Tuesday, June 14, 2011

A walk in the park

I've been working on finishing my quilt, so I'm being quiet on the blog front.  (That's a good thing... remember push-pull.....)

Well, I can't be too quiet!  I took this photo yesterday, while I was out on assignment for my Silly Photography Class with Steve Sonheim.  I used three of Kim Klassen's textures to give it a vintage feel:  serendipity, chamomile and magic scratches.
butterfly with serendipity and chamomile

But that was just for fun.  My assignment was to find an interesting (yet safe) spot to close my eyes and shoot 20 pictures without peeking, and then choose one to submit to the class pool.   I decided to kill two birds with one stone, so I worked on this while walking in the park with my dog, Jackson.... in retrospect, not a great idea!

Most of my photos looked like this:
crooked trees


This was my best shot :
silly photo 1

 I like how I captured some bokeh, but for the life of me I don't know how I did it... in other words, I don't think I could replicate it.  Well, maybe this class will help me understand my camera a bit better and have some fun along the way!

16 comments:

helena said...

lovely image - your photography class task sounds fun - I like the trees on the angle

V I N T A G E O L O G I E said...

You've captured nature perfectly ... love the grittiness of all three textures combined!
xo
Jill

Bonnie Zieman, M.Ed. said...

Love the creative approach you bring to your work!

deb duty said...

Love the butterfly photo! You did a beautiful job with the textures.

Unknown said...

I think you did a fantastic job - sounds like a fun class! I love the dynamic lines of your tree trunks! And thank you for stopping by my blog and for the lovely comment!

Kathryn Dyche said...

Beautiful butterfly, loved the tree angle.

patty said...

sounds like a fun class.
the bokeh (i love all things bokeh!)- easier to capture when using a really wide open aperture, but i clicked over & saw that yours was set at 5.6. i think you captured the background bokeh b/c the leaves were so close to you, relatively, that the background becamed blurred at that setting. bokeh-have distance b/t your focused subject and the background, or you can always manually un-focus. :)
visiting from sweet shot

Anneke said...

A fun class, that's a fact! Lovely texture work too, like the vintage feel of the first picture!

Jenni said...

Love how the texture on the leaf stands out against the delicate butterfly. Your photography class sounds like fun, did you just set on AF and then shoot, or how did you focus..change settings etc?..Jenni

urban muser said...

that's a cool assignment--to take photos without looking. you got some good shots.

Jennifer@threedogsinagarden said...

I like the butterfly texture work. The other assignment is fun too. I like the tilted look of the trees. It is like the world is sliding downhill.

Kathleen said...

@Jenni, the instructions were to observe the area first for about 5 minutes, then set the camera to auto focus, and shoot. I think the whole point was to see what effects you can get through serendipity. So no focusing allowed! It was a lot of fun, but also a little frustrating.

Halie said...

You took some photos without peeking? Wonderful images!

Jenni said...

Thanks, Kathleen for the explanation, might try that myself for fun!
Jenni

pam said...

What a fun assignment!! I have also been busy trying to work on a quilt and squeeze in some photography!

Marilyn said...

Very nice work. Must have been a fun photo shoot. I like the angle of the shot for the trees.