Day: April 7, 2024

Doing much (just hanging around)

Published on by bushboy42 Comments

John’s Cellpic Sunday

In South Grafton, the Flying Fox colony has moved in. I pity those whose houses are around them. They do smell a lot and if you forget to bring in the washing in the evening, be prepared to wash it again. There is constant squabbling and squeals too

A grey sky and the Flying Foxes in shadow, under the tree canopy, or what’s left of it. The colony will move on when the trees are just bare sticks, natures pruners.

Just let it slide (changes)

Published on by bushboy35 Comments

Lens-Artists Challenge #294: Before and After

A bit of photo editing using Corel PaintShop Pro Ultimate 2023.
I went into one of my must sort and file away folders and select some photos from the fifteen photos at random, all from my garden in November 2022

Original on the left, photo edit on the right. Slide away

An attempt to make a not very good photo of Crinum flowers into something. Darken the background to make the white and dead flowers prominent and add a dash of white

Emphasise the death of the red Hippeastrums. Darken background increase saturation, remove the garden hose

A bit of work on this Agapanthus bud. First, get rid of it’s mate, a square crop works well, darken the background, fill focus on the buds added highlights

These buds needed a bit of a lift too. Increased shadows, decreased overall lightness, increased mid-tones. The background was still too light and distracting so an elliptical vignette applied

A tiny Blue-banded Bee asleep under a red Salvia flower was a bit lost in the overall image.
Increased the overall lightness and saturation a little, then a close crop to square.
Don’t be limited by photo dimensions, quite often flowers and macro photos work well in the square format.

Beckys Square Photo Challenge is starting again next month so have some practise. I often set my camera to 1:1 format so no cropping is needed. I have been adding an appropriate song for Beckys challenge, can’t Let It Slide next month. Hope you enjoyed your slide through my photo edits Max Merritt & The Meteors were an Aotearoa/New Zealand group.

Looking south (a storm approaches)

Published on by bushboy26 Comments

Hammads Weekend Sky #124

For quite a few weeks now it has been raining, from gentle to the full on crash, bang and boom of a storm. I went looking for some more suns rays photos and found these photos.

These are from a while ago but still convey what a storm can look like as it builds.
White, billowy lit by the sun

The rays of sunlight stream skyward

Darkness descends

The storm approaches

During an interview session, the media kept want to know what the Rolling Stones next single would be as Satisfaction was on top of the charts. Keith Richards, with a look of exasperation told the press to “get off of my cloud” and there it was born