Labor Day Effort

For quite a few years, the Filthy Pikers have toyed with the idea of "10K for Labor Day" -- that is, writing 10,000 words over the four day Labor Day weekend. I've never managed to achieve that, but this year, I thought I'd give it another try.

In my voyage of creative discovery, I realized anew this past weekend just how much I hate deadlines and quotas. I could not find a single drop of desire to write, even though I have two interesting stories started.

However, I followed my sudden rabid urge to create. I needed to make an image to go with Charles Cicirella's poem "Modern Day Job" in the Piker Press, so I tackled a work of pastels. No, I wasn't thinking of the Hulk when I made green the focal point of the picture. (In fact, when I was done I wished I hadn't used green.) It was a lot of fun having ALL my pastels spread out on the side of my work desk, so much so that I'm going to do that again today.

Then it was time to move on. My Sony camera has more features to it than I was ever able to use (DSC-H400), but with the creative urge on, I perched on the back patio in the morning light and just played with the thing. Photo after photo, setting after setting -- it was glorious!

This is the breadfruit plant that thrives in the southeast corner of the yard, under a canopy of fern pine and hopseed. I loved the way the light was shining through this newly-unfurled leaf.

My neighbor's queen palm was blooming, and I had a good view of the fascinating golden cascade. Using the fence as a tripod, I was able to get a nice zoom-in of the blossoms.

Back to the shade and morning light! Bernie has a coleus on the shady bank, the variety is called "Camp Fire." The stems are dark red, nearly black, and the leaves catch the light beautifully. Sadly, the camera didn't want to catch the light except as a glare.

All that warm, pinky lit-from-within color was lost. How can a camera see things so much differently than my eyes? Exploring a light-blocking setting on the camera (for the first time ever) gave a somewhat better result:

From the darkness of the shadows, I moved to full sun on my potted corn plants. After giving me a few delicious ears this summer (it has been a lousy corn year everywhere in the Central Valley because of the high heat), the corn has dried. Beautiful when it's green, beautiful dried, too. When it turns white, I think of it as "ghost corn."

Back to the studio, and Photoshop. I needed a cover image to accompany Ken Dubuque's humorous essay, "Armed and Dangerous." Using some public domain clip-arty images, I was able to cut and paste together a contraption that put me in mind of the mommies who barrel along the sidewalks, shoving huge buggies before them, all the while staring at their smart phones:

The stripes were simply for graphic effect visually, but what was stupendous to me was that in fiddling with settings and tools in Photoshop, I was able to get onto the screen just what I could see in my head.

Between Photoshop and my camera, I was able to capture this antique-colored portrait of Bernie's zinnias. I've always loved how zinnias hold their shape even while their summer color begins to fade.

And finally, since our cell phone joined the ranks of Electronics That Refuse To Do What They Were Meant To Do, Bernie got me a Motorola g6 that has a pretty spiffy camera feature of its own. This is the first photo I took with it, on Monday evening:

My glass of wine! What better subject could there be, at the end of the holiday weekend? And with that tenth picture, if a picture is worth a thousand words, I did achieve 10K for Labor Day. Cheers!

My First Giclee

Joma and I were wandering around Kaiser Permanente Hospital the other day (while Dzyiadzy had a quick routine eye exam) and I noted, on the walls of the halls, some art work whose medium was called "Giclee." (Kaiser has some really, really absorbing art on its walls, displaying local artists' work.)

I was impressed with some of it, but I had no idea what "giclee" was. So I Googled it when we came home. Giclee is an art form, recognized (named?) in 1991. It involves a print of an original work, enhanced by application of other media, such as paint, pastels, pencil, ink, whatever.

HAD to try it out, so I printed out a picture of one of my corn crops in the past, one in which I had leached out much of the color to give a shady look to it. Then I added a couple yellow/orange values to it, some purple, and a bit of green. I was thrilled with the result, even though Bernie viewed it and was unable to see where I had added anything. (It's subtle, okay?)

He went on to snark about "giclee" meaning "pintura por los numeros" in Spanish, which was rather rude, but kind of funny, too.

The main drawback I see is the cost of printer cartridges, but it was fun to add my own highlights to my own photo and come up with something a bit different. I have another print waiting for me on the work desk, but tomorrow is tentatively "oils" day, and I plan to stink up the studio with solvents on multiple canvases, throw convention and decorum to the wind, and paint like a maniac.

Not Good Art

Now that Christmas and Thanksgiving are past, I felt I could finally talk about this image from BHG in 2016.

The photo credit is a person named Andy Lyons, with "Prop Styling" by Sarah Cave.

What was the title? "Turkey with Gonads"?

The Moon and I

Never was able to take a picture of a full moon before, without the image horribly over-exposing. My "old" camera just couldn't do it. This image was taken with the "new" camera, a Sony DSC H400. And no tripod.

Not yet, anyway. I love the ZOOM on this new camera, but wow, I have to seriously lean on something and hold my breath to use it. When the moon was full last week, I leaned against the back of the house, held up the camera ... I did not know until then that the camera will focus even if you're not touching the shoot button.

I'm a little intimidated by a camera that's smarter than I am.

Bernie's Nemesis

This little fellow has been wandering around the kitchen ceiling for days.

I've always had a fondness for jumping spiders; they're feisty and independent, fast and furry. If you poke at them, they'll hop away, but if you're persistent with your pestering, they lose their tempers and will hop at you.

That's what had Bernie worried. When was this spider going to have enough of intruding humans in the house and go on a rampage?

Spider was exploring the kitchen island when I spotted it, just ambling along, checking to see if any slices of home-made pizza had been left out. I got my camera and had an interesting photo-shoot with the close-up focus ... but I couldn't get too close because Spider would get aggressive, throw front legs in the air, and jump on the camera.

It was fairly annoying to the bug, but what an expression when I used the flash:

Mooned

Since we have had few clouds lately, I had a chance the other night to photograph the moon in the evening sky.

I tried every setting on the dial on my camera (except video) and frankly, except for a couple settings making the sky appear more blue, the focus remained the same. Apparently the trick is to get the photo before it gets dark.

Over at the Resolution Blog, I've posted another moon picture, one I tinkered with a little in Photoshop.

Artsy Fartsy

I wanted to do an illustration for Pete McArdle's funny story, "The Scarsdale Doctors Diet" in the Piker Press. I took a bunch of pics of the full moon on Sunday night, and got one that wasn't horrible.

But I could even do that in Photoshop without the photo! It wasn't dramatic enough as a moon shot, and I spent a pointless twenty minutes looking for a tree silhouette in public domain stuff on line ... then realized I have lots of tree silhouettes in my own photos.

In my Flickr account, I found one that seemed to fit the bill: a nice silhouette, a sky that was not too busy, colors that were simple.

Then I bled the black out of the moon shot, (trying to get a blue background instead of a black one) and turned to the other photo. I inverted the colors on the tree shot to make the branches come out white, selected the blue color from the bottom of the inverted pic -- a nicer blue than I came up with on the moon pic -- and spread it upward on the sky of the tree image. Back to the other pic again.  I selected the sky on the moon shot with the "Magic Wand" tool, inverted the selection so that I got only the moon, and pasted it on the tree shot. Yeah.

I did some tinkering with the blue colors and the "Paintbrush" tool (making it about 50% opacity and a fuzzy edge) and scrubbed at the sky a little -- I didn't want it perfectly homogenous, but didn't want a lot of variation, either.

By this point, I'd spent about 40 minutes from inception to a reasonable product. Four years ago, it would have taken me all day and a case of the hives to boot. Practice, practice, practice. Do, do, do. Dang, it pisses me off when good advice really does pan out if you take it. Could not my artistic ability have sprung forth fully-formed from the brow of Zeus and saved me all the sweat and nerves and twitches?

With the final image on the screen, I reduced the size, and got one of the best Photoshop images I ever thought I'd get.

My, that sure feels fine.

Ketchup

This is the best Moon picture I've ever taken with my Sony camera. I used the action setting and it came out pretty good. We've been sitting outside in the evenings, in the shade of the eucalyptus tree, watching ants move their colonies into my raised vegetable beds. Like geese flying south, or dogs shedding their summer undercoats, ants moving eggs is a sure sign that autumn is nearby.

This evening sitting time cuts into blogging time, and as a result, I haven't had many entries over the past couple months. I'll make up for that with some mightily-compressed paragraphs, bringing readers and myself up to date.

We rented a truck and bought a cord of almond wood. The suspension on the Chevy Prism (2000, and 281,000 miles) is really getting rough, and without an income, replacing the Vibe (2003) isn't an option, so we opted out of ferrying the wood in the cars' trunks and spent a few Andy Jacksons and got the wood. It's stacked now, after one of the most pleasant stacking experiences I've ever had; the weather in the mornings has been wonderfully cool (it was only over 100 degrees when we picked up the wood) and I could take as much time as I needed to bring it in and find niches for each piece. I swear every other year we got wood coincided with a hellish heat wave. Also, possibly because Dink is off pasture and in a paddock, I may have better upper-body condition from shoveling horseshit cleaning up after him.

Ah, Dink. The old man is in fine fettle at 23 years of age, still good under saddle so that I can ride him out alone if need be. He's feeling quite feisty for his years, and I've had to really ride like I know what I'm doing as he prances and postures, like liquid, like wind-blown clouds, surging forward, lofting side to side, as we prepare to ride out into the orchards. I rode today, too; although he was an asshole prior to the ride, he was perfect on it. Good horse.

Joan (also called JoMa) is in a phase of vocabulary-building known as the Screaming Meemies. Can't figure out what she wants? She will pierce your eardrums for you until you do with a scream that is incredibly high-pitched and pure mind-blasting sound. I can't wait for her to grow through this one. She's also taking a few steps, but can still travel faster quadrupedally.

Lillian started school at the Historic Durham Ferry campus of Venture Academy. Already we can see a difference in her homework assignments: she's expected to learn practical English and math! After six years of schlock and stupidity, (no wait, her fourth-grade teacher was really good) it looks like she will finally learn something that might actually stand her in good stead.

Bernie has expanded his culinary skills to include tempura and a kickass key lime pie.

I tackled a new cooking skill, too. Mine had to do with buying whole squid, and learning to clean and cut them up. But that's a whole blog post of its own, and I hope you'll check back for "Dancing with the Squid" in days to come.

A Challenge!

Not one for letting me alone, Lydia Manx gave me a poke and suggested that we write 10,000 words over Memorial Day Weekend.

She didn't wait for my answer, because she knew what it would be and how I would phrase it -- so she quickly amended it to a picture being worth a thousand words, thus a 10-picture challenge.

I could do that.

The pomegranate tree got a photoshoot, with  guest appearances by a nasturtium and an artichoke.

The result of the challenge can be seen at Palmprint Gallery.

More Art Bits

One of the stories in the Piker Press the other week was "Me" by Michael Price.

The story is about a very self-absorbed young man, and I remembered I had a pic of a narcissus stowed away in my Flickr account.

But while a narcissus may symbolize self-absorption, garage siding, the front bumper of a Vibe, and the neighbor's tree do not.

In Photoshop, I copied the leaves on the bottom left, and pasted them on other parts of the photo. Then I 'selected' only the narcissus flower itself and put it on top. A 'paint daubs' filter gave me the texture I was looking for, and thus I ended up with an illustration that pleased me greatly.

 
I do believe I also used Edit-->Transform-->Scale before I did the 'paint daubs' treatment.

And added a border by pasting the color pic onto a new field of black, merging the layers, and cropping off all but a medium frame of black.

This goes to show that we should take pics of everything in case you ever need a pic of anything.

Maybe someday I'll even have a use for my photo series "Things on the Back of Trucks."

Autumn Arrangement

Some filthy gophers killed John's artichoke plant this summer, but not before it bloomed. The dried heads are beautiful, though, retaining their purple color. Beside them sits an old tequila bottle with fern bracken in it. An autumn display.

I thought it would make a nice composition, but it really didn't. I don't know if the fern pine was too distracting, with its bluey-greens, or if it was just too "staged."

'Tis okay to fail with compositions, though. Not every photo op works out well. (Look at the pics of starlets at openings and events -- argh.) The main thing is to just keep trying. The more you try, the closer you get to what you want to present.

There is a photographer/writer I know, whose pictures are always inspiring, and when she doesn't keep uploading pics to her gallery, I feel the lack deeply. I want to shout at her to take more pictures, good, bad, indifferent, just get them up there and let me see she still has the passion.

Yeah, I need to do that, too.

Day Twelve: Truck Day

The start was in Arkansas, the morning so hot and humid that my sunglasses fogged up as soon as we left the motel room.

Arkansas looks a lot like Tennessee, which looks a lot like Virginia, which looks a lot like West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania ... you must understand that aside from the topography, and the strangely brown rivers, ponds, streams, we weren't seeing much that was different. I saw a few butterfly weed wildflowers today, but nothing took my breath away.

After the first hour of "same old" I saw a truck carrying something (I have no idea what) with massive chains securing the load to the flat of the truck. I wished my camera had been ready to take a picture of it.

That's it! A quest! I unpacked my camera and prepared to take pictures of Things on the Back of Trucks.

My friend Bill (see above post of Day Nine) is fond of doing projects that are a series, in part because once you have a series, you find yourself doing multiple works instead of just one effort and then lying down on a sybaritic couch with wine and goodies to congratulate yourself. Thus, the idea of a photo series excited me with the prospect of at least six hours to exercise my photographic skills.

I snapped pics of trucks as we overtook them, looking for something interesting, juggling the zoom, trying to ride the bumps in the road. A silly project, to be sure, but instead of hating the slow trucks we got stuck behind, I welcomed the prospect; and it kept me alert and watching, rather than yawning and checking my watch and map over and over again.

As we overtook trucks on the two-lane I-40 West, I felt giddily akin to the Plains Indians as they rode alongside the buffalo on horseback, poised to let fly an arrow into the heart of the thundering beasts at close range. Rumbling along the rough road, I would position my camera at my window: if Bernie was passing them too quickly, I'd miss my shot; if a bump in the road bounced me, I'd get something I wasn't aiming at; if I didn't aim right, the camera would automatically focus on the smashed bugs on the windshield and not the truck I wanted.

No, it wasn't an exhilarating experience, but it did make the day pass quickly. In fact, by the time the drive was nearly done, and I had to put the camera away, I was moderately annoyed that about four trucks with really interesting loads appeared.

What to do with the pictures? I'm not yet sure, but I'm encouraged that I want to play with them in some manner.

Having vowed to stop early on the far side of Oklahoma City, we did so, but defected from our preference of Holiday Inn Express when we stopped there, only to find that they lied on their website and did not indeed accept pets. Over the fence we went, to La Quinta Inn, whose rooms have very high ceilings (airy-like) and is very pet-friendly. (Howie approves.) Though the wind and the heat made us feel blow-torched when we arrived, a swim in the cool indoor pool helped us to relax; I have two bottles of water in the mini-fridge for the morning draught, and their soap smells very, very nice. Tomorrow should put us in New Mexico.

I haven't decided whether or not to continue the "Trucks" series, but my camera battery is charging anyway.