Downtown was looking rather barren of curves, but I found a few. And then while processing I got caught up with the possibility of pushing some pretty ordinary pix towards full-on curvy abstraction -
The fun app being explored this week is Photoforge2
(my son rolls his eyes at how “app-ed out” I am).
But really, they’re just too fun (and curvy) like this -
These are the original (slightly curvy) shots, in order, before abstraction -
The weekly photo challenges can be found here
Fleeting – Sky
A morning at the beach, quietly contemplating the water and a grey overcast sky, only the phone in hand, when it all started to change so fast…
Weekly Photo Challenges here
Columbines revisited with Texture
Fleeting – clouds
At first I was thinking of birds for this week’s photo challenge, as if somehow “flight” and “fleeting” were synonymous.
But then I thought of the shifting nature of clouds, of how they seem to take distinct shapes – animals, symbols, faces – but it is only for a moment before they become something else.
Do you see the fox? Or the skull?
These were all taken within a half-hour period, out storm-chasing one day in my special spot.
A massive storm seemed imminent, inevitable, but ultimately it was all a big blustery show, and the clouds moved on, and the sun came out again.
Looking for crimson
We’re having a wave of purple here in the garden.
I’ve noticed this over the years of living with this garden, that there are these thematic waves of colour that seem to happen. Last week there was a lot of orange/red with the poppies, but this week is a series of various different purple blooms.
I’ve been on the hunt for something red, something crimson for this week’s 52 Photo Project prompt, but was not having any luck at all.
The shapes and textures are interesting in the different purple blooms, especially the weird spikey ones (yes, technical language is my forte)
Something about their antenna-like stamen protrusions and the green center always remind me of the little green men characters in Toy Story -
But anyway, I was looking for crimson.
And after hours of exploring every corner of the garden, I’d just about given up finding anything even remotely red when I saw -
A tiny little red fellow in the deep of the green.
And he wasn’t entirely alone, this little guy, he had friends.
But they were busy.
Absorbed as I was by their intimate moment, curious about what exactly they might be doing and traipsing through all the lush growing green to try out different angles on the scene, suddenly I felt a shoot of pain at my shoulder.
A bee!
Actually, not this bee, this is a bumble bee of course, from earlier in the morning, but as I was reaching to rub the growing welt on my shoulder, I looked around to see what had happened to my assailant, and it was not a pretty sight -
He was down, writhing with his death rattle. The end was nigh.
I felt bad for him, such an extreme ramification for protecting himself.
Thinking about all these insect scenes, the copulating red bugs and the bee’s compulsion to assault in spite of the consequences reminded me of the hilarious series Isabella Rossellini did on the sex lives of insects, Green Porno -
Passing
Two friends died.
A few days ago, each of them, but I found out today – first about Sheila, then about Johanne, her husband weeping on the phone, saying he just wants to go join her.
Beautiful, glowing, vibrant women both of them, lost to cancer.
Mostly I wish I’d been able to steal a little more time with each, wish I’d stopped over in December in that little town in Quebec to visit Johanne, wish I’d called Sheila to go dancing like we said we would.
So fleeting -
Breath
Life
Pulse
The Sign Says
First day back at work today after a couple of months off and meandering.
Leaving the garden behind this morning, my feet muddy from the wet soil, heading out along College on the streetcar for the first time in weeks, after a few blocks the driver leaned deep into his horn and the brakes but too late, too fast, nothing could stop him and he rear-ended a taxi, totally crumpling the back half of the car.
All of us passengers fled the scene, the streetcar driver slumped depressed over his steering wheel, the taxi driver strangely indifferent.
Ahhh, the city…
Now walking to work, I run into an old friend, a friend I haven’t seen for maybe 5 years and we kiss each other and hug again and again – it has been so long, too long… I am suddenly grateful for the streetcar driver’s misfortune.
Now rushing to work, the day is beautiful and the city vibrant, so wonderful to be in it, feeling the heart of it, not thinking about the absurd, if entertaining dramatic spectacle that has gripped city governance for the past weeks.
Opportunities for photos abound, and indeed there are signs everywhere, too many signs, the city is rife with signs.
Some are intriguing, cryptic in a playful way -
Others are strange in that futuristic sci-fi dystopia movie kind of way…
…especially as there is NO blue door in sight.
Others are attractively bilingually cryptic in a way that is repeated again and again in different languages all over the city -
And others just seem to have been very badly located -
But now very very late for work on my first day back, I run up the stairs and face the door with the sign leading to the floor that will be my daytime abode for the next couple of months…
The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge can be found here.
Uncommon shapes – Columbines
It is columbine season around here – columbines and thunderstorms, the rain passing in waves, drenching the city, drowning the existant flowers while giving life to new ones.
They are funny looking things, columbines. They range from strange pointy bell shapes to soft layered petticoats.
Wet in the morning rain, I’m faintly repulsed yet fascinated – I can’t tell if they are beautiful, grotesque or both.
The closed, still-emerging flowers, darker versions of their open selves look distinctly like a human heart, with all valves and ventricles accounted for.
The fingery tops suggest creeping movement, the waving tentacles of something almost mollusk-like.
columbine |ˈkäləmˌbīn|
noun
an aquilegia with long-spurred flowers.
• Genus Aquilegia, family Ranunculaceae: several species, including the white-flowered Colorado blue columbine ( A. coerulea) with blue sepals, and the red-flowered A. canadensis.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French colombine, from medieval Latin colombina (herba) ‘dovelike (plant),’ from Latin columba ‘dove’ (from the supposed resemblance of the flower to a cluster of five doves).
Water drops – on imitating
Over the weekend I was messing around with the camera out in the country, experimenting and trying different things.
As I was framing and snapping and adjusting, I realized I was imitating Karen – realized there were photos of hers I had seen and been intrigued by, and as I looked through the viewfinder, I was semi-consciously trying to figure out how she did that…
And while failing utterly to get the same results, still I found I was teaching myself something via this imitation of a master.
Other moments it occurred to me I was trying to create an image like Sandra Bartocha’s images…
And again, failing completely. Yet in the process, little things were learned out about the angle, the blur, the light, the settings on the camera.
It has been almost 1 year now I’ve had this camera, my first digital camera. We are still getting to know each other.
Mucking around like this in the rain, trying to capture something of the water and reflections and the glistening of water drops, working from an impulse of exploratory curiosity, fun as it was, I found the pictures I was taking bored me in and of themselves…
But the process of passing through these mediocre efforts was part of pushing towards something that might still be fresh and different and unique, that might interest me at least, even if no one else.
So then, back home, staring at the endlessly fascinating fish pond, I tried something a bit different -
Training the hose onto the surface of the water, a process began of exploring the bursts of action and colour, of water as it met water…
And wondering about the possible extremes of abstraction, I became curious and interested again…
In the Background – full moon
This weekend’s “SuperMoon” – the moon when it is closest to the earth.
Behind clouds, behind trees, it still pulls on the earth, the waters, the tides of life…
