Altering reality: adventures with photo software

In the evenings, to take my mind completely off of my job, I have been using the same digital software I use to make holiday cards to play with architectural and geometric images.

I have been having fun.  Perhaps too much fun.  (As if there is any such thing.) I'm learning new things!

Here are links to recent experiments: first up, a very new version of New York City's most dramatic PATH station, with an imaginary (and very still) reflecting pool:

Digitally Altered: Oculus

Digital fun with New York City's most dramatic PATH station.

Fun with some beautiful plaster columns carved by Moroccan artisans in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Digitally Altered: Moroccan Plaster

The Metropolitan Museum in New York has a spectacular Moroccan courtyard (indoors), which has some remarkable plaster work created by craftsmen on site. (Many of their impressive installations were created by living artists who were paid to do the work, which makes me heart sing.) The detailing is completely beautiful.

And lastly, some heavily modified Korean palaces and temples I photographed in Seoul, and modified a few nights ago here at home.

Digitally Altered: Grand Palaces and Temples

To relax after work, I turn wide pavilions into narrow ones. These images were taken in Seoul, in both the Gyeongbokgung complex and (for one particular set of details) on the grounds of the Buddhist temple headquarters. I've exaggerated the colors with filters to break my subdued color habits.

Spring continues

I went outside to buy groceries earlier this week!  While sweating inside my mask, I spotted these irises, which are blooming happily, and not sweating under a mask at all.

Irises arrive late spring/early summer around here.

It was difficult to compose this image, because the irises and some native wildflowers sit in a deep drainage basin that helps prevent localized flooding near the base of my hill, but the basin also (unintentionally) collects plastic bags and discarded face masks.  'Lots of cropping happening here to eliminate those.  (Now is NOT the time to go touching discarded medical masks on the street for the sake of composition.)

Easter photo bouquet

These flower are in spring-like, happy, pagan Easter colors, and I enjoyed them in place of candy today (which I have been resisting, so there is none in the house). 

It feels good to see something bright and natural, and to enjoy it with enthusiasm...  Life is complicated for humans right now, due to unwise human behavior, and so little celebrations of being alive are appropriate.  Really, little celebrations of being alive are ALWAYS appropriate, there is just more to contrast that with right now...

Wishing everyone safe and healthy spring holidays!

Closer. No, closer.

I have lots of images like this in my archive, though the better ones are zoomed in beyond recognition, and show abstract colors in film grain...

Calla curves, detail

Yes, it was still raining.  We need the water desperately after the driest February in 150 years.

Wet calla

I went outside as far as my garden today.  And got my shoes wet.

Pink for late spring

Lilac time

At least, it is lilac time in my little microclimate.  Your local seasons may vary!

Inner Blossom Jasmine

I ran out of tea, and can't get to Rainbow to buy my favorites during this stay-near-home period, so I ordered from Red Blossom Tea, and My Jamsine set included these "blossoming" (expanding when brewed) types.  Aren't they pretty, all bundled up like this?  

Wild rice (in a domestic setting)

Dreaming of the outdoors

The thing about being indoors under a health order during a pandemic AND in cold, wet weather is that it becomes harder to make excuses not to do things that are on your indoor to-do list. 

I'm low on postcards to use for my postcard exchange club, and I finally found some of my long-lost 2007 Yosemite photos, plus some scans of my trip to Desolation Wilderness.  So, I slaved over a hot stove Lightroom album all morning, and placed my order with my printer for 20+ designs.

I also repaired a vacuum cleaner, taped shut a drafty window, vacuumed the back of a couch, and baked a pie.  Because: INDOORS.

New, white tea

Whole leaf tea like this is rather odd looking...  If I didn't know what it was, it would be hard to guess from this image.  

Ever grander wisteria

Every time I look at it, there is MORE of it...

Sunday morning in my garden

Last year, I had my yard violently cleared beyond what I intended (who tosses out potted plants from a patio when clearing overgrowth in yard??) in preparation for construction that... should have already been completed.  My yard was quite bare, which is giving me a chance to start over after construction (should that ever occur!).

The autumn rain pleased my established plants, and delighted many hidden seeds, which are eager for more rain.

I've been engaging in SF's Social Distancing experiment to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus for two weeks, and wanted to spend some socially distant time outdoors, without venturing far from home.  A little time in the garden with a cup of hot sencha and my iPhone camera allowed me to appreciate the expanding vision of spring that my yard contains.

Top: tea tree (maybe Leptospermum scoparium), local alyssum, some kind of crocosmia
Middle: local flower (Fumaria capreolata!), euphorbia, camellia (likely japonica)
Botton: California poppy (Eschscholzia californica), wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta), camellia (Camellia japonica).

Ruffles (but not the ones I’m craving)

Eucalyptus bark

While we don't appreciate that these trees tend to explode while on fire, they sure have interesting bark!

Plum time warp to earlier spring

The plum trees with purple leaves lost their blossoms in my neighborhood weeks ago, yet just over a mile to the west, in an adjacent neighborhood, I found one that was in the early stages of leafing out, and still had blossoms.

When we speak of microclimates in San Francisco, they are much smaller than you think they are, sometimes just a few blocks that are in a different season than the adjacent ones.

Bird of paradise in the city

Bird of the City doesn't have the same ring to it.

Wisteria (being more so)

The image posted earlier was just a warm up for this, I see now.

Deep blue-violet

I love living near the Pacific Ocean SO VERY MUCH.