My Spark: A Road Salt Abstract

Okay, I know this image is a little weird and not for everyone. Anyway, one of the things that I am drawn to is abstract art. This image was made from a splash of dried road salt on my garage floor. It is heavily processed: bracketed and combined into an HDR in Photomatix and then further processed with the Rad Lab plug in Photoshop, plus some levels adjustments in Photoshop.

I am considering this one of my sparks per the prompt in Kim Klassen's Studio Online class (see button below). Before I was into photography as a hobby, I would have never noticed the patterns on my garage floor, let alone found them interesting.

10 on 10: At Home

These days I am not venturing very far for photographs. In fact, I have barely gone beyond my house and yard. Sometimes, this is because I don't have the time, but often, I am being a tad lazy and not motivated enough to get out of bed early on the weekends to seek something out or go somewhere too far away from my coffee pot.

Even though I must admit to being a bit in a rut, I still find shots in my yard with bits of nature--luckily I don't get bored with flowers, leaves and plants. These are all typical photographs for me--all taken at home.

Frosty, dried hydrangea in my backyard (I like hydrangeas the best in the winter so I don't cut them back until Spring).

And these old crab apples from the tree in my front yard.

Snowflakes on fallen, brown leaves still left in my back yard: 

Abstract frost patterns on my old, single-paned bedroom window (we really need to replace that):

And a few shots that I set up using clippings from my yard:

Thanks for viewing my post. 

Please follow around our circle of women photographers, starting with my beautiful and talented friend Kim Bajorek. I am so grateful that she invited me to join this group of talented photographers in the monthly collaborative blog circle.

Texture Tuesday: A Single, Old leaf

As simple and common as they are, dried leaves are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I especially like them shown singly on a simple background and I think they work especially well for adding textures.

I have had this leaf for about a year--I had kept it in a shoe box; why I kept it, I am not sure, but it amazes me that it retained its shape.

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This image was textured with two layers of  Kim's 'simple1' (one with the screen blend mode and one with multiply) and one layer of Kim's 'hsh' at with the linear burn blend mode). The texture layers were  partially masked off the leaf.

Texture Tuesday: A Color Abstract

Usually, I am a winter lover, but not this winter . . . we have not had much snow in Indiana and when we have, it has been just a dusting or it  has started raining right after and turned to a slushy yucky mess.  I do not like this winter so far; it may also be my attitude. There have been struggles of late and I am not handling them well.

lately

Today, though, the sun is out and it is about 10 degrees. There is about an inch of white, glittering snow on the ground. It is lovely.

Also, I had some success today. Today is a good day. I'll take it. I need to go one day at a time. Need to.

Sometimes, I am trying hard to fix my attitude; other times, not so much and I just want to wallow in the blues.

Productivity will be key but it is not always easy.

I have been lazy about photography lately; pretty much staying inside and looking for things to use. Sorta trying to do something different, but not really.

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The image in this post is something I made by panning the camera on some window shades and changing the color with presets and white balance adjustments in Lightroom and Photoshop. I layered a couple of Kim's textures on this. I don't remember which ones, though. I am not completely  happy with it nor am I completely unhappy with it. It is what it is.