Emergence from Winter

There is a beautiful botanical garden nearby.  Originally slated for a development, it was found to be unusable for housing.  The owner donated it to the city – so I am told.  What has happened since is just wonderful, and continues becoming more wonderful!  Not only does it continue to expand, adding different sections, but is always a work-in-progress, from volunteers, and from the changing of the seasons.

Yesterday, after reading and knitting for a few hours in the afternoon, I realized it was Saturday.  (I’ve been in a fog with a melt-down, jury duty, and catching up with things at work that didn’t get done during the two days I was gone.)  Suddenly, I just wanted to get out of the house, and go see some plants and take some pictures.  Of course, my favorite place to go is the gardens!

Spring cleaning has been done in the gardens – undergrowth pulled out and removed so new plants can grow.  I was not disappointed.  The matilija poppies are just beginning to emerge their new growth for spring.  Hummingbird sage is in full bloom.  Other salvia plants are sending out buds.  The redbud is in flower, with brilliant red and pink blossoms amongst heart-shaped leaves.  Bulbs, such as narcissus, are making themselves visible and easily found with their sweet fragrances.  Amaryllis, too, are emerging.  Bees are busy in the lavendar; fruit trees are beginning to renew their cycles.

The evenings, though lengthening, are still early.  Sunset is about 6:30 p.m.  The sun was lower in the sky, and tilting through the leaves and branches, backlighting everything from the west.  People like me were wandering around, just enjoying a stroll, taking pictures, enjoying an outing with family and friends.

This is the time of year when last year lingers in old leaves on trees, and fallen leaves providing nutrition for future growth.

Never ending . . .

Toy in the Morning

Hmmm.  Nothing like playing with software to keep one amused in the early morning!

Adobe has a filter called “pixel bender” for CS4, CS5, and CS5.5.  I expect they will have one for CS6 when it comes out.

I have been playing with the “Oil Paint” one, with maybe another thrown in by accident.  Kinda like the results.

Is this “art”?  Or not?

If you use it, reduce the picture in size.  My system crashed using full-sized 16 megapixel images; no problems when reduced to 1500 in Photoscape along the long edge.

Spring . . .

Nothing like cold weather to make you want to be warm, but nothing beats that first hint of spring in the air.  The wind changes, the buds swell, leaves from crocus, tulip, and hyacinth emerge through the crusty snow.  In a drab winter world, that brilliant green is a visual excitement.

Soon, a new pattern will emerge here.  It is being written up over the next few days.

Oh, Nick, You’re Such a Tool . . .

We all talk about “equipment” at sometime or another.  Evaluation of the tools we use is important simply because some tools are better than others.  Hammers are pretty simple items – you can use a shoe or a rock if necessary – but a well-balanced hammer in hand is quite nice to use.  Paint brushes, too, are tools.  Every artist has favorites, and ones which are okay, and others which you cannot wait to send to paint brush heaven.  There are surgical tools, gardening tools, big tools (cars and tanks), little tools (nail clippers), software.  A tool helps one accomplish a task more easily.

Without a doubt, lenses and a camera are tools.  For me, they have been tools for a while; I am still struggling with photography, deciding if it is a “yes” or “no” in my vision of creativity.  The fact is, it is a bunch of expensive tools, but not necessarily break-the-bank kind of tools.  Cameras and lenses are all individual in quality.  I’m just beginning to appreciate some of the more sophisticated elements of the Nikon camera.  I’m also enjoying the manual art of some of the lenses, and the mechanical and electronic and computer sophistication others display.  Software is another area for enjoyment because it can be the vehicle for the final creative effort, but I wonder if it will ever become something I really enjoy because I really don’t like sitting indoors at a computer for hours on end.  I probably will enjoy it as I master it.

I’ve acquired a few older lenses in the past year, ones which require manual focus, but which will interface with the aperture priority chip of the Nikon.  This means the camera can set the time for my exposure, based on whatever else I’ve dialed into the camera.  The other day, I picked up a lens which doesn’t do any of this.  It is big and heavy and produces lovely images.  It is a Vivitar Series 1 135mm f2.3 lens, and weighs at least a pound.

Last night, we went to dinner at Josh’s parents’ house, so while the light lasted, I played with the lens in the kitchen, garden, wandering around.  At times I pushed the ISO, other times I dropped it.  I had to think about a lot of things, and totally enjoyed it, looking at the LCD on the back of the camera to “chimp” over the picture.  Time, distance, focus, aperture – the old fashioned dance of the photographer with his equipment.

I’m not sure if it is me, but what I see in the older lenses is a very different quality of contrast and color than I see in my newer lenses.  I usually use my newer lenses on some variant of the automatic mode, so I wonder if that impacts things.  Maybe, maybe not.  I suspect some of the differences is in the glass and coatings used.  Older lenses seem to have a more mellow quality, as well as brighter, but not as harsh as newer lenses.  One day I wlll take the time to find out.

Today’s pictures on this post are taken with that new-to-me old lens.  You can see more of them if you want on my flickr page.  I didn’t post-process any of them, except to resize them and add my name.