Category Archives: Photoshop

Post No. 850

Every 100 or so posts, I like to make a list of the most popular pictures on this blog.

Here is the list of the 10 most popular photos in the Artistic Gallery.


Outburst of the Soul
1. Outburst of the Soul


2. Self-Portrait


3. Jen Relaxing Between Sets

Grizzly McAlpine
4. Grizzly McAlpine


5. Rebecca – Senior Pictures


5. UnHingd Publicity Photo

Piano Ruins
7. Abandoned Piano – McCallsburg

Obama at Mike O'Brien's House
7. Obama

Obama at Mike O'Brien's House
7. Obama

Boone County Fair Photo Contest - 2008
Campanile Self-Portrait

06-11-08
7. Alexis – US 30 Flood

The 10 Most Popular Pictures in the Snapshots Gallery.


The Big Jesus Road Trip
1. Jesse and I with the World’s Largest Cheeto

The Big Jesus Road Trip
2. Jesse eats a Bob’s Dog

The Big Jesus Road Trip
3. Jesse and I at the Surf Ballroom

The Big Jesus Road Trip
4. Jesse Kissing the Blarney Stone in Emmetsburg

Shannon at Backbone State Park
5. Shannon reading map in Backbone

Eastern Iowa Road Trip - 2006
5. Jesse and I in Clinton

The Big Jesus Road Trip
5. Jesse in the Surf Ballroom

Bonne Finken
5. Jen and Shannon making a deal at a Bonne Finken Concert

Bonne Finken
5. Cousin Amy, Sara and Jen at a Bonne Finken Concert

Bonne Finken
5. Sara and Jen at a Bonne Finken Concert

Eastern Iowa Road Trip - 2006
Robert checking out the view in Balltown

If you want to see how this list has changed since the last time I posted it follow this link:



Number 750

I will check this out again in another 100 Journal Entries.

One other thing…

If you would like a Username and Password for either of the galleries, send me an email with what you would like your username and password to be, and I will get you set up.

Having an account to the Galleries allows you to Rate, Favorite and Comment on Pictures. Plus, it allows you access to the “Secret” Albums.

Personal Photo Project of the Week No. 24 Alpha

Personal Photo Project of the Week No. 24 was to take pictures of daisies. I went in to this project wondering if I could take a better daisy picture than “The Solace of Ordinary Humanity”, but I made the attempt.

I will split the daisy pictures into two separate posts as an attempt to maximize appreciation. I hope it works.


Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010
The Girl in the Blue Skirt

Here are some more pictures from the “The Girl in the Blue Skirt” Photo Session:


Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

Girl in the Blue Skirt - 2010

I am a fan of daisies and “I” have planted some daisies in my yard since I took these pictures 4 weeks ago. I hope to have a decent sized daisy patch in the future.

Vacation Day 9B – Mother’s Day Early

I broke Day 9 into two post because of the large amount of pictures, if you recall. You are about to see the rest of those pictures.

After all the flowers were planted, we all went our separate ways to wash up. Then the family reunited at the Stensland home to celebrate Mother’s Day a week early since Teresa was going to be in the Bluegrass State for Mother’s Day.

Here are some pictures of the celebration:


Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010
I know… I overuse this technique…

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

At this point, Alexis wanted to take some pictures, so I let her take some pictures.


Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010>

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Then Alexis gave me the camera back to take a few pictures of her hamsters.


Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

Mother's Day - 2010

The celebration concluded a pretty special week. I think I might be ready for vacation again though.

RWPE #14 – Symmetry and Patterns

The submissions for last week’s theme: Symmetry and Patterns.


IMAGE LOST
Becky Perkovich


Michael Vest

WEEK 14 - SYMMETRY AND PATTERNS
Christopher D. Bennett

IMAGE LOST
Dawn Krause

IMAGE LOST
Julie Johnson


Dawn’s Weekly Poem

Symmetry and Patterns

See the parallels in our lives
Lines drawn in to the sands of time
Running forever side by side
Just like a perfect worded rhyme
From pain to sad to glad and joy
We’re all alike more than we think
Foundations in stone bind our hearts
Just open our minds to that link

The theme for this week is:

Long Exposure

I don’t know if there is a good way to define “long exposure”. This is how I’m going to define it and while it most likely isn’t technically correct, it is good enough for me. The human hand can only remain steady for 1/15 of a second. Therefore a long exposure could be defined as a picture with a shutter speed longer than 1/15 of second.

Of course you can define “Long Exposure” however you want. Maybe you have a pasty friend with a sunburn. Maybe you have a friend that keeps chili in the fridge well past a time when it should have been thrown away.

It will be interesting to see what people decided to do with this theme.

Personal Photo Project of the Week No. 4

Daily Reminder

Don’t forget to update your links, bookmarks and RSS Feeds to the new URL: http://www.photography139.com/notebook/


(500) Days of Winter
(500) Days of Winter

This picture is an homage to one of my favorite scenes from my favorite movie of 2009 – (500) Days of Summer.

Derrick posed for this picture when he was forced to vacate his abode for Girls Night on foggy Saturday night in January.

As it turns out, there wasn’t a blog on Thursday, so here is the love letter from Thursday’s Writer’s Almanac.

There are many prevailing popular perceptions of Emperor Napoleon of France — most of which began as British propaganda. While his name doesn’t often conjure images of a sweet hopeless romantic who pined for an older woman, the letters he wrote to his beloved Josephine reveal as much. In December 1795, he wrote to her:

“I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! … You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.”

Napoleon and Josephine were married in 1796; he was 26 and she was 32, a widow. He wrote to her from all across Europe, when he was out waging military campaigns. The year they married he wrote to her:

“I have not spent a day without loving you; I have not spent a night without embracing you; I have not so much as drunk one cup of tea without cursing the pride and ambition which force me to remain apart from the moving spirit of my life. In the midst of my duties, whether I am at the head of my army or inspecting the camps, my beloved Josephine stands alone in my heart, occupies my mind, fills my thoughts. If I am moving away from you with the speed of the Rhone torrent, it is only that I may see you again more quickly. If I rise to work in the middle of the night, it is because this may hasten by a matter of days the arrival of my sweet love. … I ask of you neither eternal love, nor fidelity, but simply … truth, unlimited honesty. The day you say ‘I love you less,’ will mark the end of my love and the last day of my life. If my heart were base enough to love without being loved in return I would tear it to pieces. Josephine! Josephine! Remember what I have sometimes said to you: Nature has endowed me with a virile and decisive character. It has built ours out of lace and gossamer. Have you ceased to love me? Forgive me, love of my life, my soul is racked by conflicting forces.

My heart, obsessed by you, is full of fears which prostrate me with misery … I am distressed not to be calling you by name. I shall wait for you to write it. Farewell! Ah! If you love me less you can never have loved me. In that case I shall truly be pitiable.

Bonaparte

P.S. — The war this year has changed beyond recognition. I have had meat, bread, and fodder distributed; my armed cavalry will soon be on the march. My soldiers are showing inexpressible confidence in me; you alone are a source of chagrin to me; you alone are the joy and torment of my life.”

And from Friday:

Zelda Fitzgerald, née Sayre, was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great muse and more. He modeled many of his characters after her, and he even included lines in his books that were from letters that Zelda had written him.

The two went on their first date on her 18th birthday. Her family was wary of him, and she wouldn’t marry him until his first novel was actually published. Zelda was still 18 when she wrote this letter to Scott in the spring of 1919:

“Sweetheart,
Please, please don’t be so depressed — We’ll be married soon, and then these lonesome nights will be over forever — Maybe you won’t understand this, but sometimes when I miss you most, it’s hardest to write — and you always know when I make myself — Just the ache of it all — and I can’t tell you.

How can you think deliberately of life without me — If you should die — O Darling — darling Scott — It’d be like going blind. I know I would, too, — I’d have no purpose in life — just a pretty — decoration. Don’t you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered — and I was delivered to you — to be worn — I want you to wear me, like a watch-charm or a buttonhole bouquet — to the world. And then, when we’re alone, I want to help — to know that you can’t do anything without me.

One week after This Side of Paradise appeared in print, Zelda and Scott got married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. They became known as the quintessential Jazz Age couple: beautiful, flashy, with money, and often drunk in public. The year they married, Zelda wrote to Scott:

“I look down the tracks and see you coming — and out of every haze & mist your darling rumpled trouser are hurrying to me — Without you, dearest dearest, I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think — or live — I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night. It’s like begging for mercy of a storm or killing Beauty or growing old, without you.

Lover, Lover, Darling — Your Wife”

RWPE #5 – Framing

Basic housekeeping:

This page will be moving at the end of February. Don’t forget to update your links, bookmarks and RSS Feeds to the new URL: http://www.photography139.com/notebook/

Astute and technically savvy subscriber Angie did remind me that Blogger Dashboard is just an RSS Feed reader and anybody that follows An Artist’s Notebook on Blogger Dashboard will still be able to follow it through Blogger Dashboard by simply updating the URL.

Dawn and Angie both raised concerns that they would not get email alerts when responses to their comments are left on the blog. I am currently looking into coming up with a fix for that and I will let you know when I come up with a solution.

This week’s submissions for Random Weekly Photo Experiment:


WEEK 5 - FRAMING - CHRISTOPHER D. BENNETT
Christopher D. Bennett

IMAGE LOST
Dawn Krause

WEEK 5 - FRAMED - MIKE VEST
Michael Vest

Shannon Bardole’s Art Appreciation Picks of the Week:


Backbone State Park Road Trip

Backbone State Park Road Trip

Dawn Krause’s Weekly Poetry Entry:

Dawn went for the “psychological concept of Framing” with her poem.

Framing

A social theory of interpretation
It helps us along in communication

Reference points making up our lives
Fitting together till every piece jives

Outline of who we believe we are
Continually makes us raise our bar

Compare our lives to what we know
Fitting our frames to friend and foe

This must have been a tougher concept to tackle as the fewest people contributed, but hopefully more people will be able to tackle this week’s theme:

ADVENTURE

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of The Writer’s Almanac. It is my favorite thing on the radio. I wanted to share a little tidbit from today’s Writer’s Almanac as it is rapidly approaching Valentine’s Day. In fact, The Writer’s Almanac is celebrating this week with love letters.

Poet John Keats (books by this author) lived to be just 25 years old, but in that time he wrote some of the most exquisite love letters in the English language. The letters were to Fanny Brawne to whom he became engaged.

He was 23 years old, recently back from a walking tour of Scotland, England, and Ireland (during which time he’d probably caught the tuberculosis that would soon kill him), and had moved back to a grassy area of London, where he met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne. During this time, he composed a number of his great poems, including Ode to a Nightingale. And one Wednesday in the autumn, he wrote this letter, considered by many the most beautiful in the English language:

My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my soul I can think of nothing else. The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of my Life. My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there — I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving — I should exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love … I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it. I shudder no more. I could be martyr’d for my religion — love is my religion — I could die for that. I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet. You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavored often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more — the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.

Yours for ever
John Keats

The following spring, Keats wrote: “My dear Girl, I love you ever and ever and without reserve. The more I have known you the more I have lov’d. … You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass’d my window home yesterday, I was filled with as much admiration as if I had then seen you for the first time.”

Keats and Brawne became engaged. He wanted to earn some money for them before they got married. But then he began coughing up blood. When he saw it, he said: “I know the color of that blood; it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that color. That drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die.” He wrote to tell her that she was free to break off their engagement since he would likely not survive. But she would not, and he was hugely relieved. But he died before they married.

Personal Photo Project of the Week No. 3

Before I delve into this week’s PPPW, I want to pass along some sad (not real sad) and fairly technical news.

The way I have always posted entries into this journal is through a blogging company known as Blogger. It is an awesome program and it allows me to write blogs on their website and publish them to my website via FTP.

Blogger is discontinuing their support for FTP publishing in about a month. That means that I am parting ways with Blogger at the end of February.

There are some positives to this change:

  1. Now my Journal will have a consistent look and feel to it.
  2. The blogging software I’m changing to (WordPress) is the same software I use to create, design and maintain my website. It does have a couple of features that Blogger does not.

There are some negatives to this change:

  1. The URL of “An Artist’s Notebook” will change from: http://www.photography139.com/index_files/artistsnotebook.htm to http://www.photography139.com/notebook/. That means that those of you that have links or bookmarks to the blog will have to update them to the new URL. Also, if you follow this blog via RSS Feed, you will have to update your RSS feed. I’m currently double posting, so it won’t hurt to change those links and bookmarks before I stop posting via Blogger on March 1.
  2. Some people follow me via Blogger Dashboard. Those people will stop getting updates on March 1. If this is troubling to you and you aren’t comfortable with RSS Feeds, you can email me at bennett@photography139.com and I will add you to the email subscription list.
  3. There are only a few people that actually leave comments on my blog, but I do treasure those comments. (This is in addition to the people that email me directly, I treasure those emails as well.) Most of those people follow via Blogger Dashboard. It is my hope that they continue to leave comments on the blog in its newest incarnation, but know that this will take an extra step for them.
  4. Because the email subscription list will be distributed in a new way, it is possible that there will be hiccups along the way. I am in the process of “beta testing” this knew system, but it is possible that something could slip by the testing process. If you suddenly stop getting emails from me on March 1, then something bad has happened. Let me know and I’ll look into the issue.
  5. Perhaps the most annoying for my readers, I will be posting a reminder similar to this on the top of every journal entry I publish between now and March 1.

Enough housekeeping! Here is Personal Photo Project of the Week No. 3:


Open Mic Night
Open Mic Night

The sad part about this story is that this fish has already died. As Dennis so eloquently put it: “He lived on the stage. He died on the stage.”

I did not kill this fish. Nor did I kill the second unpictured fish that I got for free because the Wal-Mart lady fished out two fish on accident and was too lazy to return the other fish to the aquarium.

They both died of completely natural causes, I believe that natural cause of death to have been “fish bought from Wal-Mart”. Despite my best efforts to keep them alive, I fed them every now and again, they perished… from this Earth.

So let me share a couple of pictures from their brief existence.


Goldfish

Goldfish

I need to thank my favorite rock star, Derrick Gorshe for loaning me the mic and mic stand. I printed out a temporary copy of this picture that Derrick requested so he could hang it up at Rieman Music. If you don’t count Shannon’s apartment as the worldwide headquarters of Little White Lye Soap or Jesse’s office at work, this is only the 2nd business to proudly display a Photography 139 image on one of its walls.

The first business was Salon 908.

I do know that the Photography 139 Calendar has graced office walls and cubicles of businesses like The Salon at Younker’s, Loan Processing Services, Ortho Computer Systems and Principal Financial Group, but this is a little different.

I hope you enjoyed the comedic picture and the sad tale of how it ended.

May



This is the only monthly picture in the calendar that is manipulated in Photoshop in a meaningful way. I could see how somebody could think that June is a Photoshop manipulation, but in the spirit of the way that I see things, it isn’t. But we will open up that can of worms on the morrow.