

f/5.6  1/40   ISO200   26mm

My last picture tells a story of persistence - the pattern is caused by the roots of a fig that had been scraped off a birds beak as a sticky seed and attached in a branch high in a rainforest tree. The host tree is still encased in these roots but eventually it will be starved of nourishment by the strangler fig and will die leaving a hollow centre within the network of roots.
Using the roots as a good anchor point, several epiphytes have become lodged in this web and enjoy a wonderful view over the treetops.
The rainfall up here in Springbrook National Park is quite a bit higher than that of the suburbs along the sea front only a few kilometers away, so close but so different.
AJ

An Art Treasure

While searching for a few pieces of artwork in my home (to take photographs for an assignment) I came across a carved emu egg that had been given to me quite a few years ago.
Carving emu eggs is not an easy thing to do in spite of the fact that the eggs are really very thick and strong. When the emu eggs are fresh they are a vivid emerald green but as time goes by they darken and we have an egg that is very old that is now gray. All the colour has gone from it.
This photo shows the two sides of my carved egg. It was carved by an aboriginal woman in 1980 and given to me as a gift by a young man that Colin and I took in as an orphaned 14 year old only days after we got married. The gift was given when he was 26, married and with two little girls!

The egg has already lost its green look, it has been placed on a green cloth deliberately to show this colour loss.  Click on the photo to enlarge it.
I hope you can see why I class it as an artwork.
AJ

Happy New Year

May this year bring you much happiness and lots of great memories!

AJ

Click on the face of the movie to see it in Youtube - part of the movie has been trimmed to fit in this blog!