Recycled relatives

These people are not my ancestors. I wish they were; the images are so expressive that I'd love to lay claim to these folks. But these are the unknown ancestors of Leslie Jane Moran, who gave permission that they be "adopted". Thank you, Leslie -- I hope I have treated them with kindness and dignity. Even the scoundrel!

Many art challenges converged here, in this one piece. The theme at Illustration Friday is adapt, and this piece certainly fits, in many ways. One of the meanings of adapt is to demonstrate that what might seem to be incompatible is indeed compatible. Old images, new technology -- the perfect reconciliation of the past and the present. The entire piece also represents my need to adapt to the art challenges presented yesterday and today and somehow make them all work together. I think I accomplished that.

Inspire Me Thursday happened to post the theme of altered ancestors on exactly the same day that Leslie posted her ancestors' images on her blog. The perfect coincidence.

Finally, the image at Art Creations Friday was a lovely green background, with swirls ideally suited for my creation.

The quote, by the way, is from the song, Bookends -- a Simon and Garfunkel tune that has always been one of my favourites.

Inspired by a petal

FALLEN PETALS

Last night's wind has scattered
Peach-bloom on the ground.

Already with his garden-broom
A small boy's going round
Sweeping up the petals.

Small boy, I would say,
Aren't those fallen petals flowers?
Why sweep flowers away?

--Chong Min-Gyo--

(artwork and quotation for Inspire Me Thursday)

Baby me

I don't have many old photos of myself, especially baby pictures. Several months ago I scanned one of the few I do have, one unfortunately dark and in poor condition. But I have played around with it in photoshop and while I'm not completely satisfied with my attempts at restoration, I have definitely improved upon the scan. And so along comes today's theme at Inspire Me Thursday: family. It may be egotistical to use a photograph of myself for this topic, but I am jumping at the opportunity to use this photo in a project.

Photographic restoration is a technique, a skill, where I have the status of absolute rank amateur. Honestly .... I don't know what I'm doing. But I am quite happy with how this project turned out and so, for now, will leave well enough alone. If you like the old photo frame I used and want it for yourself, just visit kpauli's set of old frames on Flickr, where she has many to share. Thanks to her for that! This one is called Straw Hat and it's one I find particularly charming.

Inspire Me Thursday: Green

This morning I checked the Inspire Me Thursday web site, curious about this week's challenge. When I saw "green", I knew I was in trouble -- not from lack of material, but from an overload! A quick peek at my Flickr photo galleries revealed many photographs that I have tagged with green. I thought about creating a montage of green, like I did last year with yellow. I thought about one of my numerous nature photographs. I even thought about it over lunch, which was a bowl of homemade green split pea soup -- I (briefly) contemplated getting the camera and photographing my meal.

Somehow I ended up perusing the hundreds of photographs I took in January at Savannah's historic and eerily beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery, eventually deciding to try a photoshop experiment (different textures, different blending modes...) on one of them, a recent technique I've been trying out using many different colour variations.

Even in January the cemetery was rich with green without my (photoshop) assistance -- both the hanging grey-green spanish moss and the dark green decay on many of the older stone images contributing to the verdant display there -- but I must say, I'm pleased with the results of my experiment!

Lots of ghost signs

Inspire Me Thursday has an intriguing theme this week: ghost. While some will understandably think of the paranormal, not me ... I think of ghost signs. I love ghost signs -- the faded advertisements and signage of days gone by, spotted on the sides of old buildings. They are very hard to find here in Toronto, but when travelling in the U.S. I spot them frequently. Above are just some of the ones I found on our trip to Pittsburgh last year; the photos used above can all be found in my Pennsylvania set of images, where they are mostly in colour or sepia-toned. But for the above grouping, I went with a black-and-white theme. I really must do more non-colour work; it's so challenging.

I just realized the theme for Photo Theme for Thursday is buildings; how appropriate ... my montage, above, fits that theme too!

Coffee break

It must be a sign that my life is returning to normal -- I actually checked the "challenge" blogs today. Over at Inspire Me Thursday, the topic this week is coffee break, a theme that fits in nicely with a group of photographs I took while on vacation. Before our cruise, we headed into Orlando to the airport, to pick up family members who were cruising with us. But we drove in early, so we could check out Downtown Disney at Walt Disney World first. In the kitchen shop, I had a blast photographing all the various items they had on sale, including several mugs. The perfect fit for a coffee break theme!

Rhoda's Dendron

The challenge theme this week over at Inspire Me Thursday is "yellow". I cannot think of this colour without remembering one of the classic episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, "Mary Richards and The Incredible Plant Lady". (No, I did not remember the episode title. Google did.)

The plot revolves around a loan that Mary gives Rhoda so that she can open a plant/flower shop, Rhoda's Dendron. The shop is successful, but Rhoda does not appear to place any priority on repaying Mary. Long story short, Rhoda surprises Mary with a car as repayment of the loan ... a yellow convertible. Mary blurts out, "I hate yellow!" It is Georgette who convinces Mary that yellow is a beautiful colour, and all ends well.

Many of the show's episodes continue to stick with me -- Mary Richards was truly a role model for young women of my generation -- and although this one is about friendship and money and how the two sometimes intertwine, it's "the yellow episode" in my mind. Which leads me to the above montage, just a few of the yellow highlights in my vast portfolio of artwork and photos.

5-minute art

Wow, it's Thursday and I'm already posting my response to today's Inspire Me Thursday challenge! Yay me!

I think the reason my participation is so swift is that the topic is so intriguing: Create Against the Clock. The idea is that you get out your art supplies and give yourself 10 minutes or so to create something. Next, use the same supplies and give yourself about an hour to create. Then, compare the results. The time is flexible; the site states, be true to yourself and just pick a shorter time followed by a longer time.

I chose to go digital rather than hands-on and worked with a photograph in Photoshop. I used a photo I took just this morning while out-and-about purchasing art supplies -- some needed, some, well, let's just call them impulse purchases. I went with a photo I had just taken on purpose, so I wouldn't be influenced by any plans floating around in my brain for existing photos in my stash. And I'm glad I didn't know about this challenge before the captain and I went out, or it likely would have influenced my photography. Instead, I was just typical-me, hauling my little portable camera out of my purse whenever something caught my fancy. I do this all the time.

Here's the original unaltered photograph:

I then proceeded to alter it following several steps that are tried-and-true for me. Warning! Geek alert! Techno-mumblejumble ahead. You've been warned.

I played with the brightness and contrast levels, the colour saturation, the sharpness, then duplicated the layer and messed about with blending modes, then flattened the layers and further messed about with both posterization levels and a filter I use a lot, poster edges. I also added a black border. I didn't take notes on the exact order of all this messin' about, I just went with the flow. Here's the result:


This took me 5 minutes, about right for me. Now for the fun stuff. I opened up the original photo once more, only this time I cropped out a square. I like the look of a squared-off image and also, it lets me crop out bits I don't want, such as the excess sidewalk and the sign hanging above the store. And then I started off as before -- contrast, saturation, etc. -- only I really boosted the colours, letting the image go wild. I then totally lost myself in experimentation. I solarized, I duplicated layers then altered them then flattened them again, I used the high pass filter, I played with the burn tool. I added grain. Heaven knows what I didn't do. I altered the hue again and again and again. I was aiming for something totally different from the original. So, mission accomplished! After about 30 minutes of playing around with the photo, here's what I created:


This was an interesting experiment to see how far I could go before I went too far. I actually did go beyond what I liked; at one point, I backed up several steps and proceeded down a different artistic path with this photo.

Great challenge, one that really hooked me in!

Polar opposites

I'm so, so behind ... in everything. I know that the Inspire Me Thursday challenge announcement always falls on, well, Thursdays, yet here I am, not contributing until Monday. Sigh. Lately, days seem to lead into nights and then the day is gone and I look back and realize I have not accomplished near what I wanted to, each and every day.

Here is my contribution for the current Inspire Me Thursday theme of "opposites". It was taken in Savannah, Georgia earlier this year and falls into the "right place, right time" category of photographs. We were leaving Savannah that day, heading down to Orlando for a few nights, and I was standing on the sidewalk near our hotel, waiting for the captain to bring the car around so we could go. I looked up and there I spied the weathervane. Luckily, I just about always have a camera handy.

The captain and I are currently contemplating a return trip to Savannah this fall. We are heading down to Florida anyway and it would be easy to make a stop. It would be my fourth visit there and his third, but none of the visits have been autumn ones. My first trip there was with a girlfriend on a summer roadtrip. It was a scorching August and I honestly thought I was going to melt. Choosing a non-airconditioned tour bus (we didn't know until it was too late to change) didn't help matters. Now, last February and this January showed me an opposite side of the city and I learned how pleasant the weather can be in Savannah. And I bet autumn would be gorgeous!

The healing power of humour

When life throws limes at you, don’t make juice. Make jokes. Really. After a short hiatus, Inspire Me Thursday is running again and this week’s theme is healing. For me, this hits home. There is healing power in humour.

Four years ago this month I was very sick. Very. As in, almost dying. My lungs -- as it turned out, both lungs -- were filled with several pulmonary embolisms, including some large ones. Blood clots. Thanks to the skilled nurses and doctors at St. Michael’s Hospital, I’m here to tell the tale. But I attribute part of my healing to the fact that I never lost my sense of humour throughout my ordeal. Yes, I was facing a serious situation to say the least, but heavens -- I wasn’t going to let something like that stop me from being me.

For example, I was in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) for a day and I was the belle of the ball there. ICU staff are simply not used to patients who are talkative and alert and wisecrackers. “Hey, we get to tell the jokes; we’re the doctors here,” one fun-loving physician doing rounds told me that day. And after I’d been in the hospital for over a week, and was starting to show definite signs of recovery, a young doctor confessed to me. “We just didn’t know what to make of you. Your behaviour. Our tests were showing us you were so sick but you didn’t act it.”

So my advice of the day is this: even when you’re down, try to have a laugh. It will do you good. Like the above photo. I hope it makes you smile. It cracks me up, really it does. Who’s on first? Hu’s on first! I took the photo in Florida back in February at the pre-season opening-day game, Braves vs. Dodgers, at historic Holman Stadium in Dodgertown, otherwise known as Vero Beach. I’m sure every single time Hu makes it to first base throughout his career he will be saddled with the “who’s on first” classic, but you’ve got to admit, it’s a winner. C'mon now. Smile!

Purple and Orange

This week's challenge over at Inspire Me Thursday is purple and orange. I can't resist using a poppy photograph I already have; it's one of my favourites. The summer of 2005 was a good one for my gardens; I especially love that this poppy was a "surprise" that year -- I never planted it and so it became my mystery flower. A gift from a passing bird, perhaps?

On another note, the update on my son's missing record bag is that, well, there is no update. Nothing has turned up yet. I must say that I am so proud of my son -- he's quickly moving forward on the whole situation and not wallowing in his misfortune whatsoever. He has already started to replace some of the missing items. The good news on that front is that one album that had taken him a whole year to hunt down -- one of the ones we figured would be impossible to replace -- was found just yesterday at some obscure record store in Europe that sells online. Hooray for the internet!