White on the top

The past few days have been "stinking hot" with very high humidity so when I came across the pictures from my holiday in New Zealand I felt so much cooler! My visit was in Autumn and the cold had not yet descended to road level - a perfect time for travel in that country. The trees are in their colourful glory and you can explore without having to be weighted down by heavy clothing.
It was the following two photographs that brought my temperature down.

As we drove along we could see that the snow was just starting to settle on the top of the alps. This is in the Mount Cook range of mountain tops but I am afraid that I have no idea of the names of the peaks

I have a feeling that the peak shown in this second picture is that of Mount Cook. To see the pictures more clearly click on one and it will open in a new page.
The South Island of New Zealand is a photographer's paradise, it is filled with lakes, rives, mountains and glorious scenery, the coastline is stunning and there is so much variety in landscape in such a small (half of a) country.
I definitely feel a lot cooler!
AJ

November display

This morning when I looked out of my kitchen window my breath was taken away with the beauty on show by one little garden tree. Yesterday there were one or two flowers on it but this morning it was smothered with them,

The remarkable thing about this particular Tibouchina is that the petals are different shades of pink. This was originally a cutting given to me by a friend. It was taken off a white tibouchina (as was the other cutting which has turned out to be purple). This TIbouchina is Tibouchina Mutabilis - a known hybrid of the genus so why it should have grown from a cutting from a completely different tree I have no idea!!
Here is a closer look (It is worth taking a closer look!)

If you were to click on the picture you will be rewarded with a larger image. So much easier to see.
The individual florets have distinctive angular stamens. The wild birds do not show any interest in the flowers nor have I noticed many insects of them either. Maybe the pollination is done by the wind.

I have two other Tibouchina varieties in my garden and neither is showing signs of being as covered with flowers as this one - of the other two, one is the dark purple variety and the other a rich pink.
I thought that Spring was an exciting time for colour in my garden but this month which is the end of spring, is proving to be just as exciting.
AJ

more colour changing

Continuing from my previous instructions on colouring a photo by creating a new layer for each different colour (and labelling each layer) I will show you how to change the colours even after you have moved on to a different layer.
I decided that I would see what different colours would look like on the baby dress.

In the layers palette I first clicked on the dress layer

Now click on Adjust>Adjust Color> Adjust Hue/Saturation.
When the Hue and Saturation box opens slide the HUE slider from side to side to see the different colours that are possible. When you find one you like, stop sliding and click "OK"

Have another try - go to Adjus>Adjust Color> Adjust Hue/Saturation. This time, slide the other sliders, the Saturation and the Lightness sliders to see what you can create.

Once you have completed your picture to your satisfaction, flatten the image - Go to the menu bar and click on Layers>Flatten Image (right at the bottom of the drop down box.
Save as a jpg image - if the picture is not flattened it can be saved with all its layers. It will be saved as a .psd image file.

Once it is flattened you will need to change the "Format" to "JPEG" or it will again be saved as a .psd image and email recipients will not be able to see it.
Have fun with your colour changing.
AJ

Bringing an old photo to life

Today I had a little time to play on my laptop. I have always been a Photoshop (CS) user but since so many people use Photoshop Elements these days I have been making myself work with this very handy photo editing program so that I can offer help to those that need it.
So finding a delightful photo taken in 1944 I decided to have a try at bringing it into the modern day - very few people could afford colour photography back then so black and grey it was! Once I started on the transformation I started to take snapshots of the different stages. This story would be far too long and very boring if I gave you each and every step that was taken so you will need to "read between the lines" occasionally. I don't think you will get lost.
The first thing that should be done is to remove bad spots and scratches. The magic healing brush does a great job of that - make the brush size  just a fraction larger than the black or white spot and simply "dab" it with the brush. Take care when dragging the brush along scratches, that sometimes makes a worse mess than is there to start with. Major scratches may need you to use the Clone/Stamp tool. I cheated . . . I only took away the spots on the skin and the little dress, I felt that the child was the important part of the picture and no one would notice what was in the background.
Here is the original photograph.

Now for the steps on how to add the colour.
To begin with you need to change the mode from greyscale to RGB.  Click on Image>Mode>RGB Color. If this is not done you will not be able to add any colours at all.
The colouring can be done in any order. for each new colour create a new blank layer and paint onto that. Never paint directly onto the photograph.
With this photograph I clicked first on the "Add new layer" button on the extreme left of the Layers Palette (In CS5 this button is on the extreme right)
The painting is done on the layer, not on the photo.Click on the foreground colour box (the top one of the two main colours at the bottom of the tool bar) and put these numbers in 
R . . . . 227    G . . . . 183  B . . . . 151 and click OK
You do not need to remember these numbers, I have given them to you as a quick start so that you know for the future where the colour is sampled for skin colour. At this stage it does not matter that the colour is too pink or too yellow, I will show you how to get it right.
Select a brush tool and select the brush shape that has a soft edge, not a smooth edge.
In the Layers palette change the blending mode from "Normal" to "Color".
Paint over the face, hands and legs - if there are more than one person in the picture, only do the skin of one person.
Zoom in very close and take your paint colour to the very edges, use the eraser to clean up any over spill.
The skin has been coloured but it may be an un-natural colour so we now fix it!
Click on Enhance>Adjust color>Adjust color for skin tone. In the pop up box that appears you can work real magic. Click the eye dropper on the skin - not the deep shadow or even the brightest part, there will be an automatic change to the colouring. You may wish to add a little more yellow or change the white balance - experiment with the sliders. You will only see a change when you release the mouse button so make only little changes.
Once you have the skin correct you can move to the next part to be coloured.
Add another layer by clicking on the Add new layer button and, once again, change the blending mode to "Color".
It is sensible to name each of the layers. Click twice on the writing and you will be able to type over the highlighted letter.
You will end up with lots and lots of layers.

With each of the layers renamed it is possible to go back and change things or paint in little bits that had been missed.
Here is the end result of my efforts with this photo.

Under all the layers is the black and white photograph, the colours are transparent and allow the shading and textures to show through. We have a wonderful program to work wonders on our old photographs!
AJ

A simple polarizing effect

Just occasionally you may get a photo that looks very "washed out" the main part of the picture may look reasonable but the sky is lighter than you think it should be. This very simple fix may be your answer!

 Here I have a rather wishy washy photograph that will benefit from the technique I am about to show you.
First of all, open the picture in Photoshop Elements (this technique will work in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements) and use "Full Edit" from the selection on the right - not Quick Edit or Guided Edit. We will be working with LAYERS and this is not possible in Quick or Guided edit modes.
In the Layers palette on the right hand side, click on the "Create new layer" button.

Can you see the word "Normal" written in a box above the layers?
Click on this box and it will drop down giving a long list of words.
Click on "Soft Light"

The word "Normal" should now be replaced with the words "Soft Light".
You will see no changes to the picture yet but the "Soft light" blending mode will make a big difference to what we do next.
Now change the foreground colour to black (pressing the letter "D" on your keyboard will change the foreground and background colours to black and white)

Click on the brush tool and make it large enough to paint the sky - and make sure that you have a soft brush.

Now paint over your sky - I have deliberately painted over the little stone church so you can see more clearly what I have done.

Use the eraser to remove the darkness that is created, from the areas where it is not wanted. I do not want it over the church so after erasing my painted layer looks like this.

I did change my eraser to a hard edged brush so that it made a neater job of cleaning the sharp edges of the roof.
Once you are satisfied with the job you have done. go to Layers (on the menu bar) and click on "Flatten image" now the picture can be saved. Always save your altered photos with a new name, so always click on "Save As" not "Save".
I have put both pictures together so that you can see the effect of the painting with black and using Soft Light blending mode.

The foreground also looks a lot brighter - but I must admit that I also went to Enhance>Auto smart fix (from the menu) and that clever little tweak balanced the light and shade.

The effect I have just described to you give a similar effect to putting a circular polarizer on your camera to deepen the blue of the sky and define the clouds.
I hope you give it a try.
AJ

Having another go with Photoscape

I have spoken to a few people who have downloaded Photoscape and are having a play with it and they are quite excited about what can be done. None of these people are clever "photoshop" users, they find the layers and masks and processes all very confusing and yet they are having a great time with this program and are getting very good results. It is good that a program such as this is not only easy to use but effective at all kinds of tasks too.
One of the people I have chatted to is scanning old slides and the results of the Photoscape manipulation I have been shown are excellent.

This photograph is a comparison shot. The photo on the left is how the original scan looks (I worked on this photo - it is of me a VERY long time ago!) The program allowed brightness and contrast correction, colour removal and cloning. The cloning tool is faultless! I was totally amazed at how easy and how invisibly the repairs were made. When scanning old photos there are always little black and sometimes, white, dots that mar the picture. I was able to zoom right in and use the clone brush to remove those blemishes.
If I wanted to give the corrected photo a sepia wash so that it looks as dated as the original a quick click on the appropriate filter will do that. But since the photo was a black and white originally and only time and poor developing has changed it to dull brown I will keep it the way I have now made it!
AJ

An unusual town

The little red car knew we had more passengers as it strained to climb the hills. I wasn’t able to fly today! Our day began in Hahndorf, a delightful little town that began as a home for German immigrants and was named after the captain of the ship that brought them to this fertile farming land. The town shed its German name, customs and language in the time of the first world war – there was so much ill feeling about the reliability of German Australians at that time. The name was restored many years later – but to learn about the fascinating history of the place you would need to do your own research!

We discovered a fascinating little place – actually, not as small as I expected, and every quaint building on the main street housed a shop that was worth walking into. There are lots of eating places too and there wasn’t a moment during the hours we spent there that we didn’t see a crowd of people eating and drinking!

Sue and Keith were tempted by a young lady offering free samples of strawberries. We bought a punnet of them to have for lunch.

 There was a sign for the Saturday Hahndoft market so we dropped in for a look.

It is always fun to look at the stalls – half of which were selling jewellery – and my eye was caught by the sight of a vegetable stall. Of course, vegetable stalls are a common sight at a market – but this one had multi-coloured carrots for sale! I was given a taste of them – four different coloured carrots had thin slices cut from them. I tasted the yellow and the purple and was so surprised to find that they tasted exactly the same and both of them tasted like . . . . carrot!

I just have to show you the fun that someone had with topiary. The sight of these two trees caught my eye! Aren’t they funny!

I wanted to kidnap these characters in the following photo. I think they would look terrific on my front lawn. Knowing the Gold Coast, I think I would have to anchor them to the ground or they would disappear one night! But they would look good!

The countryside around Hahndorf is a delight too. We had a wonderful drive around and even visited the Big Rocking Horse and toy factory. But that is another story!

AJ

More colour from my patch of garden

I must be doing something right this year! My garden is really rewarding me with colour. I suspect it is my industrious husband's doing - he is out every single day with the hose, watering my seedlings and providing me with trailer loads of new soil. Tomorrow we are off to see if we can purchase some sugar cane mulch direct from the farm! My garden is really "spoilt"! I think it gets more attention than we do!

Number one picture is another look at my pretty multicoloured Tibouchina mutabilis. With these blooms all close together you can see how they change from white to a stronger pink colour. I prune this bush back once it has finished flowering and that keeps it from getting too big but better than that it develops more flower branches for the next year. Last year this bush was quite open but this year is more dense. Next year it should be even better.

The Agapanthus are out! They really are a majestic plant with their strappy green leaves and tall stems with big heads of blue on the top - they are such a contrast to most things in my garden which seem to be various shades of pink! I suppose I will have to dig some of them out after their flowering is over - they have multiplied so that they take up quite a bit of room. I wont be throwing them away though, when I lift them I shall plant them down the side of the driveway that goes down to the shed in the back. They wont mind being in the shade of trees and come November we shall be rewarded with a fantastic display of blue!

I have only one white Agapanthus and it is a little slower to open than the blue, It also looks a bit lonely but it will have "pups" so that I will have two or three plants next year.

The best bit of all is kept til last - the daylilies start showing off in November! I have about eight different daylilies and, like the agapanthus, they have pups that give me new plants every year so I have clumps of daylilies all through the garden ranging from single buttercup yellow to deep red that is almost brown. I love daylilies and have visited daylily farms - this is where some of my plants were purchased. I have a gorgeous one that a friend brought for me from a holiday and another that I bought from a gardener who had a stall on the side of the road! I will share some more of their beauty with you another time.
Dont forget that to see the pictures larger, click on them!
AJ

Yellow flower

Thanks to Jenny in Western Australia I now have a name for my bright and cheerful yellow flowers!

So for those of you who are curious, this yellow daisy is Coreopsis, It multiplies quite well and can be pulled apart easily and spread around. I started with only a punnet of seedlings so all these plants in one garden plus the plants in the next picture, in an adjacent garden are from those original six. I have not found it to be weed-like. It does not spread wildly appearing all through the garden unexpectedly - plus it is fairly shallow rooted and really easy to pull out should the plants become too numerous.

A friend gave me the pretty flowering shrub (lots of the plants in my garden have a story!). I was told it would be a white Tobouchina but, as you can see it is not completely white. The new flowers are white with pink on the back of the petals and as the days pass that colour appears on the white front of the petals. Because the colours mutate the plant has been called "Tibouchina mutabilis" Which, for me, makes remembering the name so much easier! This same friend gave me four different cuttings from his white Tibouchina but not one of them turned out to be white. The other three are deep purple. The purple variety is known as "Tibouchina austenville" and is the most common of the varieties seen around this area. it will be a few months before the third variety in my garden comes into bloom again. It is a pretty pink colour that does not mutate. The flowers are rather tatty when seen closely but the show created by the masses of flowers makes up for that.
(Click on a picture and you will see it larger, then click on the "back" button to return to the blog)
AJ

Spring on the Range

I have just uploaded a little video I have made from the photos and bloggie video that I took on Friday of the beautiful gardens that won prizes in the Toowoomba Flower Festival. I hope you enjoy it.
Click on the title at the top left of the video if you would like to see the video in Youtube - in this blog the sides are trimmed off!
AJ

Sign of Autumn in the Sub-tropics

This morning when I should have been tucked up in bed I was delivering my tour driver son to where he was to pick up his coach for his next trip. There was a reward for me when we got there. Just as we turned in the drive I noticed the most gloriously coloured tree!

Naturally, I dug out my little camera and took a photo. Such a colourful sight is not seen too often among all our lush greenery!
I walked closer to admire the tree - such a perfect shape! - and just had to take a photo of the leaves beneath it. When I lived in the UK such a sight would barely make me look twice!

I can remember that as a child I would kick the fallen leaves, heap them up and jump into them and take great pleasure in throwing them up into the air! I think my son would have disowned me if I did that today!

Standing among the fallen leaves I gazed up into the tree, the morning sunlight was streaming through the leaves. It made me feel great to be alive on such a day!
As I walked back to the vehicle to drive home (leaving my son to drive off in the coach) I heard the distinctive call of black cockatoos. I looked up and saw three of them flying directly overhead, barely higher than the tree I had just left. I was looking into the sun so an in-flight shot was impossible. I continued walking up to the vehicle but could hear the birds still. I looked over the boundary of high bushes and saw them in the pencil willow trees in the next property. How I would have loved to have gone over there to get on the "other" side of the tree the birds were in. Knowing that the birds would fly away as soon as I came anywhere near I moved into a bit of shade and managed to take this shot.

The birds are chasing grubs that develop inside the heart of the willow and to get at these morsels they practically destroy the tree. The beaks on these birds are huge and so strong, they tear the soft flesh of the pencil willow and the branches then break and fall, you can hear the creaking sound as they go about there work!
I hope your morning was as eventful!
AJ

More birds come visiting

I have often shown our lorikeet breakfast companions. When we eat out on our veranda it is like we are in among the branches of the trees, we are at the same level. So the birds have all become used to us being out among them and while they are timid of coming too close I have a 200mm lens which allows me to get close to them!
This morning it was a bit cloudy for a while and for some unexplainable reason the birds were out in force - and they were in full voice too! The honey eaters, Indian miners (they are an introduced bird and a pest) and the currawongs were all singing out and trying to be heard over the racket that the lorikeets always make when they come in for their breakfast. The Sulphur Crested Cockatoos were screeching loudly and there might have been up to a dozen of them - they have discovered our lemon tree and although the lemons are still green, they are biting into them and eating the seeds. No lemons for us this year! Even the little finches were chirruping at the tops of their voices too! I did get my video camera out to record some of the sound - but it will be all mixed with the sound of vehicles on their way to work on the nearby road, unfortunately.
We do not get to see Rosellas very often so when they come I always make a grab for the camera.
(Click on these pictures to see them more clearly.)

I managed to get both Rosellas in the one shot - they are two different species, the red headed bird is an Eastern Rosella and the other is a Pale Headed Rosella.

It was difficult to stop taking photos once I had started! Here is the Eastern Rosella out in the open.

And the beautiful Pale Headed Rosella.
These two birds must have formed a bond because they occasionally call in and always the two of them are together. Many times we hear the distinctive call of Rosellas but we don't always get to see them.
Further up the mountain (we are on the lowest slope of Mount Springbrook) there is an even brighter Rosella which is mainly red and rich deep blue but I have never seen it down here. (Less than 30 Km away but it is a bit more humid down here to on the higher slopes.)
AJ

Splendour in the garden

Each morning before Christmas I would look out the window and urge my little tree to flower in time for December 25th - and it did! Mind you it was such terrible weather than no one, other than me, bothered to look out of the window to admire it!

As you can tell from the bleak looking sky this picture (taken this morning) was also taken on a non sunny day - but at least the rain had stopped!  I rolled up my trouser legs to the knees and donned my heavy sneakers to venture out onto the lawn to take a few photos to share.

I have possibly left deep impressions in the lawn where I walked! The ground is absolutely sodden and although I walked slowly and carefully the mud squelched up and I discovered splashes of mud on the knee and thigh of my pink pants!

My tree must be roughly the height of my big son by now so once it has reached its potential - which I think is 20 meters - it will be an amazing sight to see if it gets this proportion of blooms on it. They are so bright and showy. I was afraid that the torrential rain that has battered us over the last few days would have ruined the flowers so it was with much relief that I found the flowers intact.
Another young tree is also making a colourful show.

This tree is a Tibouchina Austenville and has been grown from a cutting - a gift from a friend who thought it was going to be a white flowering Tibouchina. We have another tree (this same purple) that is near the house and has been cut back many many times but it is not flowering or even close to flowering at the moment. Funny that we should have so many different Tibouchina trees and they all flower at different times. Incidentally, if you are curious about the tall spikes of pink and purple flowers near the flowering eucalyptus, they are one genus of the bromilliads. I forget the name of it. The leaves are quite dangerous when I do the weeding, I always come inside covered with blood from them - they have the most evil downward pointing spikes along the edges. Colin bought me some elbow length gardening gloves to wear when near them - but I never remember to put those ones on! I do wear gloves when gardening.
AJ

Colourful people

There were two different festivals close to home last weekend and I managed to get along to both of them. I really enjoy the annual Multicultural Festival where people who came from other countries show off their dress, dance, food and customs. There were many stalls - small tents - that offered such a wonderful variety of different foods that it would be easy to spend all one's time eating! My choice was something from the Indian cuisine, spicy and delicious! but that did not stop me from wandering around and enjoying the smells that emanated from the other stalls and their sweet or savoury offerings.

f/5.6  1/200 ISO 650

This group of colourful characters were posing for a photo for the local newspaper (didn't get in the paper though) and I happened to be right there! The tall young man on the right is an Australian Surf Lifesaver. So even people who have a long line of Australians in their ancestry were represented. The three girls are Australians too but they are "first generation Australians".

To see more of my photographs taken at this festival click on this link and you will be able to view them.

The other festival I attended was called a Body Painting Expo. This was inside a very dark pavilion at the show-grounds and I was unable to take any photos inside without the flash. I tried increasing the ISO but if I wanted blurred photos that would have been OK - but I didn't!

I had a flash diffuser in my handbag (I have one of those "everything but the kitchen sink"bags) so was able to make use of the pop up flash. The outdoor shots were taken without the flash even though the sky was covered with cloud and so made the light weak.

f/5.3  1/100  ISO 650   with flash + diffuser

Again, if you would like to see the photos I took at the Body Painting Expo, click on this link and you will be taken there. Incidentally, all the pictures in this blog and earlier blogs, react to a left mouse click!

There are always interesting activities happening in this part of the world. The Gold Coast is a tourist destination and those of us who live here are very fortunate in that we can participate in all these special activities too!

AJ

Tibouchina days

All of a sudden - maybe because of all the rain - the Tibouchina has burst into flower. Most of the flowering trees and shrubs and garden plants in my garden seem to be pink but this is one tree that has broken the mould. The first shot was taken from my veranda this morning. I was enjoying a morning coffee with Colin, watching the finches as they squabbled over the seed when one little bird flew between us and I followed him with my eyes and it was only then that I realised just how spectacular the tree was! The birds were forgotten (even though one had nearly touched us with its wings) and I went inside to get the camera.

I seem to get things wrong when I first take pictures - it is so good that there is a screen for reviewing the image so that you can re-set the camera and try again and again.

As it was a bit grey first thing I hadn't realised how dark it was and with the dark colour of the leaves and flowers I really needed to "open things up" but since I did not want a shallow depth of field I needed to play with the shutter speed rather than the aperture.

ISO 100 f/8 1/80 sec Focal length 14mm (14 - 45m lens)

The second picture was taken using the same settings and was also taken from the veranda looking across at the tree

ISO 100 f/8 1/80 focal length 45mm (14 - 45mm lens)

Finally I made my way outside to get a little closer before roaming around the garden and realising that I had not done any weeding for three weeks! Oops! What a jungle!

ISO 100 f/5 1/60 focal length 18mm

The flowers are short lived and make a carpet of colour under the tree - and every time I take the car out of the garage I manage to get at least four flowers stuck on the windscreen!

I love colour in my garden.

AJ