Back Yard Photo Safari

I was talking to my oldest boyo a few weeks ago and was whining about not having taken any pictures at all in the last 6 months or so and he encouraged me to just get my camera out and get shooting.  I didn't feel up to going anywhere that day, but I decided I could just walk out to my back yard and see what I could find.  Luckily, the sun was shining and so I got some fun stuff.  :)

Of Calendar Making, Photoshop Playing, and Just Plain Fun...

For the last ten years or so, I've been making family photo calendars for my parents and my in-laws.  Last year was the first year that they didn't get done and I had decided that I wouldn't continue making them since the kids are getting older now and aren't as "cute" but my mom really, really wanted me to make her a calendar so I've been scrambling, trying to find enough pictures of the kids and get everything done before January is over.  :)

In my tried and true tradition of making things much harder than they need to be, I decided that I would try making some of my own backgrounds using Photoshop.  After all, I have a book I bought years ago that I thought I really ought to use.  :)  It's called Digital Designs for Scrapbooking  by Renee Pearson.  

After a whole day of dinking around, I finally got realistic and found some editable backgrounds to go along with the ones that I had made.  After a few color changes to make some variety, I had enough to get started adding photos.  I digitally cross-processed most of the photos to make them more interesting looking (well, at least I hope they're more interesting).

I really like the way they turned out.  These are a few of my favorites.

  

I'm definitely looking forward to playing around some more with making background pages and other things like tags and stuff that I can use for scrapbooking or mixed media art projects.  

Digital Xpro fun

I had a ton of fun playing around in Photoshop tonight.  I wanted to post some Christmas photos on Facebook but I didn't really like how a lot of them looked so I decided to try some digital collage and cross processing to see if I could make them more interesting.  Here are a few of my favorites.

I think they really look very vintage and analog, don't you?  The picture of the tree branch was cross processed and then layered with a transparent background to give it extra texture and interest.  I even learned how to create an interesting border around the photos, although I'd like to find a frame that simulates the border you'd get when you do a polaroid transfer.  It looks a lot messier and grungier, which is what I like.  :)

Turning a Vintage Suitcase into a Camera Case

 I had such great plans for blogging this last week...and then we had snow, record cold and an almost 3 day power outage.  We got our power back Wednesday afternoon--just in time for frantic catch-up cleaning to get the house ready for having family over for Thanksgiving.  Oh well, company's gone now and I have some time to dink so maybe I can catch up on what I wanted to blog about. 

First up is a sort of tutorial on the camera case I made for my friend's birthday.  She's a photographer and vintage camera collector and I wanted to make her a fun camera case so she could take more of her cameras with her when she goes out to take photos.  Of course, since she loves vintage stuff, I had to find a vintage suitcase to start with.  I scored at a local junktique store and found a great Samsonite make-up case.  Then I found some cool vintage-looking fabric at a quilt shop and bought a cheap walmart sleeping pad to use for the padding. 

  

The raw materials

The first step was to make padding for the top, bottom and sides of the case.  I measured the dimensions of the top and bottom and measured the inside perimeter of the sides of the case and cut rectangles out of the sleeping pad to match those dimensions. 

Then I cut out fabric to cover the padding.  The fabric was cut to twice the dimension of the short leg of each rectangle plus 1 1/2" (1/2" seam allowance on each side and 1/2" of extra ease for the thickness of the padding) and the length of the long leg of each rectangle plus about 2" (1/2" seam allowance on each end plus some extra for ease and "just in case").  As an example, the bottom padding was cut to 6" x 12"  so I cut a piece of fabric 13 1/2" (6" x 2 plus 1 1/2") x 14" (12" plus 2"). 

On the long piece for wrapping around the sides of the case,  I sewed on strips of velcro before sewing it together so that I could later attach padded dividers.  Normally I would have sewn the velcro all the way around but I was short of velcro and didn't want to make yet another trip into town, so I just sewed enough on to cover the long sides of the case.

Once that was done, I folded the fabric rectangles right sides together, and sewed them, leaving one short end open so I could insert the padding. After turning the fabric right side out, I slid the padding inside the fabric covers and folded the raw edges of the open ends under and hand stitched them closed. 

Here's what it looked like after covering the padding with fabric.

After putting the padding in place, I decided that I wanted to add a pocket and some elastic to the top pad to hold small cameras and film. That meant figuring out a way to attach the top padding to the suitcase that would be strong enough to hold the weight of a few plastic cameras and film.  Back to the drawing board...I eventually ended up ripping apart the top fabric covering and adding industrial strength velcro to the back of it.

  

Then I added a pleated pocket with flap and a fabric covered strip of elastic to the front of the fabric cover before sewing it back up and putting the padding back in.

The case with the redesigned top padding in place.

Once all the padding of the case was done, I measured the inside dimensions of the case (with the padding in place) so I could make some padded dividers.  Since the velcro was only on the long sides of the case, the dividers were made to span from one long side to the other.  I made the dividers tall enough to  come to the top of the uppermost strip of velcro so that the dividers could be oriented either vertically or horizontally.  The process of covering the padding was pretty much the same as for the earlier padding except that I left about 2 inches of extra fabric on the short ends of the dividers  so I could sew a strip of velcro on each end.  My velcro strips were about 1/2" wide so I trimmed the ends so that I had enough fabric to made a double 1/2" fold plus a little extra.  Once I did that, I layed the strip of velcro on top of the folded edge and sewed it on with a zipper foot.  To make is really secure, I sewed around all 4 edges of the velcro.



divider

Once the padded dividers were sewn, I decided that the camera case was fffffinished.  I think it turned out pretty well and I can't wait to make something similar for myself.  :)

Since this is my first attempt at any sort of tutorial, let me know how I did!  Were my explanations understandable or just confusing?  I'd like to do more tutorials in the future so I want to make sure I'm doing a good job of making everything clear and easy to follow.  :) 

Leaf Love

Even though I've been a whiny girl about the rain this month, I'm glad to see Fall here.  I love when the leaves start to turn colors.  It makes me want to do a happy dance!  :)

I was driving home from errands today and the sun just happened to be shining and I happened to have my camera with me and I just happened upon a beautiful tree with leaves of orange and gold and as it happened, I took some photos.  :)

Beauty happens.

What Do You Get When You Combine Goodwill Silverware, a DSLR, a Lightbox, and Photoshop? Magic...

I was looking at a home dec magazine the other day and fell in love with some black and white photos of silverware and I thought... hmmm... I have a light box now, I should see if I can take some shots like that.  So this afternoon, I got my light box and clamp lights out of the garage and set everything up on the dining room table and started clicking away. 

I had to do some tweaking in Photoshop to get the really high key look I wanted--I'm not sure I could do it all in camera or not.  I'll have to do some more reading and experimenting to see if I can get the look a little closer in camera than what I managed today.   I still have so much to learn...
  

 I can't belive how good this stuff looks in the photos compared to real life.  Ah the magic of product photography.  :)

Gotta say that shooting these photos was a lot of fun.  I can't wait to find some more cool silverware and utensils at the thrift store.  I might even print some of these and frame them.  :)

Photo Fun With Light Boxes

Well, one good thing I can say about how unpredictable the sun has been this summer is that it's pushing me to try some new things with photography.  I love shooting landscapes but have always wanted to try doing some studio photography too--especially interesting product type photography.  But, studio equipment is freakin' expensive so I kind of dismissed ever being able to afford to do it.  Until I ran across a book at Barnes and Noble and a few websites online that talk about really cheap ways to make studio equipment.  Man, I love the internet!!!

Because I don't have studio space (and storage space) right now, I decided I should start with something fairly small.  So, I decided to try making a light box or light tent.  Basically it's a box or tent made with white fabric that is used to photograph close ups of small objects--think etsy and ebay photos.  I found some instructions online to make one out of a cardboard box.  Here's a link if you're interested in finding out more.   http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent 

Anyway, I went to Lowes and bought a cardboard box, a few clamp-on work lights and scrounged around till I found some vellum and some masking tape and voila, I had a light box.

Here is the basic set up I used today.

I took all the camera photos in my last post using this set up and then tried some pictures of glass.  

 

I still have a ton to learn and I need to try a few different techniques in order to get the kind of photos of glass that I really want but all in all, it was a fun day of experimentation.  :)

Vintage Camera Find

...or Sometimes it's Really Nice That Your DH Loves Auctions.

Projectman went to the auction Saturday to check out a cement mixer and ended up bringing home 8 vintage cameras for me.  He called me mid-auction to tell me they had a few old Kodaks and asked if I'd like him to bid on one.  When he went over to get more info for me, he discovered a treasure--a Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex camera.  I've been wanting one since I first got into this new hobby of mine and so I was suitably
excited (read panting and drooling and crossing every finger and toe I have), hoping there wouldn't be anyone at the auction who knew their real value.  Anyway, being the wonderful man he is, he and DD stayed for a few extra hours at the auction, sitting through innumerable ugly crystal knick knacks, in order to bid on the Rolleiflex for me.  Instead, they auctioned all the cameras off as one lot and I ended up with quite an addition to my tiny vintage camera collection.  And I think I got some real beauties too.  :)

This blog post is obscenely bloated with photos because I have tried 3 times to make a collage in Picassa but the menu for that option seems to be disabled for some reason.  I guess that means y'all will just have to look at all of my lovely cameras individually.  Heh, heh, heh...

Kokak 3A Autographic Camera Model C circa 1913-1919

Kodak 1A Pocket Camera Series ii  circa 1926-1932

Even though it doesn't look like it from the photos, this camera is about half as big as the 3A

Brownie Hawkeye No. 2 Model C a British model circa 1907-1914

Brownie Reflex Synchro Model circa 1949-1952

Kodak Duaflex IV circa 1947-1960

Brownie 8mm Movie Camera circa 1951-1956

Kuribayashi Petri 2.8 Color Corrected Super 35mm Rangefinder circa 1958-1962

And the whole reason I have a bunch of new-to me vintage cameras.

Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex camera 2.8C Model K7C circa 1951-1953

I took the photos using the new DIY light box that I made yesterday out of a cardboard box, vellum, masking tape and poster board.  I just love it when I can make stuff for cheap!  :)  Next post will have a bit more about the light box and some of the things I've tried to shoot with it.

Oh the Beauty of the Earth

I noticed last night that it's been a long while since I had a new blog post.  I've sat down at the computer many times over the last few weeks, intending to blog, but haven't managed till now.  May is usally a busy month for me because it's the end of the school year and there are band concerts to get ready for and year end tests and such. This year it's been busyness plus loads of worry for my mom and stepdad, who spent the last 4 months in various hospitals in Las Vegas, struggling to fight off one infection after another after his heart surgery.  Last Friday, Harry lost his struggle and passed away. 

It's been a tough week.  But, it has been a time of consolation and healing too.  This last weekend I spent most of my time getting my yard and garden in shape for a jazz band concert  scheduled to be held on my back deck last night (the concert had to be moved because of rain but that's not important).  Anyway, as I was working in the warm sunshine, pulling weeds and planting beautiful, colorful flowers and seeing the beauty of the flowers and trees already there, I was filled with such peace and joy.  God's creation is so beautiful and I am so thankful for having eyes to see all the colors of the foliage and the flowers, and ears to hear the birds chirping and the sigh of the wind through the trees. 

Here are a few of the things that bring me joy in my back yard.

My new peppermint and spearmint container garden

Blue bottles salvaged from the recycling center

One of my rose bushes in full bloom

Another rose bush

A lilac in bloom

This year's big outdoor project--finishing my garden shed and finishing the landscaping around it and around the stream and pond. 

I might try to post one more time this week but then I'll be gone for a week or two as I stay with my mom and help her out.  She'll be home from Las Vegas this weekend and I'll be really glad to be able to give her lots of hugs and just take care of her for awhile.