Silhouette Beauty

Trees in winter have a unique beauty as they contrast with the bright gray skies. I was actually at the local zoo today to take a look at the baby elephant, but as cute as she was, it was this tree that caught my eye. Without leaves, the lines and curves of the branches are so interesting.

Wednesday's Word-Compassion

Several wonderful bloggers suggest the idea of choosing a special word for each new year. The idea is that the word is one that will be special to you and provide opportunities for meaningful meditation throughout the year. I love that idea! The problem for me was that I could not settle on just one word! I love words in general and I enjoy pondering their meanings. I decided that I would like to choose a word each week for this year...and I will post it on Wednesdays......hence Wednesday's Word! This week I chose Compassion. I love the definitions and some of the quotes I read when researching this word. Click here to go to the flckr group page for Wednesday's Word and share your special word or words. I would love to hear from you!

Merry Christmas.....and a Freebie

Just a quick Merry Christmas message to all who visit here! I am excited to celebrate the holidays with family and friends over the next couple of weeks. We hope to be able to hug and share at least a little time with each of our special family members. I am so thankful for the blessings that each one brings to our ever expanding tribe!
I have big plans in store for this blog site too! Today, if you look at the menu bar above, you will see a couple of new tabs that I added yesterday. One for a shop page where you can see the beginnings of my offerings for sale and one for a freebie page where I will offer various goodies for you to enjoy free of charge. The first freebie is a computer desktop calendar that is created so that you can add your own pictures to it for the month of January. I am working on a video to demonstrate how to add the pictures using Photoshop Elements or Photoshop and will add a link to it soon for those of you who are unfamiliar with how to easily create your calendar. The shop tab will take you to a page that explains my new shop and hopefully will have many more items added to it soon also!
For now, enjoy......Here is a glimpse of the desktop calendar with my pictures added....Click on the freebie tab above to download the template and add your choice of photos!

Most Memorable Christmas

The births of each of our children and grandchildren has been special and very memorable.The very first one was born just three weeks before Christmas in 1978. The wonder and amazement I felt when looking at this new little guy is something I will never forget. Of course those feelings alternated with the feelings of panic and anxiety! Being a parent has been the hardest thing I have done in my life, and yet also the most rewarding. Happy birthday (a few days late) to Jon!

Birds of Summer 2012

This is my Five on Friday post.....on Saturday! I started getting this ready yesterday, and my husband came home and presented me with a very cool Kindle Fire HD for my birthday. Can you say distraction? So this post didn't get finished til this morning but I had fun playing with my new toy!
As I was doing some more keywording of my photos this week, I noticed how often I take bird pictures. I love the variety of birds (like I enjoy the variety in mushrooms)! They are so unique and interesting.
You can see other Five on Friday posts by clicking this banner:

I am sure there will be lots of treasures there to see!

Mushroom Fun

I am fascinated by mushrooms! They come in so many colors, shapes and sizes and textures. I also like the fact that the more you watch for them, the more you see. It is like a treasure hunt on the forest floor. I began noticing mushrooms while hiking with my husband. When I get tired while on one of our adventures, I find something to stop and take a picture of! One day, I was having trouble finding something to use as an excuse to stop, when I started seeing all kinds of different fungi poking up. The more I looked, the more I found! I think my husband began to wonder if we would ever finish that hike! Since then, I have made a point to look for new and interesting varieties. I also learned that they pop out of the ground like crazy in the fall right after the rains begin. I now have a pretty large collection of pictures. My dad knows about my obsession, so when the ones above appeared in his yard last week, he called me to come and bring my camera.

My 5 on Friday

One of my current projects has been to finally organize and keyword my thousands of photos on my hard drive. I am using Lightroom and find the process enjoyable as long as I spend a limited amount of time each session working on it. I have loved looking back through pictures taken several years ago and remembering how much I enjoyed each month. When I wanted to participate in Kim Klassen's 5 on Friday, I knew just the plan for me! I would choose my favorite five photos that I found in my archives during the previous week and make a quick scrapbook layout of them. The hard part, of course was limiting myself to just five!
These pictures are from 2006 when our oldest granddaughter was turning one year old. She lived on the other side of the continent from us at the time, so I remember how much I treasured the pictures during the times when we didn't see her very often. She has since moved within a few miles of our house and I am fortunate to see her several times each week, but the memories of these early days, is still very special.
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Ten Years

Ten years ago this week, Jon and Krissy met for the first time. Since then, Krissy has become a treasured part of our family life. This picture was one taken with her camera at a family wedding this summer. Since she is often the one family member who consistently remembers to bring her camera and actually take pictures at various events, we often don't get as many pictures of her as of others, but I love this one and couldn't resist congratulating them on this important milestone!
The colors in this picture and card also worked well for the Play Date Cafe color challenge for this week.

Beauty in Decay

This is a collection of four more of the roses I found last week. The combination of the end of the season and the heavy rain, created a different kind of beauty. I really enjoy these last reminders of summer. Soon, the gardeners will prune the bushes down to just a few sticks with thorns.

Dancing Roses and Angel Rose

Last week when I was taking pictures at the rose garden, I enjoyed looking at the textures and shapes that the dying flowers created. These two pictures are some of my favorites. I am not usually a very imaginative observer, but I could easily see the angel in the first one and the two holding hands and dancing in the second. I knew that I would mostly desaturate these, but my final idea came while blog hopping this morning. I visited a new site called The Play Date Cafe. They run a weekly challenge with a color theme, but little else to constrain creativity. I loved the color choices for this week and knew they would work well for the rose pictures that I hoped to create. So this is my entry for this week's Play Date Cafe Challenge! Pop on over to their site to see all the other so very creative entries!

Umbrella Walk

Brianna has wanted to take the pink umbrella out for a walk in the rain ever since she saw it in my trunk. Today was a great day to go for a little hike in the Hoyt Arboretum to look at the beautiful fall trees. It wasn't really raining- more of a mist, but that meant I could have my camera out to capture the delightful pink against all those greens, browns and yellows.
A day with this particular four-year-old is always marked by lots and lots and lots of conversation. I enjoy the observations and questions she comes up with and a walk is a good time to remind myself to slow down and listen, and interact with her and see things from her perspective. I paused a few times to ask her to pose for me and she finally let me know that yet another picture was not really what she cared about.
My first plan after I loaded these pictures on my computer, was to pick my favorite one and scrap a cute portrait type page. But, after looking at the series as a slideshow a couple of times, I felt like the real story here was in the series and in the conversation bits that I remembered.
I was reminded again this week, as I looked through a scrapbook from three years ago, that I just had printed, just how many of the everyday, special details we forget as time passes. I always think I will remember, but without the pictures and journaling to jog my memory, I just don't. My granddaughters love those little scrapbooks and the reminders of days past when we enjoyed them and took the time to record the moment. This is why I scrap and these are the stories I want to keep telling.

Rainy Day Surprise

After a record number of dry, sunny days this summer, the rains have returned to Portland. Things had gotten too dry and I was glad to see the soaking begin. Give me a month or two of wet, dark days and I will sing a different song, but for now I am glad to just grab my umbrella and head out or stay inside where it is warm and dry!
Today I packed up my camera, umbrella, raincoat and tripod and headed for one of my favorite places to take my camera for a walk. The International Rose Test Gardens are just a few minutes from my house and I can always find something interesting to photograph. Today I was fascinated by all the texture and muted colors of fading, wet roses. I took quite a few pictures and I am sure they will show up here later in the week, but as I was heading back for my car, I looked out over the garden toward downtown Portland, and the sun had peeked through the clouds just enough to cause the brilliant reflection in the building that you see in this picture. Usually, the view of the city from the garden is hazy and uninspiring, but I loved this quick glimpse of color. It only lasted for about a minute and the flat grey returned.

Thirty-One Years Ago

Thirty-one years ago, I became a mom for the third time! I have been wonderfully blessed to watch my children grow into adulthood but I love remembering them as little ones sometimes. Today I share some of my favorite 'little' David photos! Who could not smile at that face? Happy birthday, son! Oh, and yes, he is kissing a fish in that left photo!

At the Duck Pond

I went for a walk around a pond near my house today. I was hoping for pretty fall colors reflected in the water but it just isn't happening yet. Instead, I kept hearing an insistent squawking coming from the water ahead. The source of the noise was the pair of ducks. I have no idea what kind of birds these are, but they were fun to watch as they interacted with each other. I took a lot of shots of them, but the one I like best is the top one here with the wing of one extended over the other.

Sixty Years

Sixty years ago today, my parents got married. I am enjoying looking through all the pictures from those early years. Happy anniversary, Dad and Mom!

Great, Great Grandpa Was a Jailbird

Last month I had the privilege of meeting a historian from the McCleary Museum in Washington. This is an area where many of my paternal relatives lived, worked and died in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The man who met with me, Charles, was a fountain of information about my ancestors. He has spend hours and hours in local libraries, pouring over old copies of newspapers from a long time ago. He makes copies and files away stories that are relevant to current and former residents of the McCleary area. He had a rather thick file folder full of pictures and articles to show me.
The story of my great, great grandpa and his brush with the law was one I had never heard before. The newspaper article is a copy of a copy of a copy, so I typed out the story for my scrapbook layout. I think these kinds of details are especially interesting when learning about my history...

The Colors of Fall

The Pacific Northwest has had an amazing, sunny, dry summer and fall this year. In fact, we have set a record for the number of rainless days for our part of the world. Even so, those of us who live here know that it will end soon and the rains will come and the days will be dark, cold and wet. Because we know this, we are all savoring each weekend and spending as much time outside as possible. My husband and I spent the weekend near Mt. Rainier, hiking and enjoying the signs of the changing season. Since I love fall colors, I set out to find some pretty leaves to photograph this morning before we needed to head on home to Portland.
We didn't take into consideration the shadows of the hills and I was at first disappointed that all the forest we were driving through was still in shadows even at 9:00 in the morning. Vine maple just comes alive when the sun hits it and that is what I wanted to photograph. We finally stopped at the place I remembered seeing such pretty leaves in years past and decided to just wait a bit for the sun to cooperate. My ever patient honey went to have a seat, knowing that I would be awhile!

About this time, I remembered reading about how if you slow your shutter speed down while photographing the sky at dusk, it brings out lots of pretty colors. I decided to see if the same would work on leaves in the shade. Out came the tripod.........

I loved the colors! What fun!
After I played around for awhile, the sun finally caught up with me and I did get a few brighter lit pictures. I think I might be a bit partial to the shaded ones now though!

I especially like the textures in this last one.

The Story Behind the Photo

Everyone has a story....or two....or a hundred! It might be a story of a special birthday or anniversary, or it might be a story of the birth of a child or grandchild. It could be the story of your vacation or your journey through a difficult illness. We all know stories that we have heard since we were young, of ancestors who made an impact on their world, and consequently on ours. We have funny stories, sad stories, inspiring stories, and stories that bring back precious memories.
Many of these stories are accompanied by photographs. Sometimes there is one, special, precious photo to remind us of an event and other times there are hundreds. Those photos are in boxes, closets, under beds, shoved in drawers and attics. Some are fading away in old albums and some are still on the memory cards of digital cameras or the hard drive of a computer. Most are not stored in a way that they can be easily enjoyed and more importantly, in my opinion, they are not joined together with the stories that they so wonderfully illustrate. We think we will remember the stories or we will write them down 'some day' and put all those photos in albums to enjoy and to show our children and grandchildren.....Hmmm....really???
This is a copy of one of the photos in one of my many boxes:

Now, to me, those boys are cute and any picture with them in it is important to me, but this one has a special family story behind it.......

 

The story makes this picture so much more than two little boys playing around. It's one we love to remember as our children are having babies of their own now. This is just one little part of our family story.
What is your story?  What photos do you have that are special to you because of the story they tell. Will your descendants be able to enjoy them? Maybe you have a lot of story, with only a few pictures or a lot of pictures to illustrate a special story. I either case, I challenge you to tell your story!
I will be posting more ideas in days to come on this subject...I invite you to add your comments and thoughts below.....Watch also for a link to a special place where you can share your story with others....Coming soon!

Promise of Beauty

I just couldn't resist adding one more flower picture from my class last week! This time, however, I am also working on a technique from the blogging class I am taking from Kim Klassen and Xanthe Berkeley. If you hover over the above picture with your mouse, you should magically see the picture before I edited it. I love that! ......and it only took me a couple of hours to get the code right so that it works! You can find out more about Kim and Xanthe's class by clicking here.

Dahlia With a Twist

I attended an awesome seminar by Denise Ippolito yesterday. We began just before sunrise at the Swan Island Dahlia Gardens in Canby Oregon. The flowers were abundant and gorgeous and I took tons of pictures. I learned a lot about operating my camera and actually took almost all of my pictures in manual mode, which was new for me. After several hours, we headed to the Portland Garden Club where we took a quick look at our pictures and listened to a program by Denise about her post-processing work flow. Her photos are definitely inspiring and her love for her work in contagious.
The day was rounded out with Denise directing some specific assignments to expand our creativity, at the International Rose Test Garden. I ended up with a lot of pretty flower pictures, but the one above was my favorite. I love the way the petals flow and curl. I think they look almost like a sea anemone. The original picture didn't quite capture the scene as I saw it in my head so I played with it a bit in Photoshop.

Six Months of Sweetness

I was privileged to take photos of my great niece at six months. What a happy, adorable little girl she is! I asked her parents to make a list of some of her milestones and likes and dislikes. These are the little details that we are sure we will remember forever, but alas, we don't!
The other advantage of these pages, is the joy of watching the child as they look at it again and again when they are older. My granddaughters love to hear and see stories from when they were little. I think it reminds them of how much we love them and treasure all the little things about them.

Columbine Black and White

I love the graceful shape of the Columbine flower. I love the long delicate spurs flowing from the bottom and the way the petals unfold on the top. Since I especially wanted to highlight the shape and lines of the flower, I found a black and white version to be most successful.

Hints of Fall

I wandered through Cooper Mountain Nature Park last week looking for inspiration. For the most part, the pretty spring and summer flowers are finished blooming and the grasses and leaves are brown and brittle due to lack of rain. Fall is definitely in the air. I love the colors that will come in a few weeks with the changing season, but this in-between time is not very inspiring. The golden, early morning light however, illuminated this almost hidden treasure tucked into the oak leaves. I doubt I would have even noticed it if not for the way it was lit. I must make an effort to look for the light more often....

I've Been Published!

I was excited to have one of my layouts chosen for publication in the Adobe Photoshop Elements Techniques magazine! It is in the September/October issue. I was playing with a tutorial by Liz Ness in the previous issue, that created a stacked look of several photos on a page. This was a photo shoot of sorts, that I did with my youngest granddaughter as I was experimenting with natural light portraits. These are her ideas of how to best pose for me and I think her personality really shows!
I have been creating a series of background papers to go with my pages lately and the one above is one of my favorites. I think I might make a template from this layout also, because I can see myself using it again soon!

First Day of Second Grade

From the time my first child entered school, I have always tried to take a 'first day of school' picture. I have continued that tradition with my granddaughter. It is so fun to see the growth and changes in each child as they mature- although I must admit, I am kind of sad to see them growing so fast!

Summer's End

I wanted to create a couple of pages for my granddaughter's scrapbook that captured all the fun we had during the last week of her summer vacation. I made sure that I left plenty of room for journaling so that I could list all the things we did. I think we tend to believe that we will remember all these fun, happy times but they fade so quickly as new memories and events fill our days. It is important to me that my family has reminders of how special they are to me and how much I enjoy just being with them! I am a very fortunate grandma to get to spend many of my days with such sweeties!

Summer's End

Although our area is known for dreary, rainy days, Pacific Northwest summers are usually mildly warm and sunny. For about eight to ten weeks, we have very little rain and nice 80ish degree days. It cools down nicely at night. If you live here, you plan every weekend from July through mid-September to be outside doing something....even if it is just sitting and reading a book, because we know the days are growing shorter and soon the rains that keep our hills and forests green, will return.
This year was a bit warmer than usual and I was not very good about keeping my garden watered enough. The poor sunflower plants really never did take hold and grow. I loved the colors and lines in this photo of the shriveled and bent plant. Even in it's state of decay, there is beauty of line, color and texture.

Dahlia in Motion

In the middle of the common area at the retirement home where my father-in-law lives, small parcels of land are carefully tended by individual residents. They grow everything from beautiful roses and dahlias to corn and strawberries. I love to wander through and enjoy the color, textures and variety displayed there. Today, the dahlias stole the show with their infinite shapes and colors. I was practicing with my macro lens and had trouble keeping the blossoms in focus because of a slight breeze that came along from time to time. I actually liked the way this picture turned out because the center stayed focused while the petals fluttered slightly giving the appearance of motion and almost explosive color. I did manage to take a few that were more sharply focused but I think I like this one the best....

Shell in Black and White

The black and white version of this shell shows such wonderful lines and texture that I couldn't resist adding one more picture today! I hope you enjoy it!

BeachTextures

Today I am enjoying a beach in Washington state near Koos Bay. When the tide was out this morning, I explored the shells and other beautiful textures left in the sand. I have tried to take pictures of the many birds in this area, but they just don't hold still like the shells do! I will have to keep trying.

Ballet at Four

 

One of the biggest reasons I record our lives in scrapbook form is to tell our many stories. I like to look back and remember the little details, like the way my granddaughter's four year old feet and hands worked so hard to move through all the different ballet positions and the look of concentration on her face.  I don't worry so much about the quality of the pictures and I don't usually create scrapbook pages that will wow others with their artistry and beauty. I am capturing a special moment in time and telling a continuing story of how important the people in my life are to me.

Macro Beauty

I have a special place where I stash extra odds and ends of cash that come my way, in order to eventually buy the totally unnecessary, but wonderfully cool, camera equipment or digital software that I want. Today, I splurged on a macro lens from Nikon. I am planning a hike with my husband and some friends, into a beautiful area of wildflowers near Mt. Rainier this weekend, and while I imagine most of the pictures I take will be of the vast fields of flowers in this particular area, I am always more drawn to the beauty in the details of individual plants and insects.
I actually started out to the camera store in search of a polarizing filter which will be a necessity for good exposures of the mountain, sky and fields of flowers, but it turns out that the lens I have been eyeing was sitting right there waiting for me at a price I could afford! How could I not buy it?
Anyway, I tried it out in the backyard while my granddaughter was napping and I think it will be lots of fun this weekend!

I love the fluffy details in the yellow 'mini-flowers' and the feathery pink center! Of course, since I am still working on black and white photos, I played a bit with this one that way too.

I think this version shows off the beautiful texture even more! I am not sure which one I like better.

Happy Birthday My Daughter

Twenty-nine years ago, I became a mom for the fourth time and entered, for the first time, the world of little girls! What an adventure it has been. I am proud of the woman our daughter has become and I wish her a happy birthday today. This is the card I made for her- with one of my all-time favorite photos from her childhood.

Black and White Calla Lily

I love black and white photography and one of my goals this year is to learn to create finished images that look more like the ones in my head. To that end, I have been reading and working through the concepts in John Batdorff's book, Black and White- From Snapshots to Great Shots. What an inspiration! His photos are incredible.
While looking for images that will convert beautifully to black and white, I saw this calla lily  tucked into a corner of the Portland International Rose Garden. I loved the way the light shone on it to highlight all the details of this simple flower. I think it makes a wonderful black and white.

Peaches times four

I love  the way early morning light makes objects glow and highlights their form and texture. These peaches were on my kitchen counter this morning and the light was wonderful. Of course, I couldn't just post one copy of the resulting picture! I played with different filters and Photoshop mixer brushes til I had four very different versions. Each one shows a unique view of a very common peach!

Perfect Beach Day

Oregon coast summer days are unpredictable at best. If it is hot inland, it is often cloudy and windy at the beach. This particular weekend was warm and the wind was still. To top it off, we got a gorgeous sunset. My oldest granddaughter enjoyed it to the fullest.
I usually create scrapbook pages in pairs because I prefer the look of continuity when they are printed in the finished book. This is the two page spread for this fun day. I took lots of pictures of the sunset as it unfolded, so I used one of the especially textured ones to layer over a background paper behind these photos. The silhouette of Ali is attached to a mask so it blends into the background. The whole thing just makes me smile!

Going Swimming

This photo of my granddaughter, was taken by my daughter-in-law, Krissy Hemphill, while camping this month. I loved it because of the way the light casts a glow around the cute little curly-headed blond! I asked for a copy of it because I want to include it in the yearly scrapbook I make for each granddaughter. I added a texture overlay and used a mask to frame the page.

Oregon Coast Beauty

This weekend I have the privilege of hanging out on the beautiful Oregon Coast. It is one of those perfect weekends with lots of sun, no wind and gorgeous scenery. I grew up spending many a summer weekend playing in the sand and walking along looking for treasures left by the sea. I never seem to grow tired of the rugged beauty of the rocks and water in this ever-changing landscape.
My goal today was to capture a shot of the typical beautiful water and waves as well as some of the easily over-looked details at my feet. I enjoy the challenge of searching out special textures and shapes in ordinary places and then playing with them a bit in Photoshop to see if I can make a picture that pleases me.

I loved the way the wet rocks in the foreground shone in the morning sun. The tiny dots in the surf, by the way are surfers! There were very few waves this morning, but there were about twenty or so hardy people in wet suits out there!

These are a few of the many photos I took of the details I began to see as I looked more closely around me. I love the driftwood 'bear'! I took a lot of feather pictures and hope to be able to organize them into a pleasing collage of some sort. The shell picture was one of a series that I took while experimenting with depth of field. It actually turned out the way I hoped it would!

Dead Leaves- Blah to Beautiful

I spent a lot of time trying to decide how to begin this blog. Which picture should I use? How much should I share? Would anyone care? I finally decided to just jump in and share what I am working on and tell a little about what I did to create the finished project.
This photo was taken earlier this week while I was out walking in my neighborhood. The leaves were hanging over a fence and I loved the texture of them and their simplicity. As you will see in the following description of my process, they were hanging against a purple fence. I felt that the color really distracted from the texture that attracted me to them in the first place, so this ended up being a tinted black and white project. I also just began playing with a new Photoshop filter called  Fractalius. I use it very lightly, but I love the texture it adds.

I love the way this turned out!