Week 47 by Becky

Final Preparation

My daughter had her Senior Prom this past weekend so I was busy taking photos of all her preparations leading up to it.  From pedicure, manicure, beauty shop for the up do, and finally, makeup.  She was absolutely beautiful. Loved this shot in black/white with a splatter of her school colors.

Week 46 by Becky

Irritated!

Yes, another Mockingbird photo. I would not have caught this photo if I wasn't busy trying to complete another photo challenge that Judy and I are doing. That is, we pick a day and take a photo or more every waking hour of what we are doing at that particular moment. I had picked April 14th as my day. I just finished doing my 8am photos and was sitting on the porch enjoying my coffee when this squirrel had approached my chair. I was like WOW! I had my camera handy so I attempted to take a photo of the squirrel. The squirrel started to move in the direction of the Mockingbird nest. Out of nowhere two Mockingbird parents appeared. This one had landed on the security sign in the front garden. The squirrel gave me the view of his backside so I decided I would take the photo of the protective Mockingbird parent. When I clicked the button, the parent had taken off and this is the result. Not super crisp focus, but I just though it was cool that I caught it in action as it got closer to the squirrel to protect its young. Which by the way are growing very fast. I hope to try to get a photo of them before they fly the coop :).

Week 44 by Becky

Hogwarts

I would love to say I went to a country with castles.  Instead, I went to Universal Studio's Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida for the kid's spring break. This is the Harry Potter ride. Took this with my son's Nikon Coolpix S3000. I just love how it all looked so real. This was a very popular area of the park. The lines for the Butterbeer were ridiculous. But, I had to have one which turned out to be Vernors and cream. Very tasty. The ride was also very neat. Opened in Photoshop CS5, created a B/W layer using Topaz B/W, then changed the blending mode to luminosity to boost the contrast, then Topaz Adjust 5 Spicify, content aware to remove the tourists from the scene, cropped it down, then applied Topaz B/W Opalotype Collection White Chocolate, resized and saved for web.

Week 34 by Becky

What the ?

Macro of an Orchid. Converted to B/W. To me, this looks like some kind of bat flying at you. What do you see? Played around with my flash on this one. Didn't do a whole lot of processing in Photoshop, except to brighten the face a bit so it would pop.

Week 33 by Becky

Passion

The passion flower is such a strange and beautiful flower. Looks like it is from another planet. This flower is really pretty in color, but I thought it looked neat in black and white. There is a religious story and/or symbolism behind this flower. Found the following on a website:

"Five petals & five sepals are ten apostles, leaving out Judas the betrayer & Peter because he denied knowing Jesus. The purple carolla Bosio reported had seventy-two filaments, the number of thorns in Jesus's crown. The three pistil stigmas are nails. The five stamens are the number of wounds, so that to this day, Catholics in South & Central America call it "The Flower of the Five Wounds." The leaf represents the spear that placed the wound in Jesus's side (that one is a stretch since the leaves are five-lobed, but unlike some other species, this one's individual lobes are at least lance-shaped). The dark spots under the leaves are the 33 pieces of silver paid to Judas. When the flowers are spent after a single day (the time Jesus spent on the cross), the petals do not drop from the vine but re-close over the ovary, & this symbolizes the Hidden Wisdom that constitutes the Mysteries of the Cross, & is like Jesus enclosed in the tomb. "

Week 10 by Becky

IN A HURRY

Macro shot of some potpourri piece I kept to take a photo of. Thought the shape looked interesting. Set up on black velvet with natural front lighting from my home office window. Processed the raw file in Adobe Photoshop CS5, curves, sharpened using high pass filter, noise ninja, Topaz Adjust (spicify) which I reduced the opacity, converted to B/W using Gradient map, resized and saved for web. I think that covers it. I titled it "In A Hurry" because to me it looked like a person who was in a hurry to get someplace.

Week 5 by Becky

TRAPPED

I bought this large crystal ball a few years ago for the sole purpose of being one of my photographic props. Saw it sitting there on my shelf and I figured it was about time it was used. I have always liked what I see when looking through a crystal ball or even a clear marble. I figured I could have fun with this and also do a self portrait. So, here I am acting like I am trapped in this crystal ball. Took me three days to come up with one that I kind of liked. I had a lot of fun doing this. Getting the lighting and the shocked/scared look was a bit humorous.