Photography & Changes

Straight out of Camera (SOOC)

I love beautiful things whether it's a superbly penned story or a richly hued painting.  I've always been drawn to photography as a viewer, but never tried to seriously take a photo until about 15 months ago, when I started blogging in ernest.  With my first shots, I discovered a whole new world opening before me in glorious vistas and macros.  Beauty truly is in the details.  I was so surprised by this unexpected pleasure that I started taking more photos of everything in sight. I nurtured this new-found love by reading about photography, viewing websites, and following the blogs of some amazing photographers. 

My camera is a simple Fuji point and shoot with some pretty cool settings like macro and manual, sure I long for a Canon or Nikon, but this little camera is serving me well for now.  Sometimes a photograph looks fabulous straight out of the camera, but then there are those times some tweaking would make all the difference.  I don't have Photoshop, but I did download Picasa and then discovered Picnik has a lot more options for a little bit of nothing, but I'll bet you all ready knew that. 

During my internet travels I happend upon soft dreamy photography that took my breath away.  How was this done...I wasn't sure, so I started experimenting.  I placed tulle, nylon net, wax paper or paper with a heart cut out over the lens to see how it would look.  Sometimes it was a sorry failure, but I learned. 

Outcome of tulle covered lens and mini carnation. 

Then, one day while reading Gardening Gone Wild, I stumbled upon scan art.  I gave it a whirl and was wowed by what I saw.  It was flower arranging on the bed of a scanner.  It goes hand-in-hand with photography as yet another way to express my artistic viewpoint. 

Summer Orange, bloom scan

After viewing a vintage looking photo on soul aperture, I decided to try my hand at creating something similar.  I downloaded an old letter from The Graphics Fairy and superimposed the image onto another of pink roses.  It wasn't great, but I liked how it looked.  More recently I discovered Kim Klassen's textured photography.  I was enchanted by the looks, from grunge to antique.  I read her blogs, viewed her photography, and then signed up for two of her newsletters.  I have two of Kim's textures, but I wanted to try my hand at creating my own textures, so I took a trip about the house searching for things that might make decent backgrounds or textures. I scanned crumpled white paper, a crumpled brown paper bag, a page from my grass journal, the outside and inside cover of the same journal, and scrapbook pages that I'd picked up for a song at Michael's.  Here's my first adventure into creating photos with texture.

 I used the cover of my grass journal and a photo I took of flowering crab apple trees this spring.

I liked the deep brown edge and I like how it came out, a bit shadowy showing the textures with vintage colors. 

If you've been taking a peek at my photography when you visit Write in Amazement, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I'm moving it for now over to The Cottage on the Corner.  Writing isn't just a passionate hobby, it's my life and it desserves a blog to call its own.  I'm not sure if I'll set up a photography blog or just create a page on The Cottage. We'll have to wait and see where my passion for photography leads me.        

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."

~ Langston Hughes