Spring Rain

The end of April is among us and in a matter of hours we will welcome May... for some the true start of summer.  School ends, backyard barbecues, and flowers blooming are all regular occurrences in May.  May can seem like a new beginning and with all the devastation that has occurred with the tornadoes in the South, the month of May begins anew and hopefully brings a lot of help and healing as each day passes.  Though April seemed to deal a treacherous blow to many, the photograph that I selected for today's blog was to show the gentle and healing side of Spring and rain.  Rain washes away the old to make way for the new and is the cleansing of the Earth by Mother Nature.  There is nothing like feeling the warm rain on your skin and the smell of the earth as it meets and courts the wetness of rain.  Although I am thrilled that summer is around the corner (it is my favorite season), I am and remain humbled by Mother Nature's blessings as she gets our planet ready for another season of life, growing, and eventually harvest.  Enjoy the photo!  And remember you can find my entire body of work at two locations.... http://simonehester.com and http://shcreativephoto.deviantart.com ...

"Spring Rain" (c) 2011

Layers....

I utilize Photoshop in the creation of my pieces and one of the techniques that I love is to actually layer multiple photos on top of one another.  This overlapping creates a totally new image and gives you numerous opportunities to create a wonderfully new piece.  You can use several images of the same subject or different subjects with a similar theme or totally different subjects as a whole.  The end result can be something so abstract or best to enhance a subject you were trying to capture.  Play with the opacity and colors to create an abstract or surreal environment, the choice it totally up to you.  The two following pieces I used the same subject matter.  With "Layer of Trees" I photographed three different shots of the same group of trees lit only by a streetlight.  I played with the hues to get the look just right.  And my final example, drops I wanted to add an extra branch to make it seem as if it came from one single tree and to add more drops to the piece.  I also played with texture to make the final product a truly unique one.

Layer of Trees (2011)

Drops (2011)

When It Rains...

The wonders of weather is simply that it can provide the perfect backdrop for your images.  Perfectly sunny day shot with kids jumping about conveys a happy mood, an leafless tree standing all alone in a bed of snow will make you feel cold, and then there's rain, wind, overcast and so on.  One of my favorites has to simply be rain, the kind that falls in the summer and gives off that awesome scent and soothing sounds.  There is nothing like hearing the pitter patter while you are drifting off to sleep.

Recently, we had a truly rainy day, the kind that goes all day long and wakens up the dormant spring flowers.  What to do on a day like this? Pull out your camera!  Increasing the shutter speed I was able to catch the rain in action and in particular grab a shot of the splash that a raindrop caused in a puddle.  What an impact.  The end result is a piece that is quite soothing, yet conveys that truly wet and rainy feel.

"Rainfall" (c) 2011

Dark Art....

I love images that convey a mood from happy to sad to angry and so forth. I believe that all of my images and work that I create also convey a mood whether I am feeling mischievous, happy, tired, excited and the list could go on and on. Basically I love creating a magical piece of work, an art piece that allows my viewer to join me in the mood that I am trying to establish.  I captured this photo from my backyard during daylight hours and transformed the photo to create a new piece that is dark, edgy and creates a definite mood when you look at it.  Here is the original....

 

And here's the end result and it is entitled "Dark Y"

 

 

Just A Touch

Whew.... it has been quite a week and I humbly apologize for not getting to post any sooner, but sometimes life can throw you a curve or two.  Anyway, the title this time around is "just a touch" because sometimes in creating a piece of art work that is all you need to finish it or to add to it.  The following piece was taken right outside my window after I installed a bird feeder to attract local birds.  In particular I wanted to get photos of cardinals and bluejays, in addition to the elusive red tailed hawk and my favorite yellow finches (whom still remain at-large).  The original photo looked like this....

With creative cropping, because you never want something so red lie smack dead center of a piece of work and the removal of all color except for the bird (my just one thing) I was able to create a stunning piece of work and one of my most popular pieces.  So remember, just one thing might have the greatest impact. And you get this as an end result....

Little Red Bird 2010

New Bloom

I love giving my readers, viewers, and followers of my work different aspect ratios to view my work.  Some work just goes beyond that standard 4x6 aspect ratio.  The following piece is one example, I absolutely love the length and height of the original image, but I did not need the extra on the sides so I changed the look of the image by using a panoramic aspect ratio.  It gives the picture height and importance and says look at me!  Again, one of my favorite subjects... a flower.  Why a flower, because it always looks happy to see you!

This is a lily (don't remember the species) and it was shot about three years ago, I pulled it out of my archives about a month ago and did the work.  I think this picture would be awesome stretched on canvas in one piece or split up in three pieces....

NEW BLOOM (C) 2011

p.s. Sorry about the delay between posts.... pulled back!