Zen Art

Going thru my fonts, I found this zen-like one called Far East Font, and happened to actually read the text file that comes with it, which explains how to use it. I thought it was pretty clever, and no, I did not know that's how you use this font.

Soooo...Remember that smart blur, unsharp mask art idea I've been blogging about? Well the art posted above is that same technique.

This is the original photo (crappy, did not like it):



I ran smart blur, unsharp mask on it, lightened it a bit, then cropped parts I thought were interesting textures.
Then I fiddled some, maybe did some minor cloning, maybe flipped, mirrored, or rotated the image so the finished image would look good with the text on the side.
Add the Far East Font (read sideways), white and black borders.
And viola, my zen art.

I like it.
I did a bunch more, but these are my favs.

NOTE: I could have added some drop shadows to the borders to give it a little depth, but I was too lazy to go back a redo it.

Music Art

Fonts:
City Lights - Little City 2000 font
Music Text - Parisian BT font (or Paris Normal)
Piano Keyboard - Music Fun font

The curves were made easily using Mesh Warp.
I created a black white red hard line gradient for background.

Inspiration: A rug

Magpie

Not very good, but best I have so far of the magpie.



enature
cornell

Warp and Blur

The below images were created from scratch using Paint Shop Pro 9.
Reminds me of photography I've seen where someone will take a picture of some pattern or texture using shallow depth of field.

I started with a pattern fill that looked like this.


And ended up with this.


Combination of Warp and Radial Blur effects.

I got the coloring and highlights by adding a bottom blue fill layer and changing the pattern layer to dodge blend mode.

In Paint Shop Pro 9 I think there are more adjustment controls with the Radial Blur than in Photoshop? In PSP9, you can adjust just about everything from type of blur, to where, to how much, etc. And you can preview it and watch your image change as you tweak the controls so it is very easy to just play with the adjustments until you get something you like. Warp works the same way.

Here's another one.
The pattern was made with the Weave Effect.
No layering with this one.
Similar warp settings.

Bleeding Love

Another music video I dug out of YouTube...


So HOT.
So much angst!
An all time top video at YouTube.

Bleeding Love, by Leona Lewis (b. 3 Apr 85) so 23 years old.

Another Whitney?

More Lewis videos at youtube.

Image:
Fast and easy.
Red Vector heart with warp brush deformation map drips applied to it.
Font: Buffy.ttf (also called Buffied.ttf)

Human, The Killers - Denser or Dancer?

Top Track at elbo.
Human, by The Killers
Not a huge favorite, but deserves some time on my mp3 player, and it's growing on me.

From wiki, Is it Dancer or Denser?

There has been much confusion and debate over a lyric in the chorus of the song. This is regarding whether or not Brandon Flowers is saying "denser" or "dancer", when posing the question "Are we human or are we denser/dancer?"

Some have said that the lyrics do make sense because "dancer" might be appealing to the "marionette" sense of the word, in which case the song is asking whether we are human and make our own independent decisions or whether we just dance in a show made by, and perhaps even made for, someone else.

On Amazon, the editorial review for the album states the song says "Are we human, or are we dancer?" and also says that Flowers said the lyrics were inspired by a disparaging comment made by Hunter S. Thompson about how America was raising a generation of dancers.[4]

(NOTE: Now Wiki says nothing about marionette, and lists IslandRecords link for the Thompson reference.

Comments from popwatch:

" 'Dancer' is poetic and I believe it refers to a lack of truth, substance, emotional depth."

"dancer is singular because it's a play on words...the word dancer describes us much better as a species than the word human. "

I googled for idioms that might be similar in meaning.

Came up with:
"Dance to someone's tune" and "song and dance."
Also "pulling the strings."

LINKS:
To find the song at youtube, Google it.
songmeaning
songfacts

What else do I have of The Killers?
Mr. Brightside
Somebody Told Me

Those Audi Commercials

I happened upon this at MeFi.

And then somehow landed at the Audi site where you can watch and then download the movies and the music. (Also at truthinengineering.com.)

Nice!

If all commercials were made this good, I could actually enjoy them, instead of getting irritated and switching the channel.

More discussion at adtunes forum.

VLC media player will play the downloaded movies (filetype *.m4v).

The Audi commercials are at YouTube also, but why would you go there when you can view and download the full screen high quality real deal at the Audi website.

High Pass Sharpen In Paint Shop Pro 9

I use Paint Shop Pro version 9 and it does not have a high pass sharpen filter.
But it is possible to do it manually.
I dug this up from an old Corel newsgroup post.

High Pass Sharpen
1. Duplicate the image layer.
2. Duplicate the duplicate layer.
3. Set the opacity of the topmost layer to 50%.
4. Gaussian Blur the layer. Start with something like a Radius of 1.00. (This is where and how you define what "high" spatial frequencies you are going to "pass".)
5. Do Negative Image on the blurred layer. (Adjust, Color Balance, Negative Image)
6. Switch off the visibility of the original image layer.
7. Merge Visible the top two layers.
8. Run Histogram Stretch on the merged result layer to magnify the fine detail. (Adjust, Brightness and Contrast, Histogram Stretch)
9. Make your original layer visible again.
10. Set the blend mode of the topmost layer to Hard Light, Soft Light or Overlay depending on how aggressive you want the effect to be and adjust the layer opacity to control the sharpening effect.

To Script this (make these steps automatic with a click of a button):
Don't record step 10 in a script, just adjust it by hand. All the recorded steps 1 to 9 can be marked Silent in the script, but make step 4 interactive.

My Notes:
On the photo I tried it on, Effects, User Defined Filter, High pass Preset was similar to the above High Pass Sharpen when blend mode was set to Hard Light in step 10. Might not always be the case for all photos, but something to try.

High Pass Sharpen is used to get a certain photography effect, called the "Dave Hill Look" discussed at flickr strobist group. Instead of the Photoshop Vivid Light, I used Paint Shop Pro Soft Light layer blend mode.

Clouds

My Latest Keepers - Photography

New Music - Xavier Rudd, Kanye West

New artists to me, and new songs I like...

Google the songs:
Xavier Rudd, Home

Kanye West, Love Lockdown

Add site:YouTube to Kanye West google search above and you'll find it at YouTube cuz it's pretty popular right now.
You can find Xavier Rudd videos at YouTube also, but I could not find the song, Home.

Or check Elbo.

Good Comments about Kanye West song:
Love Lockdown
By Wise Diva 11 Sep 08 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

What's fun to me is that I have no idea who Kanye West is! LOL It's not my usual music genre. I think he's a rapper and/or hip hop?
But I like this song, Love Lockdown.

Xavier Rudd is another unknown to me, I sure like the song, Home. Very pretty, soulful. I'm going to be looking for and listening to more of his songs.

Right Place Right Time

This is another one of those "always take your camera" moments.
Perfect timing.
This stuff looked like it was coated with glitter or jewels.
It shined and sparkled in the sun.
The leaves are kinda frosty icy wet yet not frozen.
The temperature was in the 40's.
It was fabulous looking stuff!



The plant is goldflame Spirea (Google it.) A fairly common plant around here, because it is very colorful, hearty and easy care.

Peace And Love Leaves

I don't know what kind of tree or plant this is.

The leaves remind me of that cigar tree. They are HUGE. I took a picture of this one because the veins really stood out and I loved the texture.

When I was reviewing the pics on puter, I noticed the peace sign on the leaf.



You could also make out a heart...sorta,kinda...

The Zen Trail

I don't know what this stuff is, but I thought "Zen" when I saw it.

So I called it my little Zen trail along the river.

It was difficult to get a good picture of the trail, but I thought I'd post this anyway just for a sense of the setting I was walking through as I took pictures.



Yeah, more like a jungle trail. LOL Some of the stalk tops stood talker than me.

A nice closeup of the "wheat." It was a pretty reddish/purplish color depending on how the sun hit it.



And since it was really tall stuff, it was easy to isolate and get a sky/cloud background on it.

Signs of Autumn 2008

I think I did a "signs of autumn" series last year? That's what September is like around here. We have all this color popping up. I adore autumn. Besides the colors, I love the sunlight this time of year. It's not as harsh, not as much glare as the summertime sun.

Photo Walks & Looking Up The Old Cottonwood

Looking up the old cottonwood tree.



One thing about taking my camera with me on the same walking route is I have to see differently to take fresh pictures.
A different time of day and it's a whole new world.

It's usually too early in the day and thus too dark to take a picture like this, so I got into looking up trees! Hey, I actually got BLUE skies and a decent exposure of the tree trunk!

We have really old cottonwood trees around here, and the older they get the more character they have. The trunk bark gets really thick and chunky with deep crevices and the branches are crooked and bumpy. They look like they've been thru a lot. And they have, cuz they are OLD. Oh the stories they could tell us if they could speak!

I love trees.

Eulogy

Independent Film Channel is airing the movie, Eulogy, a dark comedy.
I liked it.
Good to see Debra Winger (b. 16 May 55) again.
I liked Zooey Deschanel (b. 17 Jan 80) in this movie. The Kate Collins character fit her well this time. I did not care for her much as DG in Tin Man.

The imdb summary of Eulogy (link above) says, "Son Daniel is a secret porn actor."
I think that's incorrect. I sure never caught that in the movie. His wife, however, is another story (the video).

For anybody out there who wants to see Eulogy, TVGuide says the movie will air again on IFC:
Wed, Sep 17, 5:10 AM
Mon, Sep 22, 7:00 PM
Tue, Sep 23, 4:35 AM
(The movie is rated R, not PG13.)

A few quotes I got from imdb (link above):

Kate Collins: Could one of you *please* tell me one nice thing I can say about your dead father.
Lucy Collins: [after a long pause] He often called me Andrea for no reason.
Daniel Collins: I was Barry.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Kate Collins: [reading a letter from Ryan out loud] Did you really leave me again? After all the seasons I spent waiting, watching out the window, listening at the door, waiting for the news of your return? For the news that you realized that someone important was waiting for you. A whole lifetime I've been waiting. I can't believe you're not coming back. I can't believe I'm supposed to stop waiting. I can't believe you left me again...
[ends letter]
Kate Collins: Grandpa didn't leave because of you, it was because of you he kept coming back. I hope you all realize that.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I didn't check to see if that was an exact quote or not, but it's close. She just kinda pulled out this letter she had from Ryan and read it, I think, more out of desperation to find something to say for her grandfather's eulogy. So it was this odd mix of funny yet kinda sad/true.

LINKS:
Trailer (YouTube)

Soundtrack List

Search YouTube For Songs:
Doctor My Eyes
Papa Was a Rolling Stone

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
UPDATE posted 16 Sep 08:
I just discovered a song that goes well with the movie, Eulogy.
It's Willow Tree, by Chad VanGaalen.
It's currently a top track at elbo.
Or you can Google it.

"Willow Tree
Take my body
Put it in a boat
Light it on fire
Send it out to sea"

Eluvium

Wow, I LOVE this song.
Beautiful piano music.
Another one of those songs I can listen to over and over again.

LINKS:
Radio Ballet (YouTube) by Eluvium (Matthew Cooper)
(Piano pic from YouTube video.)

Via:
colourlovers
Color of Music: Interview With Eluvium
(The song DOES end abruptly, however, the video at this site does cut off the song at the end too.)

Yellow Warbler

enature
cornell

Goofy Photos

I'm going thru my pics and decided to post some goofy looking ones that, strangely enough, I like, cuz they are so odd.

Panning The Pigeon:


I think the pigeon pic is very pretty for some reason even though, technically, the pic didn't turn out.

Panning The Squirrel:


The Squirrel result is a combo of slow shutter speed squirrel twirls and panning rainlike background (following a moving object while taking pics of it.) I bet I couldn't do that again if I tried.

This one is called "The View from the Chain Link Fence:"


Goofy little sparrow sitting squished in the chain link fence. Now why would he want to do that? It sure didn't look very comfortable.

Flower Art

So I've been trying to get some good shots of these certain flowers and just cannot do it no matter what setting I use on my camera. Could be just bad time of day (not enough light, light too harsh).

But...
I love this cropped area of one picture.
I call it: "Meeting of the Leaves"



I also have been playing around with different artistic effects and liked the results on these cropped areas of the photos.




I used Smart Blur, Unsharp Mask, and Texture.
The artistic effect looks best at full scale, but I had to resize these above ones to fit my blog.

The idea of using Smart Blur and Unsharp Mask came from an online Photoshop tutorial.

I liked a little texture added to it so it looked more like it was painted on canvas or textured paper.

NOTE: That's how my current blog header was made. A different flower setting, though. Same place as the bees and butterfly pics I posted earlier.

Sunflower Season Again

The wild sunflowers are pretty much everywhere now. I took lots of pictures of those last year, so haven't done much with those this year. Then we have the blankets of yellow sunflower fields. They are such a cheerful yummy colorful feast to my eyes. Pictures never adequately portray the experience, though. I think the planted crop sunflowers are maturing a little late this year.

Charolais Against The Great Sky

I thought this scene looked so funny with the white cows (Charolais pronounced sharlay) dotting the field under the great mushroom cloud sky.

Wind Turbines on the Prairie

They look small in a landscape shot like that. And yeah, it was hilly, so just the tops are showing on the ones in the background.

Here's a close-up shot. They are big.


I had to get really close to them to hear them when they are spinning in the breeze. The noise didn't bother me. But I'm not so sure I'd like them dotting my landscape view at home, though.

This next one was backlit so I turned it into a sunset composite.
Just messin' around in Paint Shop Pro 9.
I added a sunset gradient layer (Color Blend Mode), a cloud pic layer (Soft Light), a moon pic layer (Luminance), and then added a few stars on a layer (Screen) with Ulead Particle Plugin.



Okay, so it was probably overkill and it doesn't look very realistic. Maybe I should have stopped at just adding the sunset gradient.
The creativity is always fun, though.

My Best Hawk Picture So Far This Year

Just driving around in the country, I always see hawks. They seldom stick around long enough for me to pull over and get a good picture of them. This guy let me take two shots and then even zoom in for another one before he flew away. I was surprised he tolerated my presence that long. Maybe he was on the hunt for something in the field and very hungry, so did not want to leave? I have some in-flight pics of him too, but they are blurry poor quality.



Not sure what kind of hawk he is. A Northern Harrier maybe?

It wasn't quite as exciting as my best hawk picture last year.
I don't think anything can beat that experience.

LINK:
Hawks of North Dakota

Clouds

John Mayer Free Fallin'

Wow. I L♥VE Mayer's version of Free Fallin'.

I've been listening to it over and over again.
I can't get enough of it.

Google it.

YouTube Direct Link
(UPDATE: Link was dead, so I changed it.)

Image Notes:
My clouds pic, duplicate Screen Layer Blend Mode to lighten/brighten, Soft Focus Effect to soften, MuRa's Filter Meister Copies for text effect.