Signs of Autumn

This was taken on the 9th of September.
The leaves are in their prime. Luscious colors.
Made my current header image out of it.

Some trees started turning color the end of August.
Unusually early for this area.
I think we had some cold mornings, maybe even a frost in some areas?
Maybe that's what did it.
Usually autumn is at its peak some time after the 21st of September.

I just adore the autumn season and hope to get lots of photos.

Night Sky Terrier

Walked out the door this morning and there he was as clear as can be.
My night sky terrier pooch.
Grab camera and tripod for a quickie pic.



10" F3.2 ISO 100
Tungsten White Balance
Manual Focus Infinity
2 second timer delay
IS Off (Image Stabilization)

Probably a Scottish Terrier cuz his legs are so short in proportion to his body.
See Scotty outline.

He's part of the orion constellation, but all I ever notice is the terrier outline.



Orion constellation image from here.
(I rotated 30 degrees left.)

Find orion in the night sky
I don't know how accurate this is, but it's fun and interesting to play along.
Try it.

Google orion images
Google terrier images
Orion at Wiki

River Log

I like this pic.
Turned out better than I thought it would.

I don't know what those orange/red thingies are, but they sure add to the photo.
Here's a closeup of them.

Sexy3

"Smoke" On The Water

My first attempt at taking photographs of fog.



Smoke on the water... at hypemachine.

From Wiki:
The "smoke on the water" that became the title of the song referred to the smoke from the fire spreading over Lake Geneva from the burning casino as the members of Deep Purple watched the fire from their hotel across the lake.

Search YouTube
Whoa, check this one out: Deep Purple Live
Almost 9 minutes long.

Silhouette

An opportunity to try a silhouette.

A New Trail

A new trail to explore.
Yippy Skippy.

Guess What This Is

Betchya can't guess what this is...



It looks like a wooden flower.

Okay, here's the obvious hint.


Trio - I plopped three of them on a fence post, to get a blurry background.


I might go back to the scene and try again to get a good shot of the cones in the tree. I actually had too much light for this shoot (surprised me) and the cones tended to be overexposed.

More Fuzzies

I'm into these fuzzies (flowers/weeds gone to seed). They're everywhere too.

Hangin' On


Falling Apart


Softy

Best High Contrast Photo

This represents my best exposure on a high contrast scene.

Here Today Gone Tomorrow

Tree moss.
Fabulous yummy texture, and yes, it really was this pretty green color.
The next day, it was gone.

Where's My Mama?

The fawn was grazing speedily in the back yard today, so I got in a photo shoot thru the window...



He's such a high energy creature, just a busy moving here and there. It's hard to catch him in a still pose. But then all of a sudden he paused and looked back as if to say "where's my mama?" before scurrying back into the trees to find her.

Always Take Your Camera With You

I almost didn't take my camera with me during my morning workout. But I did and then I decided to go a bit further than usual. Came to a little brook or whatever you'd call it and paused considering taking a shot and...

Look who flew in for the photo shoot as I stood there...



That is at full zoom, hand held, no post-processing, early morning.

I think this is a Cooper's Hawk Juvenile.

I was so excited I was shaking. Okay, BREATHE, turn on the camera, hold steady, hold breath, shoot.

Here's a no zoom full size crop:



And just to give you an idea of place, here's the entire scene no crop resized to fit my blog.



I just stood there and kept taking photos for as long as I could.
Got 6 pics of him before he flew away.
3 blurry throw aways and 3 keepers out of the bunch.

That was the ONLY thing that showed up interesting that day.
WOW.

The Last Hurrah

I'm not sure what kind of weed/plant this is. But the flowers had gone to seed and become this fluffy white ball, kinda like the dandelion does. I zoomed in and...



I call it "The Last Hurrah."

Here's a Dandelion fuzz ball.



Intricate little thing ain't it.

Sexy - Photo and Music

These flowers (lilies?) are so NOT this red! I cannot get an accurate color on these with my camera. I tried. They are really a quiet muted wine color. I had not noticed how heavy they were with pollen until I looked at the photos.



Here's a full sized crop of the stamens heavy with pollen and pistil.



LINK
Plant Physiology

SONG
Birthday Song, by Abra Moore

For you are so beautiful
You are so wild
You are so young
Could you stay the way you are
You don't have to carry
This world on your shoulders
This life can be scary
When you get older...

Search YouTube for Abra
I also like songs: Four Leaf Clover, I Believe.

NOTE: I think the flower is a daylily.
Possibly: Ruby Stella or Pardon Me

This flickr user captured a daylily with more of that wine color I was going for, only more vivid.

Rocks and Water - Photo and Music

A study in shutter speed and running water.
Rock water fountain.



1/20 shutter speed gave this running water a smooth look.
This shot is fabulous at full size. (I think so, anyway.)
The colors and textures are so yummy!
I have no place to put large images online yet.
Optimized it too, to keep the file size down, so lower quality.
I'm feeling so limited lately. :)

Here's a close up snip of the above image. Not optimized.



SONG
Rocks And Water, by The Weepies
youtube
grooveshark

Seven times I went down
Six times I walked back.
And I don't fear the dark anymore
'Cause I'm become all that.
all that
all that
all that

I will be rocks, I will be water
I will leave this to my daughter
Lift your head up in the wind
When you feel yourself grow colder
Wrap the night around your shoulders
and I will be with you even then
even when I cannot see your face anymore

Don't forget the time
I wooed him with red wine.
The devil he wore such a fine, fine shirt
And it stayed so clean while he dragged me through the dirt
Now, honey, don't trust anyone who looks you in the eye
Don't take any kindness, it's a demand in disguise

Chorus

I have seen such things child
I have seen
I have seen
I have seen
such things, child
on this, and the other side.
Words cannot show you
the midnight owl it does not know you.
You will see for your sweet self
by and by.

Chorus

I will be rocks, I will be water.
I will leave this to my daughter:

Together Alone

Wild sunflowers.

Alone


Together


Together Alone


Sad But Hopeful


With each ending comes a new beginning.

Inkscape Rays

Rays were done with Inkscape Tiled Clones.
(I love that feature, can you tell?)

Ground? Jittered circle.
Birds? Calligraphy Tool.
Tree? Okay, I cheated and imported that.

How To:

Create One Ray
Used Guides for the ray and invisible rectangle.
Bezier/Pen Tool to make triangle (point down)
Yellow linear gradient fill, no stroke
Used Gradient Tool to edit -- drag the white color node to top center and yellow colored node to bottom tip/point.

Tile Clones
Ray triangle must be grouped with an invisible rectangle (changes center point for rotation).
Create rectangle same width as triangle, but twice the length, no fill, no stroke.
Group rectangle and triangle - Select both, Object, Group

Edit, Clone, Create Tiled Clones
Symmetry is P1
1 Row, 18 Columns

Shift Tab:
Shift: X Per Column is -100% (that's minus)
Shift: Y Per Row is -100% (minus)
(Stacks clones on top of original.)

Rotation Tab:
Angle: 20 degrees Per column

The rest of the picture
Background is orange filled rectangle.
Birds created with Calligraphy Tool (default settings except size was 5).
Tree is a transparent png import.

Ground is a circle, converted to path, add nodes, add jitter, stretch to size.
Specifics:
Circle size W234.052, H135.75 px
Path, Object to Path
Effects, Modify Path, Add Nodes 0.1
Effects, Modify Path, Jitter 1 (Shift nodes & Use normal distribution checked, Shift node handles unchecked)

Move the pieces around to get different looks.
That's all the further I went in Inkscape.
Did a print screen, pasted into Paint Shop Pro9 and cropped.

References:
Inscape Rays
(I think using tiled clones is easier.)

Photoshop Rays
(Just for more ideas.)

In Inkscape see Help, Tutorials, Tips and Tricks for the tiled clones part.

For jittered circle references see previous post here.

Inkscape - Mosaic

Got the idea from an Illustrator tut.

When I saw it, I thought of Tiled Clones in Inkscape right away and wanted to see if I could get something similar.

I tried the pixelate thing in Paint Shop Pro 9 (see above link) and that just made everything more complicated with worse results in Inkscape as far as I could figure out (broken clones, etc.).

In Inkscape:
I set preferences to import images as patterns automatically.
File, Inkscape Preferences, Misc, uncheck import image as bitmap.
(Just opening the image might work too, but I was working with an image pattern.)

So after importing the desired image pattern, I'm ready to set up for tiled clones.

Make a tiny circle/ellipse that will be used for tiling and place it at top left corner of image pattern.
My image size was 296W x 291H px and my circle was 9 H/W.

The circle fill/stroke:
fill = "unset paint" ("?" icon)
stroke = "no paint" ("x" icon )
OR
fill = "no paint"
stroke = 2 line width, then set to "unset paint"

Circle must be selected (Selection Tool)
Edit, Clone, Create Tile Clones
Click the Reset button
Symmetry Tab = P1
Enter width and height of image pattern

Shift Tab: (adds spacing)
Shift X Per Column is:
20 (if fill is unset paint)
or
40 (if stroke is 2 line width & unset paint)

Shift Y Per Row is:
20 or 40 (same as above)

Trace Tab: (clones colors of image pattern)
Trace the tiles under the tiles is checked
Pick from the drawing = color
Apply the value to the clones' = color
Click Create

Move the source images out the way, and you have the beautiful cloned mosaic vector.
I added a black background layer to mine.

Inkscape - Spiral Mania

This is a combo of various techniques I've posted about already.

NOTES:
I noticed tons of keyboard combos that do different things with spirals.
I don't know if this applies to all shapes.
I just started noticing it now.
And I don't know if this is all of them.
If I find more, I'll add it here.

With Select Tool:
Ctrl/Shift/Drag arrow - scale around center (static center)
Ctrl/Drag arrow - resize & preserve aspect ratio (side opposite arrow drag is static)
Ctrl/Drag Spiral - a snap to thing happening
Shift/Drag arrow - twirl and/or stretch- Hor or Vert depending on arrow (static center?)
Drag arrow - twirls also but in a different way. (side opposite arrow is static)

Inkscape is a lot more powerful than at first glance.
The more I work with it, the more impressed I am.

UPDATE:
See Inkscape Spiral posted 2011.