Sensory Overload

The annual spring Tulip Festivals are well under way in the Fraser Valley. There are two of them this year. The Tulips were very late in coming and they are reluctant to leave. They love the cooler temperatures and that is what we are having.

The owner of the land on which this field of Tulips was grown is a good friend of mine and I was thrilled to get his permission to enter the field 'after hours'. The hours of operation are right when the light is at its harshest, and because the view is to the south, the camera more or less points into the sun, with the Tulips in the foreground. At sunset, the light is coming from the side and it makes all the difference when composing a good photo. I was thrilled to have a dramatic sky as a backdrop to the vast flood of red. There really is nothing like standing in a large field of brightly coloured Tulips in their peak.

Home Grown

 

Here are a few photos of our home grown tulips on this bright spring morning.

 

What makes these photos unique is that they were all taken from indoors!

 

1. I have been limited in my movements due to a bad back.

2. It was very cool and breezy outside and I did not care to bundle up.

3. The flower bed was muddy right here and I did not want to track any mud back into the house.

4. I wanted some close-ups from low down.

 

So I opened the windows in our basement and took the screens off from the inside and there were the tulips staring me in the face with some great lighting as a bonus.  

 

And that is how you get outdoor photography from indoors.

Launch

 

Available for purchase at my new website.

 

The posts on this blog have been scarce of late. I have had a sense of urgency to finish a project I have been working on for several months now.

I have been greatly encouraged, by those who enjoy my photographs, to offer them for sale. I researched a number of host websites and finally decided to build my new business on the Smugmug platform.

There was a learning curve to be sure, but I finally designed and set up my own website on which to display and sell my photos. I am pleased with the results and the great thing is, I can re-design, change, add, delete, and tweak the site at will.

I have based my idea for a photography business on the '100 mile diet' in which a person eats only food grown or produced in a 100 mile radius of his home, thereby reducing excess transportation and encouraging local business. My research taught me that people generally appreciate local art depicting local culture, scenes, and landmarks, over art content from unfamiliar locations. It must be recognisable and of good quality.

My site offers a variety of products, from digital downloads to all sizes of prints, to canvas wrapped reproductions, to mugs and tee-shirts. When ordering on the site, all prices are in $CAN and the product is shipped right to your door, similar to any other on-line shopping.

I would be honoured and thrilled if my readers of this blog would drop by and take a look at the site and especially thrilled if some product was ordered.

Here is the web address for 'Terryography100'

Just click here and thanks for being one of the first visitors!

More Glory

 

Each morning as I look out our bedroom window, I see a bit more deterioration of these beautiful blooms. They do not like the cold night of Autumn and it is only the warm days that keep them hanging on. This morning they were wrinkled and had dark blue veins running through the petals. Varicose veins of old age?

 

These are perhaps the last Morning Glory photos of the year. These flowers have brought us great pleasure and joy as they do every year. Having them in a spot where we see them as we rise in the morning was a bonus. There is no other flower that plays with the light like these do. Their clean lines and rich blues and mauves are highlighted by the inner light in their center.

 

There are multiple spiral buds left on the vine, even though the vine itself is old and dry, the leaves crumbling and falling off. A picture of life? There can still be beauty in age if your light shines through.

In My Studio

 

The Autumn leaves are coming late this year. The few trees that are 'turning' are dropping too many leaves before they change colour. It may not be a great year for Fall photography. Yesterday I turned to my tried and true studio, my back yard, for some photos. Our Red Delicious tree is bearing fruit this year and there are quite a few apples that are not scabby and diseased as in other years. We ate one of the above apples and it was sweet, crisp, and juicy, just like an Okanagan apple.

 

The conditions were ideal yesterday, for a few choice mushrooms to pop up. I am intrigued by the underside of a fresh mushroom so that is what you get in this photo.

 

And then there are the Morning Glory blossoms, so fresh and magnificent every morning. A fresh batch of up to 20 blooms greets us as we open the blinds on the bedroom window. I think I have more photos of Morning Glory than any other flower except Tulips. These are very photogenic flowers and I never tire of trying to get a new angle or shed some unusual light on one or two of these.

 

They have no battery to power the light emanating from the center of the blossom, but it certainly looks that way.

 

Placing a bit of unfocused autumn colour in the background gives testament to the fact that these, for us, are Autumn flowers. The texture, shape, colour, design, clean lines, and delicacy are what make them such a marvel. The fact that they renew themselves every morning gives us a life lesson.

Rainbows

 

When holidaying in Oroville this past August, we were fortunate to have a variety of weather. It can often be hot hot hot for the whole week but this time we had a really mixed bag of weather. On three separate occasions we even had sunshine showers which can provide rainbows if the angles are right.

 

When photographing landscapes, I always use a polarizing screen on my lenses. This circular filter will eliminate reflections when turned the right way and the light is more or less 90 degrees to the angle of the shot. It makes sense, but I discovered, much to my surprise, that when the polarizer is at full effect, the rainbow totally disappears. The reason is because a rainbow is reflected light and the filter eliminates reflections. By turning the filter in the opposite direction, the rainbow suddenly appears. When it is at its most colourful, that is the time to press the shutter.  

 

Everybody loves a rainbow!

 

 

An Experiment

 

I found some 8 x 11 canvas wrapped frames on sale for pennies and thought I would try an experiment with my photography. Above, you see the canvas wrapped frame and one of my photos, printed at Staples on plain paper, ink jetted for only 39 cents. In the can is some clear Acrylic Varnish.

 

I brushed a heavy coat of varnish on the canvas and on the printed surface of the printed page. I took great care to place the photo squarely on the canvas and even more care to push any bubbles and wrinkles out. Like hanging wallpaper, I suppose.

 

In this photo, you see a different print and this time I used an off-white pure acrylic paint. Same method.

 

Here is a photo I transferred to a piece of particle board with varnish. There are too many distress marks on it and the darkness of the board took clarity away from the photo. I will not do this method again.

 

But I got ahead of myself. After applying the photo with the paint or varnish, I let it dry over night. The next day I moistened the photo paper and gently rolled the paper off the back of the photo. Fingers work best for this. The ink (photo) transferred onto the canvas and was fixed in place in the dry acrylic after having been dissolved by the wet acrylic. In the above photo you can see that I am about 1/3 done removing the moistened soft paper.

 

There are a few distress marks but it is unavoidable. It adds character and makes the photo look old.

 

This one turned out the best.

 

When they were dry, I put a protective coat of satin varnish on them to seal in the ink and 'fix' the photo.

 

Next, I went to my wood pile and found some Pine branches from my latest prunings that were a bit longer and wider than the canvas.

I cut out 1/4 of each branch to accommodate the depth of the canvas frame and then cut the pieces to length.

 

I now have one frame and two photos. I could not find 4 more suitable sticks. Not quite sure which photo to frame permanently, but probably the Sunflower.

 

I am trying to come up with some other ideas on how to frame these canvas boards because the prints are 8 x 11 and the frames are a wee bit bigger than that. Ideally, I would like to wrap the photo around the edge of the canvas and just hang it that way, but now I have a small unprinted border each time I transfer a photo.

Does anybody have any ideas?

The Many Moods of Lake Osoyoos

 

A lot of my time, on our holiday in Oroville, is spent simply soaking in the beauty that is spread out before us. It is ever changing, ever beautiful. Day to day, hour to hour, there was constant change this year. A clear sunny sky can get mundane after a while.

 

Desert rain seems to come in two varieties, torrential downpour or gentle showers. We had both, but only for one 24 hr. period. It was welcome after three days of oppressive heat that would only cool by two degrees at night.

 

Surprisingly, for the uninitiated, some of the best colour in the skies comes at sunset and is displayed in the east. Not one photo is this post is a sunrise, but all photos are pointing east or north.

 

 

 

This was a particularly eerie evening as the sky overhead was dark with storm clouds and then in the north, over Osoyoos, came a white glow from clearing northern skies.

 

Looking south at sunset.

 

And north at sunset. If we look west at sunset there is a very large and close steep mountain that totally blocks the view.

 

Ever changing and more beautiful by the minute.

 

Looking northeast we often see clouds like this, resembling the billowing smoke of a forest fire over the ridge.

 

We do not get clouds like this at home, in combination with crystal clear air. Ever changing and ever beautiful, I come home with way too many cloud pictures, but no two are the same. Please look at them large and you will get a feel for what it is like to spend a day sky gazing in Oroville.