Category: flowers

camera, flowers, iPhone, Maui, photograph, photography

Aloha From Maui

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Hibiscus

Aloha means more than hello or goodbye.

It’s a feeling, a way of being that exists on Hawaii.

We are very blessed to have Hawaii as one of our states. I am very blessed to have now visited Maui 17 times.

This trip my husband and I are here for two months. When you stay in one place for that long you take a completely different approach to your trip. Especially on Maui.

It is not one big whirlwind of activity. We get a chance to really relax into Maui and feel the Aloha.

I think of Maui as my spiritual home.

Warren and I are going to renew our wedding vows on the beach this year.

We celebrated 40 years being married last May. It felt like a good thing to renew our vows.

So to celebrate that occasion, I told Warren it was way past time for me to have a new wedding ring. Poor guy didn’t know that you reward a good wife of long standing with a new ring.

I explained it this way:

Husband who doesn’t get a trophy wife has to buy a trophy for the wife of long standing.

It made perfect sense to me and I got a pretty new diamond ring.

This is a hibiscus I photographed at our condo grounds. It is the most beautiful color of pink.

Aloha.

best effort, camera, flowers, iPad Pro, iPhone, photograph, photography, plants

Sunflower

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Sunflower

Sunflower

This is a sunflower photograph I took recently.  Warren and I were on a drive heading east in Washington state.  We stopped in at Index which is a very picturesque little village nestled among the cascades and sits below Mt. Index.

On the way home, we stopped in Gold Bar for lunch. I had the absolute worst meal of grease ever.  I will spare you the details.  I’ll just say that when traveling in small towns, Mexican is your best bet.  While it may not be the best, it is hard to ruin a taco.  One has to work incredibly hard to ruin rice, beans and a taco.

After lunch, we came upon a poor little bedraggled sunflower plant in someone’s front yard.  I have been seeing glorious fields of sunflowers lately.  I was extremely disappointed.  But I figured, what the heck.  You never know. Well, I ended up with this beautiful photo.

So, you never know when that one special photo will show up in your camera.

This was taken with my iPhone 6 Plus camera on auto, using  Camera+.  I may have used macro mode, I forget.

For post processing, I started in Enlight.  That is my new go-to app.  I have been a real fan of Snapseed and still use it.  But I find that I can make some more subtle changes in Enlight.  I especially like the Clarify settings under image.  Those settings there seem to offer a bit different set of adjustments for sharp, saturation and black.

Then I took this into iColorama in the style settings.

Finally, I took it into Tangled Fx and used one of my custom settings. I love Tangled Fx. I like to make my own adjustments to their settings.  I have about 15 special settings.

Enjoy!

best effort, flowers, iPad Pro, iPhone, photograph, photography, plants

Maui Fern

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Maui Fern

Maui Fern

This is a photo I took with Camera+.  There is a big difference between Camera Plus and Camera+, so don’t get confused.  Camera+ is an awesome app for your iPhone.  However, don’t buy it for the iPad.  It’s a total ripoff.  It has none of the features it does on the iPhone.

I used their macro setting which is not a real macro setting, but definitely brings you in closer on your subject.  Camera+ will let you set exposure, focus, white balance and other settings if you want.  They give you more than one way to do this.  I like to just tap both fingers on the phone screen and then tap in the exposure circle or the focus square to get what I want when I shoot.  Also their auto focus works great.

I shot this last year in Maui, although it could have been shot here in Seattle.  But, this is a Maui fern.  It is in a favorite place of mine, Kula Lodge in Maui, up in the mountain, as you go towards Haleakala, the volcano on Maui.

This was overexposed and posed some other problems.  I was going to toss it, but found that hard to do.  I had recently watched a Mike Moats video. If you don’t know who he is, rush, I mean, rush over here. Mike is a totally awesome macro photographer.

Anyway, I was watching one of his videos where he used Nik Software’s Viveza2 to work on a photo that had some problems.  Nik Software is made by Google.  It used to cost a lot of money.  But now, for some odd reason they give it away free.  There are also free videos on how to use it up at You Tube.

Anyway, in Viveze2 there are these little dots that you put on your photo,  They expand into a circle that you can then add contrast, saturation and other elements to in your photo.  So I worked on the overexposed areas in the photo and Viveza2 did it’s magic and my photo was no longer overexposed.

I hope you enjoy this image.  I had fun taking it and enhancing it.

 

 

acrylics, art, best effort, digital art, flowers, Painter, paintings

The Outsider

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The Outsider

The Outsider

I started this painting in Rebelle, a watercolor app.  Then I brought it into Painter and finished it with acrylic-like paints.

I am calling this the Outsider.  The little bird on the left wants to join the two birds on the right.  But, they are busy gossiping.  He feels very left out.  The two birds will let him join them as soon as they finish their gossip.

I think there’s a lesson here.  Don’t gossip.  People know they shouldn’t.  These two birds that are gossiping are embarrassed to have the little bird join them because they know gossiping is wrong.  Really, it’s none of your business.

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