Mackinac at Midnight

Mackinac at Midnight, originally uploaded by kklawiter.

Flickr’s “blog this” functionality makes promoting artists and their images so much easier. Then, if you connect your blogs and networking sites, that means that it becomes quite effortless to promote your favourite finds from the web. Would have loved to link this direct from Karri’s RedBubble site, but flickr’s “blog this” is hard to beat.

Valley of the Waters – Wentworth Falls

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the Valley of the Waters with two other photographers – Peter Hill and Tatiana R. These two are absolutely passionate about their waterfalls and landscapes and will go to all sorts of lengths to get the shot perfect (and by that I mean, getting up at a ridiculous hour even in winter in order to capture the scene in it’s best light) . I was also fortunate enough to borrow a spare Canon 30D  – which, of course, I fell instantly in love with…sigh….

I’m in the process of considering an equipment upgrade, and after using the Canon 30D, I think the upgrade will be happening sooner rather than later. I’m looking forward to our next outing, and shooting some more of our beautiful surroundings.

To view more Blue Mountains and the waterfall images please go and view Peter’s gallery here  and Tatiana’s gallery here.  Their works are available for sale as greeting cards, matted prints, wall art and canvases through RedBubble.  when you view their gallery of images, I think you’ll agree that getting up at “stupid o’clock” is well worth it if it means being able to achieve such wonderful results.

To view more in my series of the Blue Mountains, see my flickr gallery.

 

 

 Peter and Tatiana in action – if you’ve taken a look at their galleries, then you’ll see that getting up at “stupid o’clock” is certanly vital to getting the perfect shot.  And yes, that means not only all the necessary camera equipment, but also good shoes, cap – rearward facing, flask of tea, chocolate and a beanie – preferably with a pom pom, good shoes, and a heap of patience and stamina. 

undergrowth 3, originally uploaded by Adriana_G.

 

Sweet Blog

Sweet Blog, originally uploaded by Adriana_G.

Recently, the comment seen in this image was left on my blog. I felt flattered – for a nanosecond – then I realised it was probably left by a machine with links to goodness knows where. I googled the entire term, and sure enough, over 625,000 search results came up – all showing that people had accepted this sweet little comment on their blog without realising that it was instead, fake.

It’s always nice to know that another person is reading my blog, and feel flattered when comments are left. But, sheesh, when it’s a machine leaving fake, little, meaningless blurb, well that just stinks.

Drawing Day 09

What is Drawing Day all about? It’s all about the art of drawing, of course! It’s the day you’re encouraged to drop everything and simply draw. Visiting the Drawing Day website, you’ll find the various websites participating in this artistic day. I’ve had a lovely browse through many of the pages, and have picked my favourites here. If you’re a member of any of these sites, then go and comment on those works – give a little encouragement to your fellow artists. Enjoy!

Batukarang by FriellaAnakIndonesia

Draw Your World by KuyaChan (DeviantArt)

Nes On Pennyroyal, originally uploaded by the manx.  As seen on Flickr

Repose by bojancica

Parking Critique Posted

Parking Critique Posted, originally uploaded by Mixed Species.

Would love to carry a handful of these little stickers around!

Word of the Day – Happy

Having discovered www.oneword.com, I try and visit it when I can and come up with something that remotely makes sense. Trouble is, with a time limit, and a visible timeline that runs to red far too quickly, you don’t realise just how much you rely on the backspace button when typing up a simple phrase.
It’s just a little bit of fun, a little bit of pressure and far more enjoyable than doing crosswords. Of course, now that I’m following oneword on twitter, it’s easy to be reminded when a new word appears.

The images below are ones I’ve chosen to suit today’s word – HAPPY – and have been found on Redbubble. Please click on the images to visit the artist’s online gallery.

 

Absolute Joy by Rough Diamond

 

 

Have a Nice Day by thartranft

 

Happy Cloud TShirt by SavannahSaurus

 

the party of the crocodile by Gillian (: Cycling Trivialities

Feature Monday

For the sheer feeling of serenity this image exudes:

endless by Debbie Black

For the dizzying effect these fun contraptions produce:

Round round we go by Scott Ruhs

For the wonderful memories of a long lost reunion and memorable family holiday:

Perth city after sunrise in duotone by Martin Pot

For the vibrancy and gorgeous pattern:

Starglow by Webgrrl

For the feeling that it was produced in another time, and for it’s sensuality:

Espresso Bagagli by Peter Zentjens

Mineral Make-up – so what does it all mean?

These last few days while ironing in front of the tv – there’s a lot of ironing to be done you see – I notice that every second advert on tv seems to be for mineral make-up.  So what it is?  Why is it different?  Do I really need it?  Will it get my ironing done any faster and more efficiently?  Will it resist our Australian summers without sliding off my face?  And what if I get caught in the rain – will it form brown sludge marks as it drips off my nose and chin?  Does it stain clothes?  How do you remove it?  What happens to the powder that doesn’t stick to your face, will it fall on my shoulders like brown dandruff? Will it create more housework as I try and dust all the powder away? And for those of us lucky to have wrinkles – does this mineral make-up fall into our  creases (laugh lines, actually…) so that our faces look like a topographical map?  I’m really not convinced it’s the answer to my make-up prayers, this mineral make-up thing…especially since I have to send away 3 easy payments of upteen dollars, plus postage and handling of course, and then I get all these “free” products to try, lucky me…  Well, the jury’s out on this mineral make-up fad.  I haven’t come across anyone who wears it or who has tried it.  Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie seems to wear it, but I’m not sure that’s enough endorsement for me.

“Pucker” by Josiem. This image kindly reproduced here with permission from the artist.  Visit Josiem here to view her work at RedBubble.

When love goes wrong…

…you take your life into your own hands!  Well, so it seems when you view this photograph.

It’s actually a staged shot taken by Melbourne based photographer “Alexander Edwards”, in collaboration with “Dallas Ashton”, a visual effects artist.  Simple in it’s composition and while being effective, complete with humourous title.  It makes you think – gosh, some people take their morning coffee very seriously indeed! 

Edwards has an exhibition at the moment of his work entitled, “Touch Me Series”.  A simple, elegant and very moving portrayal of human feelings and thoughts expressed in the most touching ways.  To find out more about Edwards’ work, click here.

Art Pain?

Is that what you’re left with if you lose images from your hard drive without backing up?  It must be…  Luckily one of my New Year’s resolutions is to back up all my data – images, documents, the lot, before I lose precious data.  I recently lost a whole stack of brushes I had made in Photoshop, the “art pain” wasn’t too bad, as I know at a push I can create them again or at least retrieve them from the saved .psd images I now have multiple copies of. 

I’ve had several external drives sitting here, simply waiting to be used, and today I bought even more blank cd’s and dvd’s so I can burn multiple copies.  You just never know what hardware will fail, so it’s best to keep multiple copies and to store them in different locations – ideally off-site would be great.  Next on my to-do list is to investigate online storage of my images, but at the moment I will be content with the multiple back-ups I’m creating.

Before you get too involved in 2009, have a little think - when was the last time you backed-up your images and documents?  This task is really not one you want to put off till tomorrow, as you may wake up tomorrow to find your only copy is now on a dead drive.  And then you’ll experience the suffering, the agony, the regret of what it’s like to have ‘art pain”.

“Art/Pain” by Cathie Tranent

Please visit Cathie and buy her work at RedBubble.