Blog

Nicci Australia, Travel

A rusty wheel… and thoughts on the new year

Tomorrow is the last day of one full year of blogging every day. And today I was dry! I almost blew my streak!

After my triumph with the Australia, interpreted post yesterday (thank you all for the kudos!), I found it impossible to get something else unique. I tried more putting together different photos using layers and textures, but nothing worked out. I thought I was going to miss a day.

Well, I was just looking through my photos and I spotted this one that I hadn’t shared yet. I like it just as it is, just a plain old snapshot.

From Ravenswood in Queensland Australia
From Ravenswood in Queensland Australia

I have to check my WordPress Reader to see how people are doing, but I’ll offer a thought before I do that. Do you feel like we ended the year with a big hurrah and high expectations for the new year? And maybe a lot of goals and resolutions?

The start of a new year coincides with the end of the holidays and can feel anti-climactic. After all, we’re faced with the reality of going back to work. The slog of all these resolutions.

Well, here’s what I learned from last year. I was afraid to check my goals because I knew I couldn’t have done what I set out to do, because I completely changed what I was working on. But I checked them and they were good goals. The specifics of writing x number of short stories and y number of novels, no, that didn’t happened, not in that configuration, but I set a goal to write an average of 500 words a day or 150,000 words total and I exceeded that. I had a goal to blog every day and grow my Twitter followers. Those ones I did. I think it works to have somewhat general goals and leave a lot of freedom to allow things we never thought of to happen.

My advice is to set some goals and then set them aside. Check them next year. They can set a direction for you and the process of checking them at the end of the year is a chance to reflect on what you did do. I didn’t do this, but I did that. I was amazed how much I did, both on my goals and otherwise.

The other advice I have, and really all this advice is mostly for myself, is don’t worry about the big events, the successes, the struggles… those things happen. Mostly life is built on doing a little every day and on showing up. If you just do that, you’ll have a great year.

Nicci Australia, Travel

2013 retrospective, part 3

I learned from Leanne Cole it’s not a big deal to tote along my DSLR. Just use a backpack and you’re good to go!

Or have it nearby so when something amazing happens outside your window you can just step outside and shoot.

I also learned to make sure I have the battery charger in that backpack. These were the only ones I got to take in Australia with the camera due to leaving the charger behind. But I do like them a lot!

SONY DSC

SONY DSC

I learned from iPhone Photographer that there’s a lot you can do with photography with just a phone. I’m going to look for a similar app for an Android.

I learned to think differently from VeganComics. (We’re eating veg 5 days a week and there’s a word for this — occasionarian!)

I learned a lot more from other people’s blogs, but I just highlighted a few things I learned that were reflected here in my own posts.

Happy new year! May it be creative, healthy, peaceful and happy.

Nicci Art school, Australia, High Sierra, Local, Paris, Travel

2013 retrospective part 2

As I said yesterday, through my daily blog I discovered or re-discovered my enjoyment of the arts. In looking back I discovered that I seek out art when I’m traveling.

New York is a gold mine for art. 

Day 18 072 FF Day 18 070 EE Day 18 068 DD Day 18 062 AA Day 18 044 V Day 18 040 U Day 18 027 P Day 18 014 I Day 18 013 H Day 18 005 C Day 18 003 A

Paris is amazing:

Sculpture by Cezanne outside Louvre Cathedral de Notre Dame Bust at the time of Venus de Milo Feature Venus de Milo Ain Ghazal

And Amsterdam is heaven for art lovers, too:

I didn’t go inside any museums in Australia. I would like to do that some day, but I didn’t need to go inside to find art there:

Tomorrow is new year’s eve in the United States and I’ll do my final post of the year about the people I’ve met through blogging and what I’ve learned from others through blogging.

Nicci Art school, Australia, High Sierra, Local, Paris, Travel

2013 retrospective

Leanne Cole inspired me to use the waning days of 2013 to reflect upon the year. I want do this, particularly since this was my first year of blogging.

I do have one more award to post, but I’m going to do that on January 5, on my blogging anniversary.

I know that my blogging style has changed since I started. When I first started, I tried being edgy.

Because I blog every day, though, the “real me” came out quickly and I settled into a pattern of… the arts, I guess. Photography, digital art, book reviews, poetry. In that order, really. Well, travel too, certainly, but I think after I get the photos up from the travels, I like to settle in and spend some time working with the images artistically.

Ravenswood
Ravenswood, Queensland AustraliaRavenswood
Ravenswood, Queensland Australia
DSC00239_Painting
Port Lonsdale, Victoria Australia
Snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef
Snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef
SONY DSC
Before the storm, Saratoga
Impressions 8_Painting
Amsterdam
Bikes_Painting 3
Amsterdam
Horse at the park
Paris
Paris Impressions 1
Paris
At the park 2 Painting Paris
Paris

I’ll post tomorrow about other ways that I think my interest in art came out through blogging. Then I’d like to talk a bit about the people I’ve met through blogging and what I’ve learned from others through blogging.

Nicci Art school, High Sierra, Travel

A painting from Barker Pass, near Tahoe

This took a few hours. The software wasn’t making a good painting out of one of the wildflowers pictures. Finally I did one on Corel Painting Essentials 3 Defaults, then restored detail to the foreground. The restore detail doesn’t seem to be working right in the other painting types. I thought it was just me, but when, with the defaults setting, restore detail started working as shown in the demo video, I concluded there’s something off with the other programs. Anyway, this is art, so I’m not going to worry about precision. I wanted it kind of loose anyway.

I spent a lot of time in Paris making canvases out of photos. I would run one of the painting programs but stop it before it finished. Then I would smear it and then save it as jpg, then use that as a canvas for a digital painting.

With that in mind, I tried making the painting of the wildflowers and opening that in GIMP. Then I opened another Barker Pass photo, one that had just shale rocks in the foreground. I pasted it and then fiddled with the transparency using Color to Alpha. I have no idea what that means. I didn’t bother to look it up because I like how the visually simple rocks in the foreground let the flowers come through and the flowers look like rain, while the smeary background in the wildflowers picture made for a textured sky.

BP lyrd P1000301 E3 dflts dtl rstrd flwrs 297 50 prcnt opcty 2

Nicci Art school, High Sierra, Travel

Something different

There have been a lot of snow pictures in the blogosphere lately, so here is something from summer. I took this in 2011 near Barker Pass in the high Sierra above Lake Tahoe. That was a very heavy, late winter and the snow persisted through July. The late melt fed the wildflowers into an opus of Nature, like she’d come out to show the competition that we humans can never compete! Oh, the Keukenhof Gardens (see posts under Keukenhof Gardens on my Travel page), arguably come close, but even they can’t cover hundreds of miles with this:

P1000301_Painting