Waterfalls are cool to begin with.
I am not trying to improve on nature.
I’m just having some fun with it.
Mixing it up a little.
Showing that there are always new ways to look at things.
And really, isn’t that all art really is?
Think of these as alternative facts…
You know… for nature…
What I love about this series is the deceptive simplicity of taking random Google images, copying part of them in Photoshop, flipping that part over to make a mirror image, and then sticking the pieces back together, is that you never know what they will end up looking like.
Those are both done from the same image of a beach at sunset. This time, I just copied the entire image before doing the mirror effect. I simply made the canvas… the working area of the picture… bigger. In one, I moved the image to the left before copying it. In the other, I moved it right. But when I stuck them together, something magic happened.
I did the same thing with the second set of images, more or less.
In one, you get a strange lagoon, and in the other, a weird, symmetrical point of land.
That one, unless you are paying attention, might seem to be an unaltered photo. I did the cut right through the middle of the sun. Only the kaleidoscope effect gives it away.
That one, on the other hand, is a little more obvious.
The thing is… Hey, thing, it is good to have you back… I am still playing around with macro super-close-up photography.
As per the suggestion of my son-in-law, who loaned me the three macro lens spacer thingies that I have been playing with, I tried using them with my big zoom lens attachment.
He said this meant I could move a little further back, and eliminate the problem of the shadow of my own lens getting in the photo.
It did solve that problem, but created another one: now, I am having trouble getting those really close up images I am looking for.
Don’t get me wrong, these are still nice photos.
It also does nothing to address another issue with macro photography. The field of focus is small. Only a tiny portion of any picture is in focus. I can get around this by cropping the image to just the in focus sections, but as an example, is any part of the above photo in focus???
That is a good shot of a tiny star jasmine flower.
I guess the point is that I am having fun learning.
Okay…
I swear…
This is the very last of these posts I am going to do…
That involve pairs yoga…
HA!
Okay, I know I already posted a bunch of super-close-up-macro photos of the projects I made when I took that glass blowing class… and, yes, I realize that the title of this series is a stretch, even if you do speak some Spanish… but there is a twist this time.
You see, this time, I was really still just trying to figure out which of the three macro lenses gets the best results… and I suddenly remembered something my wife got me when we were in Maui. It was a glass jellyfish, encased in a flat-bottomed glass teardrop, the shape and size of which reminded me of my paperweight, the first project I made… yes, this one…
So anyway, after taking a couple of photos…
Just as a test, you know…
That is when I remembered the jellyfish… which came with a little stand that you can plug in, and it has LED lights on the top that change color. It makes the jellyfish look really cool, and I wondered, what would happen if I put the paperweight on it…
And I have to say, the results were spectacular.
Not only does it fill the glass with an unearthly, ethereal glow, but the colors change, so I could take two or three pictures in the same place, and they would all be different… which I did, as you will see in the next few posts in this series.
Also, try saying ‘unearthly ethereal glow’ five times really fast.
I know, I know, I am stuck on this yoga part of my series where I take images from Google and copy part of it, flip it over, and do a mirror image thing… which is ironic, being stuck on something, given the name of this series…
But the thing is… hey, thing, haven’t seen you around here lately!… that this is just so fun to do, and I never know how the images will end up.
I think the part I like so much is deciding exactly where to select on the image for the best result.
The possibilities are endless, and they are all amusing in their own way. Sometimes, I do it a bunch of times, deleting the new layer and trying again, to make it just a little more weird.
I will leave you with the original image below, for anyone who cares.
And I swear, I am only doing one more doubles yoga post, before I move on to other things.
Okay, this macro photography thing is really confusing me. Like many kinds of art, there are multiple ways to achiever roughly the same effect. All this time playing with the three macro zoom lens my son-in-law loaned me, and he just got around to suggesting that I try using them with my big zoom lens.
I took these photos with the regular lens with the macro lens spacers. I was playing around trying to figure out which size was best. I called him to ask how to keep the shadow of the lens off the object I was photographing. He said the big zoom would let me move further back.
So now I guess I have to start the playing around all over again.
And I started doing that… but I have a few other posts to do first.
But I do love the super close up macro photography. How else would I have known that this small rock, from the collection of small rocks I have picked up in my world travels, had a small mouth on it? It looks a little like a mummified alien head.
Yes, I am still having fun doing the mirror image thing… and yes, I still find it amusing to do them to photos of people doing yoga for now… but I have found that pair yoga, which I didn’t know was a thing, is the funniest yet.
Hey, don’t judge me… you think it is easy living with crack squirrels in your head?
I mean, I did take the photos with my phone, so it isn’t like my good camera, but still… it looks like an alien planet.
But, see, it happened in more than one photo.
And it looked pretty normal just a few minutes earlier.
So… uh… yeah.
Because I was at work the other day, and I was taking a break, and I glanced down, and there he was…
Just looking back up at me from between my size-fifteen feet…
I must admit, my added lines did not really capture his mischievous grin or his tempestuous eyes, but you get the idea. It is the receding hairline on the swept-back forehead that really makes that braid work.
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Pouring My Art Out by Arthur H. Browne is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at https://pouringmyartout.wordpress.com/.
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Pouring My Art Out 