This week for Brashley Photography’s Twirling Tuesday I used a daffodil. They are popping out all over these days.
I used the GIMP, a shareware program (free) to do this manipulation. If you are interested the directions for doing this effect are in this post: Putting a twist on it using the GIMP.
In the lobby at the Auckland Botanical Gardens they had several sculptures for sale. Lovely work but no way to get it home. Here are a few that I really liked.
Cactus flowers always seem impossible to me: the low-key green, stubby, prickly stems don’t seem to go with the ethereal and delicate and brilliant exotic flowers.
This lovely was blooming when I went for a walk this morning.
For Cee’s Flower of the Day and Brashley Photography’s Floral Friday #10.
Welcome to week 11 of the Pull up a Seat Challenge in 2020.
Take a load off and share a favorite perch by linking your post to this one, either with a comment or ping-back. For more detailed directions go to Pull Up a Seat page.
It is always fun to see the variety of ideas this theme evokes.
Continue reading Pull up a Seat Photo Challenge 2020-Week 11
My amaryllises are still going strong, but I think this may be their last hurrah for the year. The three bulbs have been providing cheer continuously since the beginning of December. I’m not generally a great lover of red but the weather has been cloudy and I’ve really been enjoying the different shades of red and the way the light plays on the petals.
The one that started the display in early December is also the one that has one still unopened bud. Obviously an over achiever in more than one way!
For Nancy Merrill’s Photo a Week: Red
…and the closeup of the pollen is for Sunshine’s Macro Monday.
I admire the work of both Bren of Brashley Photography and Julie Powell. I’ve learned a lot from them. This morning Bren posted a “Twirling Tuesday Challenge”. It intrigued me, but the directions (written by Julie Powell) were for Photoshop.
Being an amateur on a fixed income I haven’t sprung for the Adobe Photoshop software. I wondered if I could create a similar effect in the GIMP. GIMP stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program. It is shareware, which means the price right.
A bit of internet research and experimentation today led me to this process:
Both Julie Powell’s directions and the video on Brashley photos post use a Photoshop filter in the pixelate menu called “mezzotint”. The GIMP doesn’t have that choice near that in its pixelize filter. There is a GIMP plug in to get the effect, but I decided to see what would happen without that step. I was in the mood to play with pretty things, not be a computer geek..maybe next week.
Filters>Blur>Zoom motion blur. I moved the center to the middle of the flower and cranked the blurring factor up to 0.515 and left the other parameters at default.
If you wanted you could repeat this again.
I made a copy of the step 3 layer and applied Filters>Distorts>Whirl and Pinch using the default settings to get this:
I mad another duplicate of the step 3 image, moved it above the layer from step 4, and again used the Filter>Distorts>Whirl and Pinch, but for this layer I made the angle negative (I forgot to jot down the exact number, but I think it was around -200).
Not much to say about this, I just tested all of the various blend modes on the layer made in step 5 until I found ones I liked. Here are my two favorites:
It was fun to give this a try and the GIMP was quite easy to use to get the twirled effect. So much so that I may become addicted to abstraction.
Another sculpture from Auckland Botanical Gardens, this one is a permanent fixture in the rose garden. The ones I posted previously are part of the Sculpture in the Gardens special exhibit (Hand in the Dirt, The Head of John Doe, and Bee Haven. )
Sometimes the sunset makes you feel like you are on a different planet. This evening was one such.
Photos taken on Vashon Island, looking west toward the Kitsap Peninsula across Colvos Passage of Puget Sound in Washington State.
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