photo challenges

weekly photo challenge: express yourself

Were there someone

in the world

who feels as I feel,

we would talk all night

in this grass hut.

                              ~Ryokan*

weeklyphotochallengeexpressyourself

visit The Daily Post to participate in Krista’s photo challenge:  express yourself

*cited:

Sky Above, Great Wind

Kazuaki Tanahashi

weekly photo challenge: shadowed

We meet and we part.

Coming and going–hearts like passing clouds.

Except for the marks of a frosty-hair brush,

human traces are hard to find.

                                                                 ~Ryokan*

DSC_1612Weeklyphotochallengeshadow2

visit The Daily Post to view or participate in Jen’s photo challenge: shadowed

*cited:

Sky Above, Great Wind

Kazuaki Tanahashi

one four challenge…week 4

words of old

whispered today by wind

in the reeds

                                           ~Shohaku

As I was stumbling around Photoshop, I found myself remembering a cartoon which pictured an overwhelmed student with a raised arm and the caption, “may I be excused, my head is full?”

That memory was followed by the remembrance of a meeting with a clinical supervisor who spoke of the importance of going back to the basics…so I exited Photoshop, found the original RAW image, and entered the realm of Lightroom…to begin again with the basic adjustment layers of:

  • highlights,
  • brightness,
  • shadows,
  • darkness,
  • hue,
  • saturation,
  • sharpness, and
  • black and white

I then did some reading about basic composition as a means to explore:  To crop or not to crop?

As I pondered this question, it came to me that cropping this image would narrow the context…the story…as well as the invitation to imagine the various elements  that came together to create this unique image—which, I believe cannot be recreated.

It is the various elements within this image that invites me to contemplate:   How did this leaf come to embrace the grass? Or, was it the grass that embraced the leaf?

The evasiveness to my questions is reflected in the image’s various degrees of blurriness/sharpness and light/shadow and thus I  find myself also wondering:   Was the leaf captured? Imprisoned? Or, was it saved?  

oneinfourweek4final

Jump on over to Robyn’s to join the One Four Challenge

 

The first three of December’s One Four Challenge

second week
third week

One Four Challenge – week 3

Well…what did I do…should have taken notes…hum…

In response to Apple’s recent decision to retire Aperture, I have been exploring Lightroom and Photoshop as  alternative application options…so this week I jumped right into Photoshop and learned rather quickly that I need a tutorial for the various tutorials and that my learning style is most likely one built upon trial and error…but after learning about layers and playing with masking I did create an image that I eventually took into Silver Effects for a final touch up.

Visit Captivate Me to join in the fun

oneinfour123rdwk

one in four challenge – week 2

week two…for this week’s ongoing challenge I went into Perfect Effects 4 and added a layer from a preset, “whiteness”, which I created some time ago, then added a layer from Perfect Effect’s True Film category, “green velvet”, and then found that by playing around with darkening the edges (highlighting, clarity, and shadows) seemed to add more depth of field.

oneinfourchallenge2wk

visit Robyn’s Captivate Me to join this week’s One in Four Challenge!

weekly photo challenge: gone, but but forgotten

over the fields of

last night’s snow–

plum fragrance.

                                                                                      ~Okano Kin’emon Kanehide*

plums and raindrops

spring rain showers

visit the dailypost.wordpress.com to participate in Krista’s photo challenge, “show us something that is lost, but not forgotten,”

*cited:

Japanese Death Poems

Yoel Hoffmann