Playing with the viewfinder again


I am besotted by the effect of photographing something through an old viewfinder. it changes how you like at things. And best of all you get a wonderful soft, vintage feel without Photoshoping them. Apart from cropping and resizing, these are straight out of the camera.

Needing blue skies

It seems that for the past two weeks it has been nothing but dull, grey and overcast. Whatever you think about the big freeze, atleast the snow was bright and the skies were generally blue! I'm needing something brighter to look at, so I dug back through my photo files. This is one of my favourites from last summer. Who doesn't love poppies?
This one is from last autumn taken in a field just beside a tiny medieval chapel at Elephant ~rock and give it a bit more time, it will fall into the sea! It was warm and sunny, and we had the place to ourselves. Rather nice. It definitely still hibernation time for me. All I do at present is sit on the sofa with a sketchbook, or laptop, and a cup of cofee, watching the Australian Open tennis (or even ice skating this week)
I'm hoping for sunny skies tomorrow to play at back yard photography - fingers crossed. X

Red angel, purple angel




Suzi Blu does some great painting classes on her ning network. This is one of the angels I painted for the December angels workshop. There. is ton of texture on her which was great fun to apply and color. Loads of layers, attacked with sandpaper. I took her outside into the snow to take the photo.Almost immediately, it started to snow again and extinguished the candles. The one below is more of a goth angel.

Tulips again and another experiment




A friend of mine showed me the wonderful photos she had taken of flowers using a light box. I had a try with a small borrowed box and played with my tulips. Then I tried a little tweaking of them in Picasa until I got something I liked. Tulips are such beautiful flowers.

Tomorrow I will be trying to do something with the carnations I froze tonight (oh, the joys of sub zero temperatures). I was trying to make ice lanterns such as Benita of Chez Larsson made, so I wondered what else I could freeze! And I had some carnations on the window sill in front of me, so into a jug of water they went and then outside the front door to join the bucket-and-pot-lantern-making contraption. The postie will be perplexed at all of the odd things by the door but then he is the same postie who has delivered a rubber duck with a stamp on it to this house and a plastic apple (oh, the joys of mail art experiments!)

More snow photos....well, if it snows, make art!

Work yesterday - lunchtime camera session

And then I discovered that my Lumix FZ28 has some nifty scene settings. I'm loving the pinhole setting at the moment. Can't wait for my "new" vintage Duaflex to arrive so I can try some ttv (through the viewfinder ) photos. Kelly Rae did a great post on ttv's which includes links to other great articles on the subject. Wouldn't this view blow look fabulous as a ttv = scatches and all (that's what I love best about them!)

Take a bunch of tulips

add some snow (note to self - borrow water proof trousers before lying down in the snow to get the right angle)










Retreat indoors, warm up, and play with a black fleece as a backdrop instead.
Place flowers in a vase and admire.

Stone circle outing........................
Today's outing involved both the ancient and the modern. First off, we took a tiny little detour off the dual carriage way to visit a stone circle. I received a Fuji Instax camera for my birthday and I wanted to play with it. It doesn't do too well developing in the sub zero temperatures! Luckily I also had the Lumix too.
The modern bit was trip to Asda where I discovered they do pseudo-Moleskine journals. Naturally, I had to try the 2 different sizes, for scientific purposes of course. The paper quality is pretty good considering its not the real thing. But way cheaper and a good place to play!

2010 already?I'm still trying to get the concept that another year has moved on. Each one is going around faster. Anyway, I don't bother with the New Year's Eve thing - standing outside in the cold watching a clock move just doesn't do it for me. Instead, I choose to get up this morning and play. I typed out a 2010 (way too small it turned out) and then took it and the boy's vintage typewriter into the garden. Earlier I had found a wonderful mcguffin to get photos of him (he's 9 and elusive). Having shown him the snowcils I made yesterday, he wanted to have a go. See below, with some green added.

He did a bit of spraying and then got bored with the delicacy. Instead, after a few trips into the kitchen to acquire different food colouring and only one change of clothes later, he produced a wonderful abstract piece of art which happened to include an accidental green girl in a frock. If you look, you can see it! Once again, the streak of red looks like a vampire visited but it has all faded nicely a few hours later. Is there a better way to spend your birthday morning - making art and getting photos of an elusive child?Apparently, we are doing more tomorrow............