You’ve seen some of these before. These are digital paintings, though. These take some time to do so I’ll have to post them a couple at a time. These are Victoria.
Here is the Port Lonsdale Pier again. You know what? After all that photo manipulation I tried yesterday, I decided to try Corel Painting Essentials today and I like this one the most.
I took this at night in Melbourne. It is a blurry photo but for a painting that doesn’t matter so much.
I posted before on Port Lonsdale pier here. I have a lightweight version of Photoshop (Essentials) and wasn’t able to export the RAW to jpg again. That first time was kind of an accident! Now I have a bit of software available from Sony for my camera that allows me to open a RAW file, fiddle a bit, and export to jpg. Well, I still don’t have a lot of control, but I kind of like these anyway.
On this one I specified a gray point, whatever that means, but I shifted the color a bit. Took out some blues.
This one is a different angle on the pier. I warmed it slightly. Then I applied a “creative effect” called landscape. Then I quickly typed here what I was doing so I wouldn’t forget. Then I adjusted something called a D-range Optimizer where I added +17 to the Amount of highlighting. (Shrugs.) Then I lowered the highlighting a lot and raised the shadows a little, managing to reduce some of the white foam in the waves. Well, then I switched from landscape to nightview in the Creative Style, applied some noise reduction and voila.
Then again, here’s the original:
Is the fiddled-with one better?… Looking at WordPress Preview…
Looks about the same, ha ha!
I might need to take a class.
We went to an off-the-beaten-track spot for these photos of the famous Barwon Heads. Leanne Cole, our fabulous hostess, friend, and fellow blogger, came to a stop at an intersection in two roads that seemed like they were in the middle of nowhere. “Hmmm,” she said, looking down to the left where the new road dead-ended. “I wonder what’s down there?”
Well it wasn’t long before we were turning left, parking, and exploring.
First we came to this sign:
Then we wondered what this industrial looking smoke-stack type thing was:
And as we wandered I snapped shots of the coastline:
And of course I had to capture a dead tree, or in this case, a denuded crap of brush:
Then Leanne and I settled into trying to shoot stop-action waves while my hubby, the ever happy paleontologist-and-seaman-at-heart studied the rocks and gazed out over the waves.
We arrived late in the day at this magnificent site.
It wasn’t easy to photograph because of where the sun was. But I’ll never forget the peaceful feeling of the place.
I had better luck when I found a sample for my favorite dead tree theme! Albeit a bush in this case.
The swells and pulse of the ocean enthralled me. This photo captures a bit of that.
The 12 Apostles were the pinnacle of a magnificent day. And Leanne helped me out with this photo. I like how the sky turned out.
I did not have my DSLR with me. Wish I had. But the important thing is it now goes everywhere with me. As does its spare battery and charger.
Love is what it’s all about–
but food is a close second.
Nia Simone, November 28, 2013
I was asking an Australian friend if they have any holidays that are basically about food. Not really. Okay, so I have several Australian friends, many of whom I’ve met through blogging, so pipe up if you disagree! Of course, as you know, the food in Australia is amazing, so perhaps we don’t need a specific holiday centered on feasting there.
Australia is my other home, and this is becoming clear as one fellow blogger thought I was Australian. I love Australia and my Australian friends. Today is an American holiday, though, and I’m going to celebrate it by starting this celebration of food off with home-grown and home cooked foods before moving on to some of my international culinary samples.
Home grown and home-cooked:
Greenwich Village Manhattan:
Australia:
San Francisco:
Paris:
Amsterdam:
Thai food
Texas:
More Manhattan:
I have led you to believe Magnetic Island only has dead trees. This is far from the truth. I’m just a blogger who particularly likes dead trees!
Magnetic Island is just off the shore from Townsville.
It takes about an hour to get there by ferry. We walked over to the big ferry that takes cars. It is the one locals use and is half the price of the tourist ferry.
Showing you the beauty of Magnetic Island will take several posts. Here’s a little beauty to start you on this day before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and just a regular day in most parts of the world.
Twas two days before Thanksgiving and the blogger was thinking about FOOD. Shopping and planning for the feast while reminiscing about food in Australia.
We ate lunch at one of the many restaurants by the river in Sydney:
Near Bondi Beach we enjoyed lunch at a sidewalk cafe:
After lunch, you could get a tattoo next door. My friend considered it. I did not. (I didn’t even get pierced ears until I was 30. (About a year ago. 😉 ))
Looks like I had seafood again.
In Melbourne, Leanne Cole and I split a basket of blueberry scones here:
And of course, I had a flat white.
Leanne then took us through more arcades and streets. At the end we saw DeGraves Street, which is closed to cars, lined by restaurants and filled with tables and heating lamps. We went back that night and had dinner at a tapas bar. We sat at a bench table inside as it was raining a bit, and just people watched. Since we accidentally ordered way too much food (tapas are supposed to be small plates!) we spent a few hours drinking champagne and lingering over the amazing food.
The next day was epic! Leanne took us along The Great Ocean Road. We stopped for lunch in Lorne:
where we all ordered the most amazing barramundi:
I can’t leave out dessert! So here is a picture of a gelateria where we stopped to fortify ourselves with a couple scoops in Watson’s Bay, near Sydney.
Watson’s Bay is stunning. On one side of this peninsula is the Pacific ocean:
and on the other side is Sydney harbor:
Come back in a couple days for pictures of our Thanksgiving feast. In the meantime, enjoy life and bon appetit!
I noticed a lot of cities in Australia have “Royal Botanical Gardens”. That’s a difference from the U.S. In the U.S. I haven’t noticed any royal anything. I mean, the reasons are obvious, but it’s not something I thought about ahead of time, rather learned about from traveling. (Love that.) This was one of the many little cultural differences I noticed between our countries. Traveling to a country that shares the same language but which differs in many cultural ways fascinated me. When I travel to some place that has a different language like Peru and/or is radically culturally different like Asia, there’s a feeling of being so far outside my native culture, it’s like observing everything through the walls of a bubble. When the language was the same and the level of development very similar, there was a comfort level (once I overcame driving on the opposite side!) and it was easy to feel at home. Without the bubble, more subtle differences surprised me and let me compare and contrast alternate histories as well as to see the influence of U.S. culture on my personality, word choices, values and preferences.
I think it’s interesting and it’s educational to me to see gardens culturally valued on the level of art. Every city not only has its museums and opera houses but also its botanical gardens. I think in the U.S. the equivalent would be city parks. And our parks have conservatories of flowers and that kind of thing, and gardens, gardeners and arborists certainly abound, but the emphasis and naming differ and I never noticed this aspect of culture until I went to Australia.
Of course, it being Sydney, the gardens lead down to water.
And what’s totally unique to Sydney, at the end of your botanical gardens trek, you come upon the spectacular Sydney Opera House:
Nicci Carrera 