Month: June 2021

365 ~ June 20th ~ 26th

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So here we go with another sodding selfie week, with an overall theme of ‘What I Love’. Sigh. I don’t love selfie week. Not too many AFACs (airy fairy abstract concepts) this week, at least none that have thwarted me. Yet.

Day 171 ~ Determined. ~ Today’s prompt word is “determined.” I absolutely love to hike in nature. It’s funny, as I have gotten older, I have gotten more determined to try things out of my comfort zone. Ten years ago, I wouldn’t be doing some of the daring (to me) things that I do now. If you had told me then that I would be climbing over boulders and using ladders in some of our hikes, I would have laughed at you.Determination is mind over matter. Once you get it in your head, and have the confidence that you can do it, you are more likely to succeed at it. What is something that you are, or were, determined to do and you did it?

Straight in with an AFAC! Just blerkety blerk. 🥴 I am not really “determined” to do anything other than get through sodding selfie week, and get through work days. No hiking up boulders with ladders in Gateshead. But I came up with this instead. In the past couple of weeks Lord Vincent has been bringing presents home. The tally so far is 3 bluetits and a sparrow. He hides under a bush under the Happy Eater tree and somehow manages to catch them. I’m so surprised as bluetits are very speedy and wary little birds, and I am not happy about it at all. I got a bell for his collar, but that hasn’t done the trick. So I sent off or 2 extra loud bells to add to his collar, and Phil has cut away the branches where he was hiding, so hopefully that will suffice. Lord Vincent is determined to murder birdies, I am determined to stop him! But I do love him!

determined

Day 172 ~ wave. ~ What does wave mean to you?  The crashing waters at the ocean’s edge?  Flowing hair?  A flag blowing in the breeze? The wave I most love these days is the one that comes from this little hand each time I get out of the car at his house and get back in to leave at the end of the visit. Today, turn your camera toward a wave that you love.

I decided to take ‘wave’ as in the sea, and in the evening took myself off to Long Beach at South Shields, and got my legs wet trying to photograph myself in a wave.

wave

Day 173 ~ nourishment. ~ You might think, what has this photo to with nourishment?  Well, I thought I would go to the source, I walk the fields at least once a week and with the sun shining on the crops it does make for some great photos and really makes me happy! This is a flax field, blue flowers for as far as you can see…well, to the Waterloo Lion in the distance!  Flax is used as a food and fibre. What is nourishing you today?

Well I was at work today and nourishment is a quick chew on a chicken saté stick in between dances. I bought a salad for dinner, but I checked IG and quite a few people had chosen salads for their picture. Have to say salad as artwork is a thing, but I don’t like doing the same as other people so I figured I would nourish my face instead and used a clay facemask, the cucumber came in handy though. There is no way I would ever have posted a picture of myself thusly in my younger (and arguably prettier) years, I guess I got too old to give a rats arse about what anyone thinks of my radiant beautiousness these days. 🤣

nourishment

Day 174 ~ Park. ~ What a lovely prompt today!  Take a photograph of yourself in the park!  It is “Where I Stand” day so try and include your feet.  What a perfect excuse to get outside and head to the park.  Tell us about your park and why it is special to you and why you chose to stand there and why you love it.  Show us what you love to do in the park. In this picture I am standing on a very old wooden one way bridge spanning the Thompson River.  I love the slow moving waters of the Thompson and its greenish hues.  It fills me with a sense of peace and therefore I visit it quite often. 

A nice and specific prompt from Mrs. Cocktail~dress, but there really isn’t a park in walking distance from me. However there is a green space over the road from us with a mowed field one end and marshland at the other, with a little oak tree stuck in the middle. I had thought and then unthought, about climbing the tree, but instead decided I’d fly with an umbrella for a bit of fun.

park

Day 175 ~ 6 O’clock. ~ What I love at 6 o’clock in the morning is coffee! Instead of showing you my sleepy face, I decided to share a still life with coffee being poured by my hand in the photo. There are so many elements in this photo that I love…the wooden tool box was a recent find at a thrift store, the teapot and cup set were gifts from friends and the shutters that I painted purchased at a consignment shop. Then the textures – burlap and dried flowers. So what does 6 o’clock look like in your part of the world? Are you making breakfast or dinner, out buying props like a vintage clock or setting up a still life scene? Don’t forget to let us see you sharing what you love!

6 O’clock is cooking time here at Fraggle Towers, and for tonight I did a fried rice, which was very yummy.

6 O’clock

Day 176 ~ Zipper. ~ Picture You week doesn’t mean you have to share all of yourself.  Sometimes it’s nice to creatively crop just enough to show a part of you that still conveys what you are sharing in a great and personal way.  I didn’t think it was necessary for you to see my face today as I am showcasing my favorite jacket.  Think of how you can creatively crop yourself in today’s photo while adding a zipper from something you love.  

Here are my great and personal favourite boots, with zippers. Creatively cropped too!

zipper

Day 177 ~ Affirmation. ~ For the last two years I’ve been on a journey to improve my health.  I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life and knew that I had to lose some weight and get more active if I wanted to enjoy my retirement to it’s fullest.  I’m so happy to say that I’m down 120 lbs. During this time, I have never felt better.  It hasn’t been easy, but the effort has been oh so worth it!  I have this saying on the mirror in my bathroom as a reminder every day.  It helps to keep me going and reminds me of why I’m doing this. Do you have a saying or a mantra that you find affirming?  What or who in your life provides you with the support and affirmation you need to live life to it’s fullest?  Being kind to ourselves is not always easy but you know what, you deserve it!  You’re awesome!

And it was going so well, sigh. I’d been thinking about this one all week as it’s the mother of all AFAC’s so far. And came up with nothing, niente, nada. I don’t do ‘affirmations’, so I googled ‘affirmations for life’ and groaned my way through airy fairy clap trap. I was on the verge of shooting the cats, but then I realised, there’s a cool saying I saw on the wall of a ladies loo, though that should be ‘bathroom ‘ as I was in a rest stop on Route 90 on the way to Columbus Ohio at the time. And it’s rained solid for two days here.

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain”.

affirmation.

So all in all this has been a better sodding selfie week than usual, it’s even been nearly fun a couple of times! Also Vincent hasn’t caught anymore birds. Also I was inspired to do a Haiku again!

Today the rains came ,
people are staying inside.
At last they’ve shut up.

Stay tooned for next weeks adventures with ‘details’.

365 ~ June 13th ~ 19th

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This week was ‘isolate the subject’ week, and hasn’t been too onerous, although there has been a couple of AFAC’s to deal with. (to anyone new an AFAC is an airy fairy abstract concept!) Let’s begin!

Day 164 ~ liquid. ~ I love capturing movement in water. I find it to be very challenging and I’ll take numerous photos just to get the one I want!  For this photo, I tried something I saw on Facebook.  I filled up a water balloon and put a pair of sunglasses on the balloon so that it looked like a face.  I used a pushpin attached to the end of a stick to burst the balloon with the hopes of capturing the burst with the sunglasses in tact and before the water dispersed.  It’s a lot of fun (but messy)! Have fun playing with liquid today, even if it’s just a photo of your morning coffee!

TBH she wasn’t that successful if the example picture she used is anything to go by, but kudos for trying. I don’t have water balloons and had my own idea for this anyway. (Was thinking of you April! 🤣 ).

liquid

Day 165 ~ magnificent. We are learning how to isolate our subjects this week to make them stand out. There are many ways to do this: composition, colors, depth of field. Today is Macro Monday so we are going to really get in close to the details. In my subject photograph, the bee is highlighted by the depth of field I used and the color of the flower as a contrasting pop. I was using my 100mm macro lens and I had an f-stop of 4. If you want to really isolate your subject using depth of field, the wider the aperture the better. I stayed with f4 so that the flower would remain in focus. Excited to see what you find today!

Here we go with our first AFAC. Isolate a magnificent subject or isolate it magnificently? Who knows? A bee on a flower wasn’t an option, too cold this day. It was also a really full on not that good a work day so I wasn’t in a great place when I got home. The only thing of magnificence I could think of was Phil’s last model he built and painted, so I had a word with him and we set up a shot so I could isolate one of the figures stood on it, he’s particularly pleased with the uniform he did on this chap. It’s 1/35th scale which means he’s about 5cm tall.

magnificent

Day 166 ~ Up. ~ Do you remember how much fun you used to have as a kid looking up at the clouds and finding butterflies and fish and boats and dragons?  As adults, we all might benefit from taking a few moments to look up and use our imagination to see what is happening up there in the clouds.  You never know what might be smiling down on you! Today, give yourself the gift of a few moments to sit outside with your eyes to the sky.  Photograph the magic you find in the clouds.

Well not exactly an AFAC as it’s a pretty specific prompt, but unless you are lucky enough to have a clear blue sky with one cloud in it, that’s not an easy isolation task! Lots of clouds but nothing making a picture that I could find though I’m usually pretty good at that. So I kind of ignored the isolate bit and just went for the clouds. We’ve been having some cool sunsets this week so I waited until 9.45pm to do the shot in the hope of another one. It wasn’t so spectacular (of course 🙄 ) as the previous two, but it scrubbed up OK in post. As an added bonus there’s a blackbird tweeting on top of the house, he looked pretty isolated. Job done!

up

Day 167 ~ Reinforce. ~ A good way to isolate the subject is to use a wide aperture, (a low f-number), and by making sure that the focus is on the subject that you want to stand out.  By doing this, you will make both the background and the foreground blurred. I reinforce this in my composition by using the rules of thirds.  It is also important to make sure that your horizon is straight.  You can do this when editing, by cropping and rotating the image slightly. The red against the green helps to make the subject pop. What can you do to reinforce your subject today?

Making sure your horizon is straight in camera when you take a picture is less time consuming! Wonky horizons really annoy me. It’s careless and lazy photography and quite amateur IMHO. Not that I’ve been very H during this 365. 🤣 Anyway ‘reinforce’ annoyed me initially, but I got what she meant so let her off. Had to do this after another pants day at work too. I chose a buttercup that had escaped Phil’s mowing of the lawn, and ‘reinforced’ it as described in the prompt, rule of 1/3rds, wide aperture, but did a moody B&W on it in post, as the yellow/green combo didn’t really do it for me.

reinforce

Day 168 ~ Loud. ~ Today we are isolating the subject and using the word loud.   As a Hard of Hearing person, the two words ‘isolation’ and ‘loud’ resonate “loud and clear for me’.  As a HOH I often feel a sense of isolation and ‘loud noise’ is simply not an issue for me. For my sample photo,  I focused on and isolated my hearing aids.  By doing this, I put myself in blur in order to represent the fuzziness and isolation I feel due to my loss of hearing. There is good noise and bad noise.  Loud noise pollution occurs when unwanted sounds enter the environment.   Loud noise can also be beneficial.  Who doesn’t like a loud belly laugh, the sounds of children playing, birds singing, music playing, and waves crashing?  Take a picture today that represents ‘LOUD’ to you and remember to isolate the subject.  Loud doesn’t have to be sound!  You may prefer to represent loudness by photographing something that is a bright colour or garish subject!

This one from my fave prompt lady, who wasn’t wearing one of her cocktail dress in her picture sadly. Anyway, good to see she has some decent hearing instruments. Loud is a no brainer for me, Phil loves to listen to his music at a volume that is too much for me (unless I’ve had a fair amount of wine) so when he’s playing it I wear my headphones and listen to youtube tutorials or some such up in my little work room.

loud

Day 169 ~ Strength. ~ One of the simplest ways to isolate your subject is to remove the clutter from your image. This allows the viewer to know exactly where to focus their attention. You can do this by zooming in or using a tighter crop in post-processing.Try using this technique today to highlight something that symbolizes strength. As with the prompt photo, by cropping in close the only focus is on the caterpillar. Seeing him hanging precariously on the end of a stalk snacking away shows the strength in those little legs. With the word strength, you could go literal and show the use of brute strength or figurative with something that helps gives you strength throughout your day.

Another AFAC, though not a really annoying one. I chose a wildflower, as my little ‘weed patch’ as Phil calls it is up and running this year after a complete disaster with bee bombs the year before. I planted some wildflower seeds at the beginning of April, and there’s loads of wildflowers coming up, though mostly Lady Phacelia at the moment. “Wildflowers are, without exaggeration, the unsung heroes of the planet; they are a powerful force that truly sustains a complex web of interdependent creatures. Without wildflowers our planet would not only be a sadder place, but life as we know it would not exist.” I read that on motherearthnews.com. I forgot about removing the clutter from my image, there’s a fair amount, but I think I isolated the Lady quite well anyway. Also today in the garden I was inspired to do another Haiku! Re: European Footy match.

Scotland and England ,
rowdy, drunk boys singing loud.
I wish they’d shut up.

I’m winning at Haiku! 🤣

strength

Day 170 ~ Morning. ~ This adorable giraffe is lovingly nicknamed “Sugar Lips” and resides at one of my dear friend’s houses.  Sugar Lips is a tall girl riding a bike with a basket in the back to hold a plant.  Isn’t she sweet??  I was lucky to have her company when I recently visited my friend for a scrapbooking weekend.  The morning sunshine poured in on her and welcoming the day for both of us in such a warm way.  Today, share with us what makes your morning warm.  Maybe it’s a pair of cozy slippers, or a cup of coffee, or tea.  Remember to isolate your subject! 

Hmm. The picture of the giraffe sculpture thingy is about as adorable as a Pit Bull in fight mode, but each to their own I guess. Had to laugh at this one, here at Fraggle Towers we don’t really do mornings at the weekend but I tried. Got up, fed the cats, had breakfast à la Chef Phil, washed the car and then found it was just passed noon and I’d missed it. Doesn’t matter, I shot a ‘morning’ coffee with my book and pretended I’d done that earlier. 🤣

morning. sort of. well not really.

And that’s a wrap for this week. I quite enjoyed it, my fave shot is the nail polish, that took a while to get right (and a few bottles of polish!) and it came out well I think. And so we come to yet another sodding selfie week. Sigh. I’ve had a look at the prompts for the week, and I’m not fired up at all, I’m mostly annoyed. 🤣 Stay tooned!

85 – Hands *

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Another collaboration with Frank.. this time, thoughts on hands.

Beach Walk Reflections: Thoughts from thinking while walking

Special thanks to Fraggle for providing the photos. Fraggle is in the UK and I encourage readers to visit her photography blogFraggle: Rocking a camera across the universe. Please tell her I sent you and feel free to comment on her images here. All images are copyrighted by Fraggle and Fragglerocking Photo Blog.

On a personal note, life has gotten in the way of me visiting others the past two weeks. Thank you for your loyalty and patience. My apologies because I like to reciprocate. Maybe this is a sign I need a blog break. Hmmmmm …..

Click the video above for 2 minutes of background waves while reading.

I like to walk on the beach. It is good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on the feet.

Some of the people I pass are holding something in their hands: a phone, shoes, jacket, bottle…

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365~June 6th ~ 12th

Posted in 365, B&W, cat, Fuji, FujiX-T2, photography, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , 52 Comments

We are in another ‘colour’ week, although black & white are not so much colours in my mind, but no matter, I like doing B&W stuff. I was quite looking forward to it but it turned out to have an annoyance factor of at least 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. So I’m not all that happy with some of my shots, but, every day’s a school day so onwards ever onwards.

Day 157 ~ Quality. ~ The definition of quality is “the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.” Or, “a distinctive attribute or characteristic possessed by someone or something.” Today, I strongly encourage you to use the second idea of just focusing on a distinctive attribute or characteristic possessed by your subject. This prompt is not a requirement to post your best quality image.  I challenge you to really think about what quality says to you today. 

Straight in with an AFAC (airy fairy abstract concept) prompt so that wasn’t the best start for me. I’d rather have done the first definition, plenty of quality gear in our gaff, like extra-virgin olive oil, or lindt chocolates, but no, she wanted the quality of a subject. I just could not get my head around it so instead focussed on ‘quality time’ which is kind of AFAC, so this is me and Phil having quality time. 🙄

Day 158 ~ Roadside. ~ One of the things I really like about a 365 project is that it gets me out exploring the beautiful city of Ottawa that I’ve called home for the last 4 years.  I’ve also found myself on countless roadtrips exploring the surrounding countryside, villages, and towns, as well.  It’s been an awesome way for me to learn more about my new home. When I go out exploring, I’m often surprised by what I find along the roadside.  We were out touring around downtown recently and I saw the unique bike structure near the parliament buildings.  It was being used for advertising.  I had to grab a photo of it as I thought it was kind of cool.  When processing, I converted it to black and white to fit in with this week’s theme. Show us what crazy, unique, or interesting things you find on the roadside as you go about your travels today.

Sigh. Well at least it was specific, but no-one round here leaves crazy, cool interesting things on the roadside, though there are some dodgy looking motors on the wrong side of the tracks area of Wardley. I remembered Wardley has one of the announcement-of-where-you-are stones places tend to have up here, so I walked up to photograph that instead. In days of yore Wardley was a mining village, so it’s stone has a carved miner’s lamp decoration, though the lamp portrayed looks like a Marsault lamp invented by Jean Marsaut, a French mining engineer. Wouldn’t have been used here in the North East as they used a Geordie lamp- invented by George Stephenson. Oh well.

Day 159 ~ Plenty. ~ Have you noticed that converting a photo to B&W can really make the details pop? Past their prime flowers are a favorite subject for me to photograph. Part of the charm is the fading color… but, when you convert to B&W your eye really goes to the tiniest of details. This faded daisy has plenty of delightful details. Each individual petal has a charm of its own. The withering center with delicate puff is spectacular. Find a subject today that represents plenty and convert it to B&W. It can have a lot of detail, represent a feeling of plenty, or any other way the word speaks to you.

Another AFAC although you’d think there were plenty of ‘plenties’ in the world. Another thing that annoys me is having too much to choose from, and it’s hard to make up my mind. I have plenty of clothes/flowers/boots/CD’s etc etc etc, but in the end I went with a dandelion. Plenty of seeds, I thought, though Connie tells me each seed represents a dream, so plenty of those too.

Day 160 ~ Paper. ~ White can be a difficult color to photograph.  Doing so requires careful attention to the “temperature” of your image by adjusting the white balance setting.  Today is a good day to play with adjusting your white balance manually.  I generally have my WB set to 5000K, a good right in the middle setting.  To determine the white balance setting in a particular image, photograph something in your scene that is white.  Since today’s prompt is paper, you can also place a white piece of paper in the scene for a test shot.  You want that piece of paper to be a true white in your photo.  Adjust your white balance either up or down to achieve the white you want.  Temperature can be edited in post-processing, but it sure is nice to get it as close as possble in camera!  To understand light color and Kelvin, take a trip to the lightbulb aisle at your local home improvement store.  That is the quickest way to see what is meant by the various numbers! See what you can do with shooting a black and white image in color.

Well today was a work day and this afternoon a dental appointment so I didn’t have time to fanny on. Ergo I ignored most of that, the prompt was Paper, not white paper and I certainly was not going to traipse off to B&Q’s lighting section, still not sure how that would help matters at all. I used my origami skill set instead.

Day 161 ~ Capable. ~ Capable – having the ability, fitness, or quality necessary to do or achieve a specified thing. I think I am capable, but I am move (I think she means ‘more’ not ‘move’) capable with my husband by my side;  together we make a good team.  We have been together for 42 years, have four grown children, and have weathered life together as you can see by the wrinkles. How do you manage to be capable?  Remember it is black and white week!

Seriously??? Can you hear me groaning as I am just thinking about how much this one annoyed me. This is the Mother of all AFACs. How do I manage to be capable of what?? You can’t just be capable without an of something attached. Pfft. If I list all the things that a human being is capable of, and me in particular, we will be here until forever. Well you won’t no doubt, you’ll step aside from the vehicle and move on the next blog. I had smoke coming out of my facial orifices for this one. Phil couldn’t help either as he knows I’m multi-capable and so is he. I checked out other peoples offerings on instagram, not much inspiration, an out of focus cat, someone’s daughter (badly composed) a chopped down tree stump. Sigh. Anyway I got on with the laundry whilst racking my brain (no it DOESN’T have a W in front of it in real life grammar) and hung out some clothes on my dryer, which promptly collapsed when one of the side supports snapped. Phil and I propped it up on garden chairs and I concluded that it’s good to be capable of improvisation in a crisis. Sorted.

Day 162 ~ Ink. ~ Ink day!  Who wants to try a new trick?  Don’t worry, “Ink in Water Photography” is very simple and fun although it can be a bit messy! Honestly, you don’t need any special equipment and this can be done with a cell phone. I took this picture using a large vase, some white foam core, a desk lamp, some ink from a fountain pen, an eye dropper, my camera, and a tripod. If this does not tickle your fancy, no problem!  Show us ink!  Pens, tattoos, books, typewriters……..Have fun!

Well thank the deity of your choice that Mrs. Cocktail Dress came up with a bonafide specific task! She is my new fave prompt giver. I’d done the old ink in water shots in the past, so decided to go with tattoos as Phil has a couple of artistic ones, but they just didn’t work in black and white, so I got out my fountain pen and did one of my calligraphy shots instead. Sorry to say my calligraphy skills are a bit ropey as I haven’t done any proper work in calligraphy for years, but it’s inspired me to get a special pen for it for future and I’ll be practicing my alphabets, so next time I need to do it I can impress you with it’s gorgeousness.

Day 163 ~ Richness. ~ I hope you have enjoyed color week! I always hate to see it end! We sure have explored Black and White photography in a variety of fun ways!  As you go through your day think about the richness your image will hold without the distraction of color. Consider highlighting patterns and textures, light and shadows, people and things.  You can shoot in color and then convert to B&W or if your camera has a B&W mode give this feature a try. It is a great way to train your eye. There is much richness in the details, so let’s show them off today! 

Another AFAC but one that I didn’t have trouble with. Winnie has great patterns and textures and I caught her sitting in a box with the light on her face and her body in shade, and she lends herself beautifully to black and white, being a grey/black/white cat. Also she enriches our lives immeasurably as does Lord Vincent, it’s my fave shot this week. Finally winning at black and white! 😃

So there ends the black and white week. Starting today we’re on another composition technique week, and this time we are ‘isolating our subjects’. I’ve had a look through the prompts, 🥴 Stay tooned!

365~ 30th May ~ 5th June

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This week we are concentrating on ‘style’ and this time minimalism. We did negative space a couple of weeks ago and they seem to be two sides of the same coin, but no matter, whatever works. A low annoyance factor this week, I’ve quite enjoyed this set of prompts.

Day 150 ~ Opposites. The minimalist style uses extreme simplicity for maximum impact. It emphasizes sparseness by using the smallest number of objects in your image. Patterns, lines, shapes, and color can be the the main focus or another way to further highlight your subject. Now is a good time to follow the Rule of Thirds.  When you place your subject on the third it will have all the space it needs to shine! So remember as you go through Minimalist week… keep it simple and only include what you need! Less is More! 

I ruminated on opposites to shoot and came up with shoes, right & left, small & large, light & dark.

Day 151 ~ Guilt~free.~ My guilty pleasure is a nice glass of wine in the evenings.  I can’t wait to see what you all have to share – and remember, less is more.  

What a grand idea I thought.

Day 152 ~ Sunshine. ~ When I was a kid, I once asked my aunt if she’d come swimming with me.  She said, “No, there’s no sun today.”  My response was, “Then, we can pretend it’s sunny.”  She said that I always looked at the positive side of life.  She’s right!  If it’s not sunny where you are today, just pretend.  Use whatever light you can find for your photo. Golfing on a sunny day is my idea of a great time.  To keep with the minimalist theme, I grabbed a photo of my golf ball on my bright pink tee.  I made sure there was very little else in the photo so that it would stand out.I hope your day is full of sunshine and if it’s not, just pretend!

Well as luck would have it we’re having some sunnier days in Old Blighty and it was lovely to sit outside and hear the blackbird singing away. Actually everybody and their dogs were having a party in their gardens so it was really noisy outside and hearing the blackbird was a bit of a struggle. My pal Mary Jo writes Haiku’s so I found myself inspired to write…

Outside the birds sing ,
people having Barbecues.
I wish they’d shut up.

Pretty good for a novice I thought 🤣 I digress, onwards with the pics!

Day 153 ~ Innovative. ~This week, we are practicing our Minimalist photography. How do you take something simple and make it innovative? I find that adding textures (both in the photographing and the editing process) makes a plain photograph more interesting. For the example photo, I draped some cheesecloth on my background to give a textural component to the backdrop. This minimalist photo of a single flower now has a lot of depth and character. Try experimenting with different backgrounds and adding simple elements to enhance your subject but not distract from it.You can also play around in post processing by adding textures in photoshop, playing with light and contrast in lightroom, and experimenting with filters in photo apps.Let’s see how you innovate your photo today by making a minimalist photo your own style. 

Yep, I got out a kimidoll and a little carnation and added bokeh and a texture, job done. Winning at Minimalism!

Day 154 ~ Prompt Free. Today is a blank canvas for which all of the other prompts have prepared you. Keep our eyes open and have fun!

The cats have been playing outside mostly so I decided I’d let them off modelling this time and I’d do a flower instead as I’ve got some lovely ones about the house at the minute. I especially like this rose which has lemon yellow leaves tipped with pink, quite unusual so I bought two of them, and surrounded them with pink carnations.

Day 155 ~ Soul. ~ Your soul is the part of you that consists of your mind, character, thoughts, and feelings. How to photograph your soul?  Well, let us just go with a part of it.  The day was a cloudy summer day and I noticed these birds sitting on the wires.  To me it looks like music lines and notes.  That speaks to my soul. If you do take a photo with lines remember to try and get them straight on the horizon or the vertical; just a little rotating in processing is all it takes to make the photo look fabulous. What is speaking to your soul today?

Well it was nice while it lasted and now back to airy fairy concept stuff, sigh. I always call a nice cup of tea medicine for the soul so that was my first thought. Music is the soul of life was my second, and my book The Soul of the Camera by David duChemin the third. I managed to combine all three for the picture, though you can’t see the music as I was playing a CD on the stereo in the shed studio.

Day 156 ~ Yarn. ~ It’s song lyric day today and the prompt is YARN. I immediately thought of Carol King and her Tapestry album from 1971 and I decided to recreate the album cover!  Fellow 365 Picture Today alumni and friend, Mary, agreed to model for me in her window seat. We couldn’t find a real cat so we improvised….Find a song about yarn, wool, string, rope, or thread and take a picture of it. Remember to include the lyrics either by adding text or writing the lyrics in your comments. 

Yarn is such a weird word I think. Here Mrs. Cocktail Dress means wool and the like, but it can also mean telling a good story, or having a good natter. I suppose a song tells a good story mostly so the two are a good combination. The song ‘SIlver Threads and Golden Needles was written by Dick Reynolds and Jack Rhodes. It was first recorded by Wanda Jackson in 1956 and has been covered by many bands and singers since, but none as great as the wonderful Linda Ronstadt.

So that’s a wrap for this week, not too bad which is a relief after sodding selfie week. Stay tooned for next time when we are doing colour week, Black and White.

for fans of Lord Vincent, he’s making a guest appearance on my other blog tomorrow 😊

81 – Passageways *

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Another collaboration with Frank, do visit and read his thoughts on the passageways of life.

Beach Walk Reflections: Thoughts from thinking while walking

Special thanks to Fraggle for providing the photos. Fraggle is in the UK and I encourage readers to visit her photography blogFraggle: Rocking a camera across the universe. Please tell her I sent you and feel free to comment on her images here. All images are copyrighted by Fraggle and Fragglerocking Photo Blog.

Click the video above for 2 minutes of background waves while reading.

I like to walk on the beach. It is good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

I’m looking at the water that seems endless. I know what I see is only a tiny fraction of this water because I only see the surface – and to think all this water, including the water below, is only a drop of the world’s water. But this water can lead anyone to many places.

Today I’m thinking about passageways –…

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