Blogger Community Photo Challenge

The current Blogger Community Photo Challenge is Macro.

Macro photography is perhaps my favorite genre.  It really invites the photographer to explore the details of the subject.  When I am out for a macro shoot session, I lose all track of time.   I get completely lost in the present as I attempt to creatively see the ordinary.


Spring is an amazing season to spend some time concentrating on macro.  Everything is changing rapidly and certain subjects will look much different tomorrow than they do today.  I can't help but sense that the moment is fleeting which encourages me to slow down and make sure that I thoroughly study the subject as it exists right now


I had a great time working on this challenge.  I was having an especially interesting adventure studying ferns but decided to set them aside temporarily when I stumbled on the subject of today's shot.  I'm planning to post a collection of images from that study and I hope you'll come back and see them.  But today, I came upon this amazing dandelion.  What caught my eye was the way that it was loosing it's seeds.  You can see that closer inspection yielded a surprise!
:)


Clearly...a fleeting moment.





The links to the images created by the other challenge participants can be found here.  I hope you will take a moment to visit them all!

Blogger Community Photo Challenge - SPRING!

The current Blogger Community Photo Challenge...SPRING!

The season is very late arriving on Long Island this year.  We have a few flowers finally coming up, but they're being challenged by the lingering cool temperatures.  I think we still have another week or so to wait for full spring color.

During the winter, the goldfinches moult their brilliant plumage.  But just this week, I've noticed a few flashes of  bright yellow at my feeders.  Spring must be here.

Be sure to visit the other photographers who are participating in the challenge.  The links are here.

April 2

Over the winter, I've been trying to learn a little about stylizing images with textures in photoshop. It's a fairly simple process with endless possibilities. There are thousands of free textures to download all over the web and countless ways to stack and manipulate them on a given image. I'm not sure how I feel about the process. In way, it seems a bit like a gimmick. Everywhere, people are applying an effect to an image (snapshot) and presenting it as "art". But on the other hand, it is fun. I decided to post this (and perhaps a few more) but they are what they are.

It seems that a lot of images that I see manipulated this way have an ethereal feel. My style is evolving a bit differently.

This Was Amazing!

(Edit (April 9, 2011) - The current Round Robin Photo Challenge is COLLECTIONS. Since this collection was truly one of a kind, I wanted to share these images with the other challenge participants.

If you enjoy these pictures, please be sure to visit the Round Robin Challenge to find the linking list to the collections that other photographers have chosen to feature.)

Yesterday, I attended the Infinite Variety Quilt Show held in NYC. I learned about it late, and consider myself VERY lucky that I was able to get there before it closed today. As a fiber fanatic...walking through this show was like walking through wonderland.

The quilts are the personal collection of one woman and all are done in red and white. There were an astounding 650 quilts on display. The exhibit represents work created over a span of 300 years. I caught myself thinking how many stitches it took to fabricate that body of work....each one by hand. It's mind boggling.

I've embedded a slide share of some of my photos from the exhibit below. If you mouse over a photo, slide show controls will appear at the bottoms of the window. On the control bar, there is an icon for full screen viewing on the far right.


Thanks for visiting and ENJOY!

Swap Out the Winter Blahs..

Indie doesn't have the blahs. Like me, he LOVES snow!

This in not from this week's storm...it was mostly a non-event on Long Island. Rain, sleet and ICE is what we got....BLAH! This was last week's weather, where we got close to 18" of that beautiful white stuff!



Alphawoman (Mary) at Just a Hippie Gypsy posted an interesting idea yesterday and I decided to play.

I will send a handmade piece of art to Mary PLUS the first five people who comment on this post AND promise to make the same offer on their blog. I'm not sure what it will be yet but it will somehow incorporate one of my photographs. I enjoy making pretty things and sharing the art makes it that much more fun. Since it's handmade work, it won't come right away but I'll do my best to get things sent out by May 1. So, if you'd like to get a little gift in the mail from me, here's what you need to do.

Leave a comment saying you want to join in with your email. I'll contact you by private message for your snail mail address.

Make a similar offer on your blog.

Send out your art to the your blog friends!

C'mon....it will be fun!

Snow At The Beach

I love winter and we've had a couple of good snowstorms with significant accumulation since the holidays. Earlier this week, we had up to 18" of snowfall in some areas out here on Long Island. Since we've moved here, I've wanted to get out to the beach after a big snow. Today, I finally made it.

It was a picture perfect day. It was cold, but not raw so it was really pleasant to be out. And, the beach was beautiful!!







I realized this morning that these images fall qualify for this week's Round Robin Challenge (The Picture I've Always Wanted to Take). I've only lived near the beach for three years. I find the beach much more relaxing and enjoyable during winter months than during the hot, crowded months of summer. I've never seen snow on the beach before, but I've always been captured by images of dunes drifted with snow. I may not have consciously known that these were images I've "always" wanted to take. But they do capture a sense of what I enjoy about the beach...the light, the lines defined by the wind, the expansive solitude and the big sky. I'm thrilled to have finally had the opportunity to make them and to add them to my portfolio.

Please visit the other Round Robins (linking list here) to see what images made their photographic dreams come true.

Blogger Community Photo Challenge - White on White

I thought this was a GREAT idea for a challenge. It really pushed me to think creatively about a subject and I did something I might not think otherwise to do. After trying a few different ideas, this is what I decided to share. The challenge got the wheels in my brain turning and there more be more white on white images showing up here soon.







Find the links to the other challenge participants here.