Flickr Photo Albums

Alright, today I thought I might share a few of my favorite Flickr albums that I have created from the digital fusion photography I have been doing.  I try to keep organized on Flickr the best I can so that if you prefer to look through albums instead of the entire photostream, you can do so.

This first album is my most recent.  I'm still working on it, but I have quite a lot done so far.  Remember to keep checking back to see what else I've done with it.  Believe it or not, last week I took some macro shots of some thick onion skins after I was finished cooking.  Once I did that, it was time to see what would happen once I started editing them into other pieces of art.  This folder is the result so far.  Obviously it is called Onion Skins.

This next album was created after Christmas 2014 when I had done a lot of light painting of my Christmas Tree lights.  Then I did something I had never done before with light painting.  I turned those shots into digital fusion photographs just to see what would happen if I went crazy with the light painting photos.  This folder is called Light Painting Gone Mad.  I hope you enjoy it.

By far one of my biggest album, with over 600 pieces, is called The Kaleidoscope Collection.  You can find it here.  Almost everything I have worked on usually has at least one kaleidoscope piece made from an original photo.  I also have on both of my photography blogs, some that I have done from scratch.  However, all of these, I believe, are from original photographs I have taken.

In all the albums in my photostream you will find mixtures of other albums.  For example, in my Macro album, you will also find kaleidoscopes and other abstracts because I have cross-referenced everything.  It might not have been the best idea and at some point I may undertake to change how I organized the artwork.

Well, there you are.  I hope you enjoy browsing through these albums.  If you wish to see more albums, just click on the photostream link in the above paragraph and go from there.  Throughout all you will see the originals, and then if I have made any digital fusion works, you will see those as well.  In many cases you can check the file name to see which original is the base for the artwork. 

Announcement: Brand New Website

I am very happy to announce that I now have a website apart from this blog.  You can find it at this link.  I am really impressed with the art organization program at Artsala.  With this program I am able to make a complete and organized inventory of all my photographs, make those photos available to Xanadu Galleries IF I so desire for them to jury to see if they want to represent me (which they already do thanks to this program) and also Artsala will create a website for the artist.  Getting my website set up only took a few minutes last night and by this morning, it was live and ready to share with everyone.  Since then I have been inventorying even more photos and adding them to the website.  Just as quickly as I press the button to save my photo to my inventory, it is added into the proper category on my website.  Nothing could be easier!  I don't have to do my inventory separately from my website.  It is all done in one easy step.

A word about this blog.  For now I have decided to continue with this blog rather than changing locations.  There may be some fine tuning to be done in the near future, however.  Between this blog and the "Page Two" blog that holds even more of my photographs, (you can find a link by clicking the tab at the top of this page) you can find almost all of my best work, as well as my learning experiences, and other photography related topics.

So, now with my new website and my Flickr Photostream you have access to everything I am doing with photography.  As always, please take time to check out the photos I have showing at Xanadu Gallery also. 

Feathers, Shells, and Water Bottles--Say What???

My granddaughter, who is now 12 years old, continually brings me different things to add to my photography portfolio.  Her's too, because she is learning photography from me, and let me tell you that she has a real eye for the art.  This time she brought quail feathers that she got while cleaning at some older couple's home as part of a youth group project.  A few days later she brought two halves of what looks like a clam shell.  Since I haven't looked it up and I am not an expert on these things, I simply call it a mollusk shell.  Where do water bottles fit into this?  Well, let's just say that at first, her turquoise water bottle she was drinking from ended up being a beautiful background for the quail feathers.  But eventually the bottle ended up offering some very interesting macro shots itself.

For the following photos, I used my Canon Rebel EOS T3i with and without my 5 extension tubes.  When I used the extension tubes the images are very, very close and almost have the quality of having looked through a microscope at times.  When I didn't use the extension tubes, you can tell that the images are just close ups, but not extremely close up.  I believe the feathers turned out very beautifully, while the shells are also very pretty.  But when you see what happened with the water bottle, you may be very surprised.

Understand that I did no editing of any kind other than to place my watermark on these copies.  Here are the photos.

You can see in some of the above photos the turquoise showing through from the water bottle.  How to photograph the feathers was at first a problem as I could not really think of any possible way to lay them on a surface and end up with a good photo.  However, I did have a small cut flower vase with an empty green floral sponge inside.  That became the holder for the feathers and also provided a greenish background in some of the photos.

I am really going to have to research mollusk shells to find out what the fossilized circles are on the outside of the shell. To do these photos with the marbles was actually my granddaughter's idea and I was really glad she came up with it.

Okay, so now what is so special about a turquoise water bottle anyway?  Well, when the bottle has its own designs on the side, and it is about half filled with water, and when light hits that bottle in certain ways while it is on its side on a table, you end up with lots of various abstract results.

I really was pleasantly surprised at the bokeh that appeared in this shot above.  I have found that I can create interesting bokeh when light is reflecting off just about anything, as long as whatever that "anything" is turns out to be shiny.

Now I am on the hunt for other interesting objects that can end up either as still life or abstract photography.  Since the water bottle was more accident than anything else, it gives me inspiration that there could be any number of objects around the house, yard, or even at garage sales, that could end up in my portfolio.  What do you think?  Got any ideas of your own?

More Learning

Well, I have to say that doing the tutorial lessons with Jason Horejs is working well, somewhat.  The assignments do require that I buy his book which I have not done yet.  But otherwise I am learning at least a few things.  One of those things is about branding and all that goes with that topic.  So far, I am learning that people need to be able to look at my work and recognize that it is mine.  So what sets me apart from others?  Right off hand I would say that it is my abstracts.  Especially the kaleidoscopes.  That has me thinking that maybe I need to totally remake this blog and the page two section of this blog which is all graphics.  I am just not sure yet how to do that so that it is better, easier to use, and more organized.  It will take a whole lot of time and work because I have very few of the photos on my computer anymore.  They are all on flash drives and CD's.  In the meantime, I am still at work creating new abstracts and taking more and more photos.  I am learning more and more about my Canon EOS Rebel T3i also.  I think I finally know how to change the shutter speed AND the aperture.  That really had me baffled for awhile.

Also, now that I am on Flickr I have been doing some interesting searching using town names of places where I have lived throughout my life.  In doing this, so far, I have met a new friend who went to the same high school as I graduated from, only several years apart so we did not know each other back then.  How interesting!  And how interesting to find photographs from the places I have lived on Flickr!  

Last week, we got a bunch of fresh produce and as I was cooking some fresh from the garden cabbage, I took these photos.  Tonight I also did a few abstracts as well of both the cabbage and some clover that I photographed last month.  Also in the photos this time are some other fresh veggies.

These colorful designs below are from the clover, which, by the way, is actually lavender.  But somehow with the extension tubes on my camera, this is the color they turned out.

On these two below I tried something I had never done before.  I took the original pattern design and then used the color fill in color changer mode, clicked on one small area and this is how it turned out.  Then I added a new color for the final design.

Obviously this must be the cucumber kaleidoscope.  What fascinates me here is how deep this looks.  It is almost 3D.

These below are the green beans in kaleidoscope and patterns.  Very unique, I think.

Flickr and Jason Horejs

Recently I've been uploading my most recent photos and designs to my Flickr Photostream so now you can see some of my best works there.  Since Flickr does not allow using their site for direct selling of photography or other items, you can still contact me by coming here.

The past couple of weeks I have been taking a free online email workshop given by art gallery owner Jason Horejs who owns Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ.  Jason Horejs is also the author of the book Starving to Successful.  So far the e-course has been very interesting and will hopefully teach me things I need to learn to possibly show my photography (and maybe my paintings) in an actual gallery somewhere.  But even if it doesn't, this course is helping me learn more about myself, and that there are many, many others out there striving to do work that someone will someday buy.  I am expecting to learn more about how to present myself and my work in the best possible light I can.

Okay, just a quick example of some of the photography you can see on my Flicker Photostream.