Tag: flowers

Light on the Border

I recently bought a Mamiya 645 Pro TL with a lens, grip, viewfinder, and film back. It’s a medium format camera. To test out that all parts were working as advertised, I put a roll of film in it and went to work. I tested the auto-exposure and manual exposure. The film advance in the grip, too. Everything worked. Focus was on the little lamp, leaving the flowers outside the field of focus. In post, I used Negative Lab Pro to process the images, but turned them to black and white in LR. Altogether, I am happy with my purchase. And I managed to get a few pictures that were decent out of all that play!

Curbside Daisies

I haven’t picked up a brush in weeks.  I did an ink and watercolor sketch a few days ago, but no painting of any sort.  Life got in the way, as well as other interests needing a lot of time – photography in this case.  Now I hope to get back to daily painting because I miss it!

The other day, I was out and about.  Looking down, I saw some bright pink daisies in the sun, falling over the cobbled pavement of the street.  Hmmm, let’s paint ’em!

And so I did.

A Summer’s Bouquet

 

I decided to attempt a more high key painting today – one with a lot of white!  I always look for contrast, but here I tried to lessen the usual contrast.  Maybe it’s because I rather like contrasty photos as opposed to subtle one with a long scale of color or black and white.  Even here, I kept adding contrast!  It’s a fixation . . . but contrast is how we differentiate shapes and depth, so it’s necessary, but I am trying to minimalize it.  Not sure if it worked or not!

Cliffside Flowers, Pt. Lobos

I took a lot of photos – digital, film – while on vacation in Monterey, California.  Trees, flowers, streets, room.  This is what I saw along the trail at Whalers Cove in Pt. Lobos, California.  The cliffs are sandy and crumbly, but there are bits of very dark dirt, from black to grey.  I wonder if this area had volcanic activity at some point.  The color contrast of the soil and cliffs, along with the tenacious hold of the flowers, made for some rather lovely bits of bright color in late summer.

Container Jungle

Part of my container garden this summer in the Dog Free Zone.  I grew hot chilis, herbs, flowers, and, in particular, milkweed.  You can see the milkweed seed pods have opened, and the seeds are waiting to blown away by the wind.  The milkweed is food that is important to Monarch butterflies, but I have heard that the milkweed with colored flowers is not good for the butterflies.  I want to do a bit of research on this – what if all is for naught?

Once more, this is a photo using my 1937 Welta Weltur and Ilford XP Super 400 film.  The Xenar lens is stunning, with lovely detail and softness at the same time.  I really like what it can do.