boots and boys

okay, so no boys but there are boots! I am happy to say that I have finally started my shoe/boot project. This first image is of a pair of boots that I bought at Ross (for $5!!) and a holster that my brothers probably played with back in the day. I plan to print it onto canvas and paint on it.. I will post an image when I am done. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Nut?

I am in Hawaii with the family and I keep seeing "new" things growing or laying on the ground-things that just don't grow in Pacifica. I have been carrying this around for two days now and Jack, my oldest son, pried it open a bit and I was able to get a better look at what it looks like on the inside. I am not sure what the heck it is or what it could be if planted in the dirt but it is a very interesting object to photograph. For those of you who want to know what I did to it..I dropped it into black and white and then used a texture overlay to highlight its complex structure and boosted the contrast a bit..

painting with a star

This photo was taken while on our camp trip a few weeks (?) back at the pinnacles.. Pablo Picasso painted with light while being photographed and I was inspired by him. The light source is a star and with the shutter on bulb I moved the camera around in circles and up and down.. there is a lick of flame in the lower right corner from the camp fire.. I did several of these, but this is the only one that came out.. funny how that works, huh?

The Fungus Amungus

These following two photos are from my trip to the Pinnacles a few weeks back. The colors in person were way prettier and didn't transfer to digital as well (i am thinking about shooting film again..). I decided to apply an "acid" filter on it to desaturate them a bit and to make them more interesting.

Mom's day is so over...

Mom's day has come and went and my flowers that my hubby and boys gave me lasted a pretty long time.. I don't know about you, but I like to keep the flowers around until the petals are practically falling off. Tulips are especially interesting when they start to wilt because they take on such a different look.. so I brought out the camera this saturday and photographed the flowers before I tossed them into the yard.. let me know which ones YOU like..

this one....or this one....
this one.....
or this one...

thistle while you work....

Took a trip to the pinnacles over the weekend and will be sharing photos from our trip over the next few weeks. I had spied this flower on our way into the park and filed it away in my brain to grab a shot of it on our way out. It was so windy and this flower was moving all over the place.. not to mention that I was standing in the middle of the road in oncoming traffic.. so it is probably not THE best photo I could have gotten of this intriguing plant, it is THE best one that I got at that moment and sometimes that is good enough..

Trees

I had to pull over when I saw the sun coming through these trees above the cliff house in SF. Does that ever happen to you? You see something so beautiful that it stops you dead in your tracks? It was like something out of a dream.. so magical that I had to capture it with my camera.. and even then it still pales in comparison to the real thing..