Menu

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Just in time for Christmas

I've been way too busy lately and have not had much time for taking pictures, let alone blogging. But I did mess around last night with some smoke shots.
What I did was to burn an incense stick in my lightbox against a black backdrop.
The incense makes good smoke and blowing it with the camera hurricane blower creates some interesting shapes.

I've seen some really beautiful smoke shots online, and I have a long way to go, but here's my first attempt.


Mother and Child


Is it me or is there an image of the Virgin Mary and Jesus here? Wow! I've seen people bidding on Ebay for a piece of toast that had an image of the Virgin Mary on it. Maybe this is our ticket outta here! If you're interested in this holy work of art...Send me a million bucks, and it's yours...

So how I did this was open up the smoke image in Photoshop;
Duplicate the layer
Invert the layer so the black background is white,
Go to Layers and clean it up a bit,
mess with the color balance and give it some color
Invert it back, so the background is black.
That's about it.

I accept Cash and Gold Bullion

Peace out


Em

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Have you seen my Hammer?

Major accomplishment done today! I cleaned up my workshop which has become a catch-all for everything in the house that we can't find a home for. Basically, it was getting to the point that I couldn't find a hammer, or could barely even get in there. So, with an empty house, and a 1/2 day to myself, I was off and running...
But before I did that, I set up my camera (I know-can you believe it!), and hooked it up to my laptop, and tried out some time-lapse photography...Check out this 49 second video. All pictures are taken with a wide angle lens, speed 1/10s; aperture: f/4.5; ISO-200. Strung together with Windows Live Movie Maker...



So now I have my tools all accounted for and organized, and I'm ready for the next project...Hopefully not too soon.

Task for tomorrow? FOOTBALL!
Nite!
Em

Friday, December 3, 2010

I'm Blocked!

Wow, this has been a busy week. The usual pre-billing week crunch at the office. And I still think I'm recuperating from the drive back from Maine. Long drives kill me these days. When is someone going to invent the teleporter? I've also been taking some online CSS and Silverlight classes so I haven't had much time to sleep. Eh-sleep is over-rated anyway.

I think I've gotten writer's and photographer's block. So I think I'll step back for a few days and focus on something else to get my creativity going again. I've got NOTHING scheduled tomorrow so I'm going to do something I've been putting off since spring. My workshop is such a mess from summer projects (and not putting tools away) that I can't find a hammer. Sue is going shopping with friends tomorrow, so I've got the house to myself. I'm going to crank up the tunes...get some DMB going.. and clean the workshop. It's almost Christmas, and the elves and I need to clean the workshop up so we have room to build toys. And I know Taylor has some projects for me to get working on! So once I get the place cleaned up, then I think I'll pound some nails, saw some wood, make a bunch of sawdust, and mess it up again. And maybe the time away from the camera will help me come up with some fresh ideas for the blog. I've got some already...maybe a timelapse of my progress tomorrow...who knows?

In the meantime, here's a close up of a flower on our counter. See! I'm running out of ideas.

Flower for my Lady

Standard lens; Speed: 1/2s; aperture f/4.5; ISO-200


So wish me luck, and hopefully I'll come back fresh!

Em