The leaf thing will get old, but I really only just started working on leaf pics, so I get to experiment a little more.

Iris PhotoSuite, classic grunge.

–  the Daily Grunge

 Wow, such a perfect subject, a newly fallen leaf with perfect little dewdrops.  When photographing anything in nature, I always shoot just as the object is, I never dress it up or move it around to look more interesting.  Here, there was nothing I could have done to make it more perfect!  The contrasting texture of leaf and concrete, the shadow around the edges, the drops … all perfect and only necessitated snapping the picture, and playing it up with HDR.  And a B&W filter, of course.  Using B&W in this situation makes the textures the focal point of the picture, without the distractions of color.

– the Daily Grunge

 It’s fall, and that means leaves, even in North Carolina.  Not the waist deep kind, at least not in my neighborhood, which was one of the reasons for leaving New England to come here.  But there are a few nice ones, just lying on the sidewalk waiting for me to capture them and start experimenting.  I haven’t done much with leaves in the past, so I’m going to be trying out some treatments of them and see what works.  The leaf is red, but I changed the sidewalk color from gray to gold, just for giggles, in Iris PhotoSuite.  In spite of Iris’ penchant for rotating pictures on its own, it does have a nice suite of effects and editing capabilities.  After hours of applying layers in PaintFX, it can be very refreshing so use something straightforward like Iris.  And it can spur the creativity to work with a different tool, as I’m finding out with even such a pedestrian subject (please excuse the pun).

– the Daily Grunge

 It’s just been days since I was anywhere near a good photographic subject, since I’ve been anywhere except the virtual search world, which is fine except that I have a commitment to my readers.  As I’ve said many times, you can take a picture of anything, anywhere, if you stay alert to what’s right in front of you.  And these days, what I have right in front of me often includes a cup of coffee.  The upper shot was when the cup was almost empty, with an HDR effect to play up the wonderful reflections and colors, and the shot below when it was full.  There were gentle vibrations on the desk from the computer, which made nice ripples in the surface, just waiting to be discovered with a few choice edits.

– the Daily Grunge

 Any outdoor venue with music will provoke people into dancing with themselves.  It is socially acceptable, in a way that dancing alone indoors is simply NOT. This event even provided cake (Pittsboro Pepper Festival), necessitating some fitness work to burn off calories. Some chose to spin hula hoops, and others to just fall back to the good ol’ bump and grind. My activity of choice was to photograph people flailing about, which is also acceptable in a festival atmosphere.

– the Daily Grunge

 I very small girl spinning a hula hoop that was way bigger than her, with a startling nonchalance. Casualness, even, to the point where she could pick her nose at the same time.

In order to get this picture to work, I had to blur the background above her (with a stylus in PaintFX). There was a lot of distraction behind her, but this brought her face and hands into relief.

– the Daily Grunge

 Hula girl.  The music of Dielli Cissokho & Kaira Ba was infectious.  This woman had her face painted like a tiger and was incredibly graceful and fun to watch, dancing with a hula hoop.  I managed to get a shot with the hoop not touching her body, and the shutter speed was slow enough to make the hoop look flat, which was a nice surprise.

 This hula boy was mearly showing off for me, both cute and astonishing.  You can be married to someone for years and then suddenly find out they have a hidden talent.  I was never able to keep a hula hoop around my waist, and am reluctant to try it in public, so I was excused from this activity.

– the Daily Grunge