Just to my Left, Still Life in a Glass

This series of photographs began with a glance to my left as I was sitting at my desk working. I had thrown some very short nasturtiums from the garden into a short drinking glass—a nice, blue crystal glass, but a drinking glass nonetheless. Small air bubbles were forming in the water, the grain of the antique table it's resting on added to the color and texture, One of the blossoms was submerged and was forming bubbles around it, too. I took the camera and placed it right on the table with the lens at varying distances, sometimes right up to the glass. The camera was resting on the solid surface so it could be a slower exposure. I love the way every part of these images turned out, from the blurred areas to the most sharp. Bubbles became crystal pearls. I could see these enlarged and printed out as is. The impromptu arrangement, from above, is here, and all photos are clickable to enlarge. They look best big, lol!

Nasturtiums, Water-filled Blue Drinking Glass:

Emphasizing Super-Saturated Pixels

Instead of trying to ignore the pixels in a low-resolution digital image from an aging camera, I've just gone with them, embracing them as the reality of the situation. I've saturated the colors and sharpened the pixelation a bit. Above, an orange zinnia in the garden.

Fresh and aging copper sunflowers in the west side of the vegetable garden.

An extreme closeup of the fly in photo posted above this one.

Pink zinnia.

 

The almost Spirograph-like center of the newest, and last, sunflower to bloom. You just can't take a photograph of them without bees or butterflies feasting on their nectar!

 

A honeybee unfazed by my presence. He's actually pulling out seeds as gathers nectar.

 

Yesterday's haul—A medium-sized white tomato, a "normal" red tomato, plum and yellow cherry tomatoes. I made a great yellow sauce from these tomatoes—the red sort of faded and the yellow stayed strong. I didn't add anything but fresh basil, salt and pepper, and the finished sauce was as sweet as honey. I froze it for one of those sad and cold winter days, lol.

Digital Musing: '68 Mustang CS Rear Fender

Click to enlarge. Digital manipulations of an image of the passenger side rear fender of a limited edition 1968 Mustang California Special, photograph taken 1980 at a local car show. Superimposed, is a painting of mine, Checkerberry Memories, 2007. Just playing around for an hour in Photoshop on a very chilly and rainy day.

A Night on the Town, Tokyo, 1954

Two Drinks Each—Colorized detail of a photograph taken of my parents in a Tokyo nightclub in 1954. My dad was stationed in Japan in the early 1950s before being transferred to Germany where I was born in 1957. The entire photograph is great, see below, but this detail says a lot. Both of my parents are drinking what they always drank in later life, too, daiquiris for my mom and rum-and-cokes for my dad. I still have the tie he's wearing, so those colors are correct, but I guessed on the rest of the objects.

I was also able to identify my mother's Mikimoto pearl engagement ring, which I have in its original box. Pearls were definitely my mother's choice in jewelry all her life, be they necklaces, rings or brooches. I also recognize the Lucky Strikes cigarettes, their choice back then. I'm just surprised they're not housed in any of my parents many, many decorative cigarette cases. In fact, one of the more interesting "objets" in my collection is an unopened box of Lucky Strikes from the late 1940s, in a beautiful case from the Ivory Mart in New Delhi, India.

Original photo. My parents are on the left, next to a good friend of theirs, also in the Army. I'm guessing that this picture was taken by one of those classic nightclub photographers of that period.

FloralColour on a Dreary December Day

I have probably posted these Photoshopped floral images before, but it's a dull, dreary, December day, and I wanted to see some color. The photos I've been taking lately are dull and dreary, too. I think it's time to brighten up the joint a bit. These images are digital "quilts" made from flowers I've grown or have been given, art pieces I've created, and fabrics and homemade afghans I've scanned.  Enjoy, even if it's for the second time!

Bonus Photo

This is the "final" photoshop digital quilt, created by combining the individual images created above. I've done several pieces like this and used pieces of them in my physical hang-on-a-wall art pieces.

Today's Abstraction

The sky reflected in a shallow pond, burnished autumn leaves dropping and floating and marsh grasses weaving and swirling in the water... all contribute to this abstract scene. Seen from the boardwalk shortcut I take into the middle of town everyday. Box turtles galore live here, and it's a rare day when careless debris and environmental toss-aways aren't littering this bit of beauty. I'm amazed that people can just toss their Starbuck's coffee cups, CVS paper bags, and other stuff into this little world. Last year, there was even a metal shopping cart tossed in here for a few weeks. 

Playing Around with Vintage Items—July 2011

Pretty as a picture. My vintage, plaid-painted, Kennedy porch rocker, and three-year old pink geranium, wintered-over in the attic. Front porch, July 2011. Click to enlarge. This might be a good photo for a book cover. The natural, shaded area at the top is a great place for white type to overlay the Salmon clapboards. The floor is a great place for an author line. I could also see it as outside Miss Kitty's home in Dodge City, of Gunsmoke fame, with its Wild West wooden sidewalks and porches, lol.

And Now a Musical Interlude. Where is our Champagne Lady?

Not exactly a video, lol, but a nice recording of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #1. I love all six of these works, and I've stood under Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, pictured below. Photo via Google Images, from a German travel site, watermark/website on image.

Gotta Move Those Old-Stock Tea Roses

Digital manipulation of the old-stock Tea Rose on the property. It's on the edge of the mown part of the lawn, the driveway and the woods. Every year I've been here I've told myself to dig it out of it's terribly crowded low-light home, and transplant it to a move favorable spot. Every year, something else needs my attention more until I forget. This is the year I'm finally going to move it. As soon as it stops flowering! I think I'll move it behind the granite bench in the backyard. It will get more sun and air. Each flower is no more than an inch wide, but they cluster in groups. I really prefer old-fashioned, old-stock flowers and plants whenever, and wherever, I can find them. I think they're healthier, stronger of "constitution," and fend off preying insects better.

 

Typical clusters of this old-fashioned rose.

The orange day lilies and lavender hostas look really nice together this weekend. I'm still hoping the hybrid day lilies and my Tiger lilies bloom. They're becoming the nightly salad bar for the local deer.

The wider view of the "tree garden." I spent two afternoons this week weeding and thinning out the perennials that have already bloomed. It's a bit more textural now. This photo looks nice enlarged, lol!

This Hydrangea has been in its location for two years now. It has 9-10 flowers forming on it. I think I only had three last year. They start out a pale green, almost exactly like an Annabel variety. Then they brighten to a nice, clean white. Then they begin to turn blue, lavender and pink, and will end this fall a deep burgundy with greenish accents. The three blooms above show three stages of coloration.

A Few More California Musings, 1983

I wasn't the only one in my group of friends that collected Wishnik Trolls. These were Andy's.

Andy had a friend that lived in the Hollywood Hills on Cielo Drive. If that name is familiar to you, that's the street Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered on in 1969. And yes, his friend lived in the same house. I visited it a couple of times with Andy. I believe it has since been torn down.

An ornamental grass somewhere in Los Angeles.

Downtown Los Angeles in the background, in those halcyon, smog-filled days of the early 1980s. I hear it's much, much less smoggy these days. I'm pretty sure this photo was taken from Griffith Park in Silver Lake.

Southern California landscape.

California Musings: 1983 Trip, Part 1

Santa Monica or Venice? Southern Californica shore scene, above, wherever I shot it, lol—Digital manipulations of the last time I was in California, 1983. I was visiting my late best friend, Andy, in West Hollywood. We rented a Corolla and drove up to San Francisco to visit our friend, Linda. I lived  in WeHo after college and it was great to go back and see that part of the country again. I ran into so many old friends, it was almost as if I never left. I don't have any notes from these photos, so they will be identified in a general way. All photos clickable to enlarge, as always.

Santa Monica—One of my favorite Ferraris of all time, the 308GT4 by Bertone. Seen alone in a photograph, the car's size isn't apparent. When viewed looking at a very small car like the VW Karmann-Ghia, above, the Ferrari's true size is obvious—it's lower and shorter than the K-G, petit really. Its angular Bertone lines are shown perfectly here. You've got to love any scene with not one, but two Karmann-Ghia convertibles and a Ferrari!

West Hollywood—"Tallahassee," named for one of the towns where my best bud Andy's college was located. His best friend was a girl named Toby. Toby and I went to Vassar together, and I drove out to LA with her after we graduated, where I became lifelong friends with her Los Angeles roommate, Andy, until the day he died. Well, still. Toby, not so much for these past thirty years.

Hollywood—Water lilies. Always photographing flowers, from the time I could hold a camera. All of these photos were originally black-and-white, and I colorized them in Photoshop CS3.

West Hollywood—Andy, John and Tony, brunch with cocktails of course.

Santa Barbera—A decorative chimney tower and flowering tree.