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Posts tagged ‘52 week photo challenge’

Jan 3

Last Hurrah of 52 weeks of Photos

I spent several days last week covering a clinic near downtown Houston while the regular doctor and his family were on vacation. The patients are nearly all Hispanic, few spoke English and I had to call upon my limited Spanish during nearly every visit. Sometimes a youngster would be present who was in school and could translate for me—I know enough to hear when they translate correctly but not enough to be fluent myself.

So I decided to stay in a hotel during the week =-making my work much easier than four hours a day on the road.

That meant I had time to stop—

And this was one of the view of Houston that I had never seen before.

houston20skyline20jan202016-m

 

Nov 23

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In the Kitchen

This past week’s assignment was to photograph something in the kitchen. Some of my classmates photographed stemware or glass ware on a colored surface and one somehow managed to  get a photo of the underneath of his washing machine.

This year we have had an abundance of lemons–as in past years. I picked them all a couple of weeks ago and we have enjoyed them in a lemon meringue pie–my grandmother’s recipe that dirtied several bowls and a saucepan in the making, a pasta dish, over fish, vegetables, and sometime soon with hot tea.

I cut one into a half and two quarters, positioned them in a blue bowl I bought in Mexico while at a Spanish language class, put our microwave bacon cooker under one edge to give it an angle and shot away. Some pomegranates were also near by but didn’t show well against our cutting board countertop.

this week it’s a self portrait—not sure what I will do with that—but I’ve got several days to think about it.

Weir Lemons in a blue bowl

 

Nov 15

Playing around with Filters in Photoshop

While I do not have the full Photoshop, I have an older version of Elements. There is still plenty of things to play with there.

This week’s assignment was to manipulate a photo using any technique including filters composing either a very abstract piece or a recognizable image.

Last Sunday I spied a set of abandoned water pipes and took several photos from different angles. Unfortunately I could not get very close as there was a bog in the way and a sign saying that there were aggressive alligators on the loose.

I spent a pleasurable two hours with filters and one of the images—all on my smugmug site but this is the one I submitted.

more images are here:

https://sylviaweirphotos.smugmug.com/52-week-photo-challeng

Nov 8

Panoramas and my phone is on Fire

McFadden Ward House Museum in Beaumont Texas

This week’s photo assignment was to take a panorama using at least three images shot sequentially with our camera. However, I finally got up the courage to get my new Fire phone activated=========and drum roll, here—-there is a panorama option on the camera. So today–the first really nice day we’ve had for several weeks, I played around with my phone taking a dozen or more panoramas of not even all that interesting things—parking lot, bedroom furniture, and then there was the marsh. I thought this might be nice==but it turns out that one bunch of cat tail reeds looks pretty much like another and so there wasn’t anything particularly distinguishing amongst the photos—so I took this one of the museum that is just two blocks away from my house. Looking at my class mates contributions–it seems that there are two forms—the distorted form and the flat form–I sort of like this distorted form as who could tell except those of us who live here that the driveway isn’t round like this.

This week’s assignment is play around with filters—and I think I have a great subject for that—-old water pipes pulled out of the swamp and piled along one of the roads through the tertiary water treatment area.  This doesn’t sound nice but it is really quite lovely and there were a lot of people there today–running, walking, birding, bicycling–and taking photos.

Oct 19

Decay

El Paso is a fascinating city with lots to see and do. I saw just a small part of it near the airport and Fort Bliss. I did have my camera ready and took a lot of photos–to be uploaded a bit later this week after I have edited them.

However, this week’s photo assignment was to take something that was in decay mode and make it attractive. My photoshop skills are not superb and since I arrived home about 6:30 I didn’t have a lot of time to manipulate the photo. But I really liked the image I did get—of peeling yellow curb paint with a few scattered tiny leaves.

Oct 5

Dreamscapes

This weeks photo assignment was to take a photo, copy it–make the background layer black-white and blurred and then superimpose the original colored photo on top.

Working with layers is not easy for me–it seems that several steps are omitted in describing the steps=-even in my photoshop for dummies book. However, perseverance is key—and fortunately the only thing that I use up is time–not the imagery.

Here is one attempt followed by the original photo.

dreaming of what it might have been like to live here

original

butterfly garden

I’m not sure I like this effect but it was worthwhile to play with layers.

Sep 27

another photo assignment

This week’s assignment was to use a text overlay on a photograph. This week has been busy and I had planned to spend today taking some photos. Alas, it was dark and dreary and rainy outside and I was feeling like a nightgown day. So I took a photo of my baby grand, sadly neglected and not played for at least a month or so due to a badly needed tuning. My photoshop editor has a lot of options for text with a lot of shapes, dozens of fonts, and then there is color. I could have spent all day playing around with those options but decided on a dullish gray color to be just a bit different from the black and white of the photo and a closeup of the keys and music. I had some shots of the entire piano but then I would have to deal with window glare and the entire imagery seemed far too busy. So this is what I ended up with.

And now to more nightgown day. Tonight is the eclipse that I planned to photo but I think there will be too much cloud cover to warrant setting up tripod and staying up late. I’m sure someone will take photos for me that I can enjoy tomorrow morning–but maybe it will clear up and I’ll feel more ambitious.

Sep 20

layered Flowers

working with layers in Photoshop is not the easiest thing for me—probably because the instructions I have are for version 12 and I have  Elements 7. That means I have to scramble and try different menu items with different terms to complete the assignment.

this past week’s assignment was to enhance a color in a photo. That meant layers. I finally accomplished the task using a magic color extractor–and here is the photo—and the original photo.

I’m not sure I like this effect but it is handy to know.

original photo

Sep 13

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Old Paint

This week was a do-over from previous challenges. I had missed several due to a dropped camera and so I chose this one. It wasn’t easy finding a good photo of old paint–I have lots of it around–but none of them seemed very interesting. This particular photo is on the back side of an old motorhome that was nicknamed ‘old Mossy’. It hasn’t moved in many years but occupies a space on my property on Highway 90.

A bit of orange tends to liven up this photo–something I could not see until I took the photo and looked at it in Photoshop.

Sep 7

White

it has taken me awhle to get back to taking photos. This week’s challenge was to take a photo of something ‘white’. My mind usually goes blank when faced with this type of challenge. I tried to think of white things that we had–I took photos of my new and empty beehive–not very interesting–then tried some fossilized shells—too dark and speckled with mold and dirt, then tried several photos of the curtains in my breakfast room.

I do not look at the other submissions until I have entered mine—there were some really good ones–a white sweater with white buttons, cool whip, orchid petals, and so forth.

This next week is a do-over–I decided I would do old paint as I missed that entry.

My husband said this photo was awful before he realized it was mine.

So I don’t expect a positive review except to say that I did it.

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