Ha ha, in my last post I said I wasn’t doing much post processing these days and so of course the next thing I did was this! That always happens to me. I have to be careful about what I say because as soon as I decide something, I want to do the opposite. Are you like that?
Alpine Meadows California and The Rule of Thirds
My focus right now is composition. I’m not doing much if any post-processing. I’ve been experimenting with the Rule of Thirds as described in this outstanding article: Two Seconds to Better Photos by Michelle W.
I like how those turned out, but sometimes during my photo shoot walk, I grew frustrated and just put the subject in the middle. I love the knot hole in this dead tree.
Here’s the same tree from a different angle, obeying the rule of thirds, at least a little more.
I do prefer the composition of the second photo.
Here’s another one where I just wanted the subject in the middle. I call it, Standing Tall.
And last but not least, I loved the majestic mountain and the sky at this moment. I think the rule of thirds wouldn’t work with this, but I don’t know. I like that big peak right where it is.
A Paris collage
Paris really is beautiful, just like everyone says! Here is a collage that shows the images which have stuck the most strongly in my memory.
What you can do at the grocery store
During my writing retreat last week, my critique partners and I went to the grocery store to stock up. I was useless because I started taking photos in the produce department.
Fortunately, my friends indulged me. Nothing like spending time with people who understand you!
What the lens reveals
A very strange and unfamiliar thing happened in my neck of the woods yesterday.
It rained.
This is a thing to celebrate, big time. But I was kicking myself for not taking pictures of the tree blossoms yesterday. Or any day over the last couple weeks since they first appeared.
As I neared the house after driving home from the dentist, a little sun filtered through a thin patch in the clouds making the blossoms on our neighbors’ trees glow. I was surprised by the beauty of the combination light! I parked, dashed inside to get the camera and came back out, stopping to photograph some tangerines:
The delay cost. The light flattened out again as the cloud cover increased. I’d missed the shot.
This disappointment led me to try something new, however– a macro of a branch from a different tree, using the blossoms as a background. Rain drizzled all around my shoulders and droplets marred my lens, but when this photo opened on my computer, I found the lens had captured the very sunlight I craved, glowing off that branch.
The sun is back out this morning! I went out to get you an update and caught a rainbow. I wouldn’t have even noticed it if I hadn’t been trying to catch the trees in the sunlight. I saw it through the camera lens. Needless to say, I shifted focus to capture the rainbow.
You can see a lot of the blossoms fell off the tree. This is what happens to our cherries every year. We get really excited about zillions of cherry blossoms and then it rains and we get about 50 cherries, which the birds eat before they are ripe. One year and one year only, we had hundreds of cherries. I’ll never forget that crop!
I’m not sure what kind of trees these are, but the blossoms remaining after the hard rain are lovely in the fresh washed sunlight.
A February evening
I have taken a lot of pictures of dead trees because they have their own kind of sculptural beauty. But as we get further along in this drought, I thought I would start appreciating living trees!
I hope they all survive.
Spring is coming
I’m very happy to be on a “writer retreat.” One of my critique partners moved away almost 2 years ago and is back for a visit. We’re spending a few days surrounding a Donald Maass workshop (The Fire in Fiction) to talk about our goals, projects and life. While technology has allowed us to continue meeting via Google chat, face-to-face time satisfies a human need for connection on a deeper level, I find. What do you think?
Although we haven’t earned spring or summer in California because we’ve had a long string of days like this (today):
I’m still excited by the first signs of spring. Look at this little visitor who came to our driveway a couple days ago.
The joy of being a beginner
I’ve been writing for a long time. I still have so much to learn, but some things are getting easier.
I did not love being a beginner writer. I declared my major English in college during my first English class because I found it so hard to express my ideas and I wanted to be as articulate as the teacher. I sought out writing in all my jobs and ended with an 18 year career in technical writing, and though I’ve been writing and studying fiction for many years, I consider myself about 30 years old (assuming a 100 year lifetime, hopefully). I still have tons to learn (one of the things I love about writing) but am able to write and edit my stories. (A new novel is in the works!)
I’ve been taking photos for a year now. My blog made me do it! Seriously, I love shooting photos and sharing them with you and really love looking at your photos. Then I wanted to do some art and quickly grew frustrated with all the supplies and mess. Although it is fun and I want to do more.
My husband observed this frustration and mess (he took the above photo), knows I love my computer, and bought me a Wacom Bamboo. The digitizer tablet came with Corel Painting Essentials, which I love. After trying digital painting and drawing, I found myself wanting to return to paper for those things, but really enjoying the auto photo painting.
I enjoy being a beginner with art.
Piano is something I spend a little time on every day.
I’m not an absolute beginner, though. I taught myself to read music as a kid and then had lessons. I would say I’m just a tad above beginner. I’m trying to unlearn bad habits and learn the timing carefully in the songs. I find this phase a tad frustrating so I set a modest goal to be able to play 4 songs well by the end of the year. This goal allows me to enjoy the process and not turn it into work.
Since I started skiing so young and grew up on a ski slope, I’m an expert in that realm, though on the bottom level of expert. I am not into extreme skiing and have no desire to improve.
I’m completely happy with my level and skiing for me is just about the joy of nature, the freedom of movement and the satisfying feeling of working my muscles. It’s also about sharing giggles, skiing stories, and good food and grog with friends and family.
With yoga I’m a total beginner. I avoided yoga because I’m stiff and the one time I went to a class everyone was doing amazing things and moving quickly through poses. I couldn’t keep up and it hurt. I hated yoga. But last fall, after getting off a 12 hour flight with an overall stiffness to my body that wouldn’t go away, and finding myself not at all motivated to get back into my weight-lifting routine, really in a state of desperation, I went to a yoga class at my YMCA.
It was called Adaptive Yoga. I figured if the yoga was adapted to people with various physical restrictions, it should work for me! And I stumbled upon an amazing teacher. I started going to all six of her YMCA classes because I love the work (enjoy the journey), want to make progress (a general, wide-open goal), and the classes make me feel well physically and mentally (a constructive, healthy journey). The teacher shares about her yoga journey and encourages us to embrace our own yoga journey while she carefully guides us through various poses.
I enjoy thinking of myself as being at the start of a lifelong journey of working with my muscles, bones, and joints, taking care of them, and increasing my ability to do poses. It should be frustrating to be so stiff. But beginning yoga has really taught me how to pursue an art:
- Enjoy the journey.
- Define success as showing up and doing the practice.
- Have very general goals like regular practice and improvement.
- Don’t compare yourself to others.
- Make rapid initial progress.
- Build new neural pathways, which is good for your brain.
- Socialize, which is also good for your brain, not to mention your spirit.
- Cure midlife blues by starting a new journey.
Ghost moon and the start of Spring
This was the moon last Thursday night:
Flowers are starting to pop up around here in No. Cal. I took these with my Android phone while waiting for my friend to join me for lunch at Krung Thai. These are not up to iPhoneography snuff (what’s with the filmy effect?), but I wanted you to see early signs of Spring and had to use the tool I happened to have on hand.
Lunch was amazing. All I had was a vegetable saute, but the chef made that taste unbelievably good.
Occasionarian diary 3
As I shared in Being an occasionarian, I’ve shifted to mostly veg.
There are so many great things to eat that are vegetarian. Perhaps my favorite are the things you can have with afternoon tea. These are Kolaches, which I pulled from one of my favorite old cookbooks:
Here’s a better picture of the English shortbread cookies, which are also from Great Home Cooking in America. (I only have three shapes of cookie cutter, hence the shamrocks… but it is February, so the shape seems appropriate!)
These root vegetables and garlic look so pretty waiting to be prepared:
And then there’s breakfast:
I recently saw the Alfred Hitchcock movie, Vertigo, and ever since, I’ve wanted to have three dimensions in my photos. So I didn’t crop these photos, wanting to leave indicators of the three dimensions in them.
Nicci Carrera 