Category: iPhone

abstract, art, best effort, edit, iPad Pro, iPhone, paintings, photograph, photography

Log From the Beach

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Hi everybody! It’s a new year filled with possibilities! I wish you all a great 2018.

Over Christmas Warren and I went to the Washington coast to Copalis Beach and stayed at an awesome place called Iron Springs. It’s several cabins on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Totally awesome.

I haven’t been feeling well, so it was nice to get out of Seattle for a week. Christmas can be a difficult time. For me, sometimes family makes it even more challenging. So my solution now is a quiet time at the ocean.

The two enhanced photos above are of an interesting log that had been washed up on the beach.

I used several various spps to get the effects. I’m a total app junkie and I’ve been letting most of them just sit on my iPad and iPhone. There are just a very few I usually use. Now, I’m branching out.

Last year I had hoped to take my photography to a step further in an abstract way. But we had our house remodeled. It took over six months and threw my life and ultimately my health in a tailspin.

Dealing with a general contractor and an interior designer that I fought with constantly was horrible. The interior designer could draw up plans, but had different taste than me. I think designers are used to just shoving their ideas and colors down the customer’s throats. I had very specific color ideas and design ideas. So we fought over colors, over floor coverings, everything.

All this and then the contractor was to finish in two months and didn’t.

My art work got pushed aside.

So now I am at 2018 and ready to start exploring where I want to go. There are so many kinds of art or photography out there. I try some of the types of photography art to fit in some place. But I never feel like I click. So I need to just explore, and try to figure out what I want to do.

With photography, I feel like I’ve been trying on all kinds of dresses, but none of them fit.

Things are always changing with my painting. But I’m comfortable with that. It feels like growth to me. I feel very frustrated in photography.

Here’s to an art-filled, creative 2018.

💘

art, best effort, digital art, digital art academy, iPad Pro, iPhone, Painter

Kaleidoscope Fun In Painter

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Karen Bonaker put up a video at DAA Facebook on using the new selection brushes in Painter.  I took off with her suggestion and made these two pieces.  You can check out the DAA here.

The selection brushes are really interesting.  For those of you familiar with digital art, they are the equivalent of marching ants, but you paint them on.

So, I went to Painter’s kaleidoscope feature and turned that on and painted a kaleidoscope with the selection brushes.  Then I painted into the selections or I chose invert and painted outside the selections, depending on the effect I wanted.

Then when I was done, I took the pieces into my iPhone, and used either DistressedFX, Mextures or Shift and gave them a background to tighten them up.

These were a blast to do, and I thank Karen for giving us this idea to use the selection brushes.

Corel released Painter 2018 about a month ago with some very interesting features. I was not going to update this time around.  Corel did not even wait a year to release this update.  To me that is ridiculous.  Once a year is enough for updates.  But in looking at the new features, I decided to go ahead and update.

I am taking Skip Allen’s class at DAA to learn how to use the new features.  We are having a blast in class.  You can check out Skip’s blog here.

camera, digital art, iPhone, photograph, photography, seattle

A Wonderful Walk

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This is a photo I took while walking out in Golden Gardens last winter with Warren. 

I put it in a Reflect app, Distressed FX, Skylab App and Enlight App.  

I read an article today about Ansel Adams.  He once took one photo and enhanced it 40 different ways.  It was this particular photo that helped make him famous.  That’s what we are doing today.  We are taking one photo and changing it many different ways.  Only our dark rooms are now digital.  Ansel Adams died in 1984.  Just before computers and digital cameras.  

I’m betting from how technical he was, from all the writing he did on photography and processing that he would have loved digital cameras and digital post processing.  

abstract, art, digital art, edit, iPad Pro, iPhone

The Watchers

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This is an edit I did recently. I got my source images from Getty Images.

The question in this piece is who’s watching who?

Are the people watching?  If so, what are they watching?  Or are they just looking down. Or are they being watched by the eyes in the mountains?  Who are the eyes in the mountains and what do they represent?  Are they our conscience, society, the CIA or mother?

Then you will need to figure out if the thing in the sky is actually a Russian spy plane or what?

Then perhaps this is none of the above. You decide for yourself. Wherever your imagination takes you is where you should go.

I did this on my iPad using Leonardo. I have tried to use Union but it only has one layer. Which in my opinion, severely limits it.

The masking brush in Leonardo could use some improvement. I noticed that it’s sister app SuperImpose has recently gotten some big updates. It is supposed to really do a great job on masking hair. Again, this app only has one layer.

Additionally, I worked in Stackables.

camera, digital art, edit, iPad Pro, iPhone, photograph, photography

Some Crocus For You! 

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What is the plural for crocus!  Croci?  I don’t know. If so, then these are croci. My friend in South Carolina, Barbara Harris Sartell took this lovely photo and I did the edit.

I used one of my very favorite apps, Tangledfx. I don’t like the default presets that come with the app. But I love my presets. So far I have about 30 of them that I play around with.

I love to see the first crocus peek its head up because that means that Spring is very near.

best effort, camera, iPhone, photograph, photography, plants, positive, positive energy, show up

Kalanchoe

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img_6056

No, I didn’t just swear at you.  That is what this plant is called.  I’m guessing it’s a succulent.  But it may be a relative to the artichoke.  None of my followers on Instagram seem to know and I’m too lazy to look on the Internet.

I believe in always sharing how I process my photos.  I a, no great post processor, but I find it extremely helpful when people share how they get to the end of a journey.

I believe that the more I share, the more I will get back.  Like, what goes around,  comes around.  I have found that saying to be more than true in my time here on earth.

I also particularly love the phrase “give the person enough rope to hang themselves.”  That’s another one that I have always seen come true.  It takes awhile, but it happens.  Usually, they don’t need all that much rope.  What I have also observed, is that we don’t realize what’s going on inside that person that is making others so miserable.  I have learned they are miserable inside.  Like I don’t need to bother with revenge or getting back at them.  I could never think up a punishment worse than what they do to themselves.  Plus, if I were to bother with revenge, it would harm me.  It would take me into being negative.  It would poison me.  Why go there?  It’s not worth it.  It really isn’t.  It may seem so at the time.  You can almost taste it.  But I know now, it’s simply not.  But learn for yourself.  Waste your time if you want.   Most people have to learn the hard way.  I don’t know why that is, but they do.  I did.  I wish I had taken more advice.  I wish I had listened a bit more to my Dad.

Ok.  Back to sharing the post processing of the photo.  I can’t.  I found this inside Snapseed.  I hadn’t saved it!  I don’t have a clue what I did to it.  Other than to say it was in Snapseed.  I don’t use Snapseed that much for post processing anymore, so I think it was in there to crop it for Instagram.  But then why wasn’t it saved? I don’t know!  But I love this.  It’s not straight from the camera either.

I’m grateful I found it.  I think it’s one of my better photos.  I’ve been trying very hard to get this effect.  Very light lights and dark darks. I know people are using Stackables for this.  While this is close to what I’ve been trying to get, it’s not there yet.

So, I’m going to keep trying.

camera, flowers, iPhone, photograph, photography

Pincushion Protea

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This is a macro shot of a pincushion protea. Protea originally come from Africa but are found all over the world in tropical climates.

There are about 1600 species of these flowers. They are absolutely incredible. They come in all kinds of shapes and every color imaginable.

If you want a real treat take yourself over to Pinterest and check out these flowers.

I use the word macro lightly here. It is not a macro in the true definition of macro. A true macro is 1:1.

I took this on my iPhone 6 Plus with an Olloclip lens. It is a magnification lens. I was using the 14x lens.

I love using the 14x and 21x lenses. I like to put them on my iPhone and go exploring to see what Mother Nature has hidden in the details.

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