Saturday, October 31, 2009

I Will Love You - Fisher - Music



I Will Love You, by Fisher (Married couple, Kathy Fisher and Ron Wasserman)
Beautiful song.
Another Dawson's Creek (DC note below) song, Episode 414, "A Winter's Tale" (DVD only).

I guess the song was extremely popular on the Net at one time, but I didn't know about it.
See Time article.
(Dated 27 Mar 00)

The main reason why I decided to blog about it is because a FREE download of the song and a pdf of the sheet music with guitar chords is at the artist's website, fishertheband.com.
There are more free songs to download at their website.
Now, that was a nice surprise.
Generous, giving from a place of abundance.

I also liked the free song, "You" (sheet music for that too).

Follow link to MySpace and listen to more songs. I liked "Too Late."
All sad slow songs.
Nice voice.

Photo from google images.

NOTE on DC Epi 414:
It's the song that played near the end when Joey and Pacey have sex on the senior ski trip.
The DVD version plays the song "I Will Love You" by Fisher.
When the episode originally aired on TV, the song played was "Takes My Breath Away" by Tuck & Patti.

Self-Portrait Art



Wow. This is the most fabulous self-portrait I've ever seen.
Watercolor.
Almost inspires me to try that medium again.
Almost. lol

via
A View In Your Mirror a self-portrait blog.

Artist's Blog
(Larger image and poem there.)

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Pete Yorn - Just Another Girl - Music



I was digging around in Dawson's Creek music and found this really nice video of Pete Yorn singing Just Another Girl on KFOG Radio. Recorded 14 Apr 09.
Very nice/good version of the song.
Also entitled "Just Another" (no "Girl").

At YouTube
OR
Google It
Google2 (Different version of the song.)

My records show the song played on the following episodes of Dawson's Creek:
#405 "A Family Way"
#618 "Love Bites"
(NOTE: The song was replaced on the DVD versions of the show.)
epguide



Yorn (b. 27 Jul 74) and Scarlet Johansson (b. 24 Nov 84)
teamed up and made an album together.
Can find some nice big photos of the two googling images.



Yorn is good looking.
They make a nice looking couple.
Only Scarlet is married to someone else.
She married Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds (b. 23 Oct 76) on 27 Sep 08. Reynolds had been engaged to Alanis Morissette earlier.

Dates/info from wiki.

Scarlett was in a recent issue of Glamour Magazine.
Article Title: Scarlett Johansson’s in Love! (but not with this guy)

"Just Another Girl" LYRICS:
You and I,
were two of a kind,
I hate to say it but you'll never relate,
what makes you tick?
It makes me smile.
You said that I should get away from it all,
and bury my head in the sand if I want to,
I think you
should thank me now.
You were lying wide awake in the garden,
trying to get over your stardom,
and I could never see you depart us
and you're my baby,
You're just another girl...

Friday, October 09, 2009

Autumn Maples



We're having an odd autumn this year. First it got windy so the few leaves that had changed color blew away. Then in addition to the wind, it got overcast and rainy. And it's been pretty much like that for the last two or three weeks, which should have been peak autumn season here. I think it froze in spots as well, cuz the trees look a little sickly in some places. The leaves are shriveled and dark, like they are going to turn an ugly black brown instead of the usual pretty golds, reds, etc. Then, another weird thing is a lot of the trees haven't even turned color yet or still have green leaves. Today it's like 30 degrees, blustery, with a light dusting of snow on the ground. I think that might be a record cold temp set today.



About the only thing with pretty autumn colors around here are the maples. So I took some pics of those yesterday.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

Over The Fence

Another Autumn pic from my 2007 photography archives.

Autumn Trees



I like this picture.
Don't know why I never posted it.
From my 2007 photography archives.
Just bumped up the colors with a Soft Light Layer.

Another Photo From The Archives

Here's another photo from my 2007 archives that I tweaked.

Before:


After:


HowTo:
Two Screen layers to lighten, clarify 6, and radial blur.
Done in Paint Shop Pro 9.

Color Masking A Photo

I'm digging around in my photography archives for possible photos to play around with.
Here's one I thought might be good for color masking.



I suppose there's a dozen different ways to do this.
I did it with masking and layering.

I greyscaled a copy, increased colors, copy/paste as layer on top of original color photo.
And then created a mask and used the airbrush to "paint" back in the color where I wanted it.
I like masking with an airbrush because it's easy to "undo" if I don't like it.
I didn't know where to stop with the coloring!
I have no idea what kind of plant this is.
There were these teensy "hearts" deep within this big mass of trees/bushes on a nature walk.
Zoomed in with my S3 Canon and got this shot (cropped).

I've blogged about the airbrush masking stuff before, here.

Consciousness as Force Field

I was googling "consciousness as force field" and found this article.
Good/interesting read.

Consciousness as an Active Force
Amy L. Lansky, PhD
Revised November 1997.
"Consciousness is an active force that we can exert upon the universe, not merely a passive perception or awareness of that universe."

"Consciousness is an active force or mechanism that can, among other things, control or cause change in the human energy field, as well as, potentially, the universal field."

"Perhaps homeopathy is actually a quantum or even a higher-dimensional form of medicine."

Note: Contrast with Wilber philosophy, link.

VR Panoramas

I was googling images and ended up at zmetro.com.
Jim Zellmer (Virtual Properties)

I liked his nature photos.
And
Wow! Those VR Panoramas are really nice!



Direct links below:

One
Jepson Center for the Arts Savannah, Georgia
April 26, 2009

Two
The Statue of Liberty on Lake Mendota, Madison, WI
March 2, 2009

Three
Sunrise Siesta Key, Florida
August 11, 2008
(My fav.)


Four
Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton Lakes National Park, Canada
July 22, 2008

Five
Yellowstone's Old Faithful at Sunrise
July 22, 2008

Six
New River Gorge Bridge, Fayetteville, WV USA
August 21, 2005

Morgue File

I was visiting the morguefile.com free stock photography place.
There are some nice "naturey" pics there.

Links, examples, follow.

DSCN1214_g.JPG
I edited the bottom part of the photo using Clone Brush and Lighten/Darken Brush in Paint Shop Pro 9.


DSCN1210.JPG
I cloned out the stuff in the bottom right side of the photo.


DSC04076.JPG
I added a Hard Light Layer is all.


100_2128.JPG
No editing, just resized and added the text.


IMG_3376_m.JPG
No editing, just resized and added text.


John Muir Quotes
The mountains are calling and I must go.
The power of imagination makes us infinite.
But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.
How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!
In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.
John Muir at Wiki.

More
Nature Quotes

UPDATE:
Sources/References for quotes here.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Smudging Gradient Lines

I can view Word Perfect graphics (*.wpg) within Paint Shop Pro 9 Browser, and when I open one, PSP9 imports it as a Meta Picture Import with multiple polygon vector layers which can be turned on/off and edited.
Interesting to fiddle with sometimes.
(Photoshop, GIMP, IrfanView all failed at viewing and/or opening *.wpg format graphics.)

For example, here's the default import result, merged/resized for blog.


After my tweaks:


What I did:
1. I turned off the layer with that white blotch at the bottom right.
2. Applied Edge Preserving Smooth at 9. Just enough to smooth any jaggies, but not smooth the tree too much.
3. Finished smoothing the "gradient" lines with the smudge brush, starting with these settings and changing the Opacity and Brush Size as needed.



The smudge brush worked pretty good in this case.
In the past, when I wanted to smooth a gradient, I'd add a very small amount of noise and/or blur and that seemed to do the trick. But in this case, I needed something a little stronger. (The "gradients" were really merged polygon layers.) Gotta be careful and not smudge too much, but can easily undo.

4. Added Borders 10 and 2 wide.