Lost Aussie on the loose

Painting That Town Red

Long Island is perfect right now.  Warm steamy days, hours spent lap swimming in the pool next to a garden that is in full bloom, it doesn't get much better than that!

But trolling through my files and finding pieces to work on I keep harkening back to February in Venice, where it was bitterly cold, but the sun shone and inbetween fiddling with gloves and trying to keep warm with hot coffee, my shutter snapped some fabulous pictures.

Aside from the eye candy, Venice piqued my interest, inspired my imagination and made me hungry - hungry for the opportunities to taste, see and explore....

And I've done some of that since, Morocco, San Diego...... what's next?......

Making Brushes from Tiles

When I was in Morocco there were so many fascinating textures and tiles everywhere it was hard to know where to look.  Some of the pictures I took will work beautifully just as textures for Photoshop but these little pretties I thought would make fabulous brushes.

Now if you subscribe to the Love To Photoshop newsletter, you will already have downloaded these no doubt.  If not, you can go and grab them HERE

♥♥♥♥.... A little freebie brush love from me to you ......♥♥♥♥

The Circles of Life

Of late I have rather been absorbed with my camera, nose pushed to the viewfinder and then processing images till I drop.  Searching for that "ah ha" picture, with a story to tell.

Not that that's bad at all, but tonight I realised that I'd rather forgotten the "fun" bit.  That place where your imagination rules the pixels and you can run wild and be silly and creative ....and just concoct something for the sake of it, because you can.

I don't think I ever want to forget that part......

A Little Art to Share

A little art to share on the blog tonight, cooked up whilst I was lolling on the balcony of our room at the Del in CA last week.

I'm finally back in NYC, arriving LATE last night after a somewhat tortured journey back.  Is it just me or is it disconcerting to you when you've strapped down your seat belt and are waiting to take off and the pilot pipes up over the intercom announcing that "unfortunately" he probably does not have enough gas to get to Philly and oh by the way, one of the AC units is not working so he's "real sorry if it gets a bit toasty back there"!!!!

Needless to say his predictions came true and about 20 mins out of Philly he pops back on the overhead to announce that there are severe thunderstorms over the airport, it's been shut down and he does not have enough fuel to go into the holding pattern so we need to divert to Allentown to get some more (fuel) - and wait out the storm.

Nothing against Allentown airport and it's gas was very nice, clearly good enough to feed the plane but landing a damned airbus on a runway that's not much longer than a pair of knee-hi socks kind of takes your breathe away - and not in a good way either!

Anyway, we made it to Philly a couple of hours late only to learn that the next plane had maintenance issues and instead of leaving at 10:40pm it was closer to 12:40AM!! before we took off and I think I finally made it through my front door at around 2:30am!

Oh the joys of internal travel in America!

The upside of all this is that it has been ragingly hot in Long Island over the week I was gone and my swimming pool is FINALLY warm enough to swim in!  So swim I have......Yay!!!  Rock on Summer!

And .... I've promised updates to the LoveToPhotoshop Class schedule, I know I am behind but will be sending out a newsletter tomorrow - for sure - otherwise "I" will be the weakest link!!!  Ha!

Ciao for now ....

Cross Posting at Vision and Verb

I'm posting over at Vision and Verb if you care to take a look!

A Peek at San Diego

We've been exploring the other side of Coronado Island today, stopping off to check out the views across to San Diego.  Rather different from the Pacific edge where it's all blue water and views to infinity.  Here the landscape is busy and dynamic.  Constant movement of yachts, ferries, jet skiis and myriad other small craft across the water and the City in the background.

I'm heading back to New York tomorrow and whilst I've enjoyed my time in this lovely corner of the world it will be nice to have my phone working again (no 4G for AT&T iPhones here) and a proper connection to the internet.  With my loved ones in far flung places it definitely drives me nuts when I can't stay connected!!

Anyway, this is cheerio from sunny CA.  I hope to come back again one day and visit a little more of the West coast.  It certainly "floats my boat" as it's so like Aus.... I even have pics of Kangaroo Paws that I snapped in the garden of the hotel this afternoon .. if you can believe that!!

 

La Buena Vida

I've done nothing more these past few days than meander down the beach several times a day, read my book on the balcony, peek into the shops hereabouts and basically "chill out",  even the camera activity has been a bit sparse .

The evenings have been filled with some business/social obligations but once those have been fully satisfied there has been plenty of time to indulge in a bit of fun and If you know me well then you'll know that I have a penchant for good a good "red" which has been amply satisfied by a visit to Eno where wine and cheese flights are their thing and some mouthwatering experimenting can be done.

And yes, if you happend to be nearby and spotted a crazy lady decked out in a snappy cocktail dress, sporting a tripod and camera, traipsing barefoot through the sand at 10pm ... that was probably me....

California Dreaming ...

Another couple of rides in a some more jet planes and I find myself way out west, in California.
Coronado Island near San Diego to be precise and staying at the landmark Hotel del Coronado which I have to say is absolutely enchanting.  This fabulous Victorian building sits right on the beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean and it takes very few steps for me to dip my toes into the sea which suits me just fine!

The town itself is very pretty and on the whole reminds me of Perth (Australia).  Clear blue skies and a grand sea breeze in the afternoon, low humidity and a little on the chilly side after dark.  I can quite see why my sailing mates at home like to come and race here as the conditions are incredibly similar .. rather makes you want to hoist a main (sail) and get out on the water ....

Anyway, the sunshine and sand beckon ... so I'll say cheerio for now and catch you when I can!

Hauling My A** into 2012

Well I finally broke down and succumbed to peer pressure in the house and got myself an iPad.  I've struggled long and hard about this, afterall I have and iMac, a Mac Book Pro and an iPhone and could not really see the relevance of yet another "i" gadget - one that needed, feeding, updating and yeah, synchronising with all the OTHER things.  And besides, I am hot under the pump to upgrade my OSx on the iMac to marry with all the other "stuff"!!

Can you see BIG rolling eyeballs here at the joy that notion brings!!

But first off I have to say the iPad is fun, incredible and amazing.  It would be nice though if you didn't have to use some Apple kind of software to add images and photos to it - as I'm deadly allergic to iPhoto and my version of Aperture is aeons ago and needs another $80 to "make it work" .....

One nice feature though is all the free books you can find for Kindle or iTunes and since I am going away again this week, in lieu of packing heavy library books have been able to download a few nice freebies to read .... nice  thing is, no noisy page turning!!!

 

Meetup At Innisfree Gardens

Lately I have been trying to broaden my photographic horizons by way of joining various MeetUp Photography Groups both here on Long Island and also in NYC.  So far there have been some interesting opportunities and a nice variety of photo themes on offer.

Today I joined the Long Island Photgraphy Group on an adventure to Innisfree Gardens where there was some 30 or so of us, faces all pushed against viewfinders, traipsing about the parts taking pictures.

I shot somewhere in the region of 250 raw images.  Maybe 10% will be of any use as we were there in the middle of the day with harsh light and way too much shadow and highlight and let's face it, I am not in the big leagues when it comes to taking landscape photographs.

I was however fairly content with one panorama stitch and the second image which was an HDR file processed out of 7 bracketed shots, with a bit more tweaking and toning afterwards.

In some ways the digital world allows you way more latitude than if you were taking pictures with film.  In the old days you would shoot one roll and hope you had a great image or two.  Now I take 200 pictures and am happy if I have two that work out.

That 10x factor is surely a nice cushion.

(PS.click on each image for a fuller scale peek..)