A digital oil painting of Townsville. I am back to my Bamboo digitizer. I was able to use the pen so this has some more of my own “touch”.
Impressions of Australia 4
Magnetic Island, today. Off the coast of Townsville. I don’t have my pen with me, so I can’t sign them. Feel free to use these and enjoy them. If you post them online, a pingback to this blog most appreciated.
~Namaste~
A white Christmas in Squaw Valley
I’m quite excited because Leanne Cole is going to feature my Christmas photos on her blog today. If you want to have your Christmas photos shown on her blog, send them to her. I think she’s doing them on Mondays between now and Christmas. Note, Monday her time is Sunday, for those of us in the U.S.
Plus, if you want to see some beautiful photos of what they are doing in Melbourne right now for the holidays, you must check out her blog. It’s gorgeous and sure to put a smile on your face. This post of the light show on town hall is amazing:
Thanks to Leanne’s offer to post photos, I was motivated to get my husband to drive me over to Squaw Valley today. (He’s good at snow driving.)
First we went to The Village at Squaw Valley, a Tyrolean style complex with all the common areas and restaurants outside. It was super cold, so I was glad we went here first.
Because then we could go to The Resort at Squaw Creek, where we could enjoy their beautiful decorations while inside the cozy hotel. I loved the real pine trees outside the windows, contrasting with the decorated trees inside.
The gingerbread houses with the toy train running around it are amazing.
As we were leaving, I snapped this shot of the entry way. I like how they have the bell and the wreath and I loved that my camera picked up the snow flakes.
The hostess said they close down the hotel three weeks while they decorate! But surely they don’t close down everything? I don’t know, but the decor is everywhere.
This is looking out from Sandy’s Pub across the ice skating rink:
Impressions of Australia 3
Impressions of Australia 2
Impressions of Australia, 1
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.
Port Lonsdale pier Victoria Australia revisited
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.
Barwon Heads, Victoria Australia Great Ocean Road
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:
A meeting of two waters.
Here at Barwon Heads, the life of the river merges with the life of the sea. This natural meeting place teems with marine and freshwater animals, providing food for the abundant wildlife to be found in the Barwon’s mudflats, mangrove forests and rocky shores.
Like the river, the Barwon’s short-finned eels have a long journey of their own. These eels breed in Queensland’s Coral Sea and swim thousands of kilometers from the Barwon over the course of their lives.
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.
The 12 Apostles, Great Ocean Road, Australia
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.
Nicci Carrera 