ATC a day for August, day 14

Can't keep my hands off the photoshopping............

I really like all the subtle differences in these leaves. I may have to plant some of these; I love all the variation in color as the leaves age (I presume).





















But you knew I couldn't leave well-enough alone, didn't you?
























There is definitely something in my core that needs all that color.

ATC a day for August, day 13

I did some more packing-tape transfers yesterday. I tried to keep the backgrounds pale, so that there was some transparency....

The technique is kind of annoying. I'm used to moving stuff around until it's just where I like it. With the tape, once you touch the paper, well, that's where it's staying, and if you don't like it, too bad for you. So I guess it's practice in not being so control-freaky. I do like the effect of the greater/lesser transparency.

That tape is really narrow, I'd just like to say. It seems wide enough, when you are sealing up packages, but when you are hunting through magazines for interesting images which will fit, well, you realize that it's really narrow.

I've never liked any words I've put into my collages, but using words this way -- a hunk of words that are not exactly out of context, but which don't hold together in coherent sentences.... I like them.

ATC a day for August, day 12

Yesterday I did a bunch of packing-tape transfers. I used an office-supply store's "best quality" tape, because that's what I had. It is thick and supple.

I discovered that the pic better have a bunch of white in it, or you can't tell at all that it's a transfer. I did a few with no white at all, and they might as well have been cut-outs from the paper itself. Why bother making a transfer?

This is the most sucessful. I did a two-piece montage (laid the penguin on the text, then applied the tape) to make the transfer, and then glued the transfer to cardstock.

ATC a day for August, day 11

I actually did some hardcopy experimentation this afternoon. I'd never done packing-tape transfers, and I tried some. They worked as easily as everyone says. They are still drying.

I think I need a teeny punch. I mean -- a punch that punches teeny holes. I'm thinking I'll apply the transfers to ... something else, not sure what, with some little bitty brads..............

In the mean time, haven't been able to walk away from the digital images.

Back to black and white -- this is the same zebra view from the other day, only now it's been reduced to only two values. Much better.

I spent a lot of time on that zebra tail, smoothing out the edges. I googled for a better solution, and found one -- use the "median" part of the "noise" filter. MUCH better, not so hands-on!

This is much better than the first attempt (a couple days ago). It reminds me of a fingerprint.......





















When I tried to clean up the edges of this zinnia, I lost the center. So I selected the center, inverted the selection, and did a very minimal two-pixel "median" "noise" filter, and came up with this:

PhotoFriday Four

PhotoFriday's challenge this week is Four.

Like lots of people, I'm finding that my pics have more odd-numbered things than fours.....

I'm not much into symmetry.

For me, the exuberant curves, leaves, and blobs work together to rescue this piece from the constriction of perfect four-cornered replication.

ATC a day for August, day 10

Continuing yesterday's theme.......

I'm sure you are all sick of hearing me gush about how much I LOVE that I can mess with my pics like this, but I do. Love it.

ATC a day for August, day 9

I keep thinking I'm going to do some hard-copy media, but I keep on messing with Photoshop Elements.......

Maybe some hard-copy over the weekend. One advantage to computerized images that I hadn't thought about before I began this ATC-a-day thing is that my aged eyes can SEE just as well at night as during the day, when the image is made of light rather than pigment!

ATC a day for August, day 8

I can't decide if I'm happy with this, or not...........

I saw that the "Inspire Me Thursday" challenge was Black and White, and I had this zebra I'd been playing with.................... So I jacked up the contrast and cut away the background.............

I think it's growing on me. I love how the stripes go, on its tail, and I like the figure/ground ambiguity.

ATC a day for August, day 7

I tried some things today that didn't work out. Here are the best of what I managed. The first two seem ... unfinished. I like the rose the best, as they currently stand..........

ATC a day for August, day 6

Here's a fragment of a pic I took of a leaf.





















Here it is, with the contrast jacked up.





















Now let's shove the hue back and forth.....

























Ok, but sort of ... tame.

At this point, I replaced some of the color with something different, so it wouldn't be so bi-color.....

These are definitely not tame!

ATC a day for August, day 5

My first attempt at a totally-in-photoshop collage using totally different images. The background is a rusty garbage can lid, the gingko leaf is itself (unfortunately not the crispest of photos!), and the dots are a button. Love the drop-shadows!

I decided to photgraph a bunch of buttons, so I could use them in collage. That's a pain -- cleaning them all up, saving them separately..... But I'll be glad later.

Here are two versions. This one "just" with heightened saturation and contrast:





















This one with the "poster edges" filter:





















They both look kinda blurry to me -- not sure if it's just that my eyes are tired of looking at the screen, or if they're ... just blurry.

ATC a day for August, day 4

Having too much fun with photoshop elements. I took a coneflower image caught with my camera in Chicago a couple weeks ago. Removed the color, posterized (four values), cropped, and got this:





















Then I colored it. I started by cutting out the white parts of the petals and putting an adjustment layer behind. Then I selected the slightly shadowed parts of the petals and made a new layer by cutting. I lightened their opacity so that the yellow showed through. Then I selected the lightest parts of the center of the flower, and painted them, and repeated that with the next lightest parts of the center.

Hmm. Ok, not thrilling.





















Now let's put it in color enhancement and shove the hue and saturation around.

Ooooh. Much better.





















Let's do that some more!!!




























Love that bright, saturated color!

ATC a day for August, day 3

Not so hot today! Yay!!!!!!!!! We'll celebrate with some green.......





















Some more black and white...............






















Some more nice cool blues and greens. My favorite part of this image is the way the gray pointy clouds trail off (on the left) in front of the white puffy clouds.

ATC a day for August, day 2

Today I was able to get started while it was still light enough to see. Pretty much.





















Here's a way to cope with it being too dark to see color....

fire, no string

Ok, couldn't resist removing that stringy branch thing..... I do like it better like this.

ATC-a-day for August with Carmi

Carmi decided to do an ATC a day for the month of August. She invited anyone who wanted to join in.

I have been doing photography almost to the exclusion of everything else, and I wanted to get back to some "hardcopy media", so I jumped on her offer.

Well. Ok. I hope these don't suck.

I came home from work, and it was over 100 heat index, and we don't have a/c. So we went out to dinner so we wouldn't have to cook. When we got home, eek, it was not only still H O T, but getting dark! I never work after dark, I just can't SEEEEEE. If I can see lines and shapes (get out the reading glasses!), I can't see the color.........................

So I sat there, sticking to the chair (ick), and magazine pages (my usual ATC medium) were rumpling before I even opened the glue, just from the humidity........

Oy.

[putting on teenager voice:] I mean, like, *totally* sub-optimal working conditions............................

And then after that, there was blogger-wrestling to try to get the images up......

Ok. Enough excuses.

My usual ATC's are extremely edited images from magazines. One (1) piece of paper. I think I misunderstood copyright when I started doing this -- I thought I owned *that copy* of the image and could do whatever I wanted with *that one copy*. Not make any copies of it, but just use that one copy. I now think that if the image is recognizeable as someone else's work, it's not ok. I'm not throwing out my binder of work, but I'm not showing them anywhere, nor am I trading them.....

I hope this next one is edited down enough that it is no longer recognizeable -- I include this as example of my "usual ATC" (and because it's really HOT -- though, I bet, fire is a *dry* heat, unlike Michigan's heat, which is not).

(I've been photoshopping everything -- I would so remove that thing that looks like a string that is horizontal across the branch, if the photo were the final product here. But if the photo is supposed to look like the original, well, I'm stuck with it.)






















Ok. Intro over.

I am pretty sure the following are Just Fine, copyright-wise.

I wanted to use orange, not only because I love it, but because it is so flipping hot here. Also -- I really like contrast................

Note that I have doubled my usual number of pieces of paper, *and* I have ripped the paper (unheard of, all my other ATCs have rectangular edges, only, even the ones that have multiple pieces of paper).

I hope these photos are reasonably representational. I used incandescent light, not daylight, and I had to stand at a funny angle to avoid glare, so then I had to try to square them back up, and the dimensions weren't quite right.....

leaving Chicago

.

Before I am finished with Chicago, I will show you some random parting images.

I took several pics of the "corncob" apartments. The lower sections are where the residents park their cars. I found it amusing to look at the rear ends of so many cars, all neatly arranged.........





Something else amusing -- flying buttresses, well, flying, way up in the sky.

Note also the lake, visible from our friend's 35th floor hotel room. At least this month. There is so much construction, it may not be visible next month.





A close-up -- lion on the old public library building.





More flowers-in-planters.



More leaves, plant in a planter.





Another shot of the Cloud Gate. This sort of sums up my Chicago experience. Excellent things to see, excellent buildings to look at, many many pics taken. (Your faithful renderer pretty much in the center of this image.)





This is the last pic I took in Chicago. Go there. Spend a week or more. I was only able to scratch the surface in these few days.



.

foodie postcard swap

Ok, I'm not really a foodie, but I have aspirations.....

I joined Meeta's Blogger Postcards from Around the World swap.

Thanks for organizing this, Meeta! I'm enjoying seeing all the cards on people's blogs!

Here is the postcard I mailed today. We have lots of aspens and birches growing in the sandy soil of the upper part of Michigan's lower peninsula.

(If you look at a map of the USA, Michigan's lower peninsula is the mitten shape, surrounded by enormous lakes, at the northern edge of the country. If you ask a Michigander where something in Michigan is located, she will hold up her flat hand and point to part of it -- "Torch Lake is over here, by the tip of the little finger" for example.)