Lost Aussie on the loose

A Little South Carolina Weekend

This weekend's adventures included a rather off the cuff and last minute dash down to Charleston, South Carolina where I enjoyed some fabulous walks on the beach, a decent amount of "head cleaning" and just generally enjoying the seaside air.

The above pics are of Folly's Beach and the Fishing Pier.

Lots of fun people watching and chatting to the folk fishing along the way ....

 ....and some pleasant camera indulgences in Olde Town Charleston.... including frolics in the fountain and some fabulous fenetres.

I could have stayed there for weeks and hope to go back again soon .... lots more to see and do.  Great landscape imagery to be had if you are in the right place at the right time and fantastic birding and wildlife in the marshes, not to mention oooodles of lovely decay in the old buildings that abound ...

Mad dash back to Charlotte because I had tickets to see the Charlotte Roller Girls this evening.  Quite the bag of fun and mayhem with some good shots to be had.  I definitely need a faster lens for this kind of thing though...

 

More Black and White - this time, Street Candids

... sorting through some off the cuff street images tonight and thought that I would share a few that captured my eye ....

I also came across this quote in my internet meanderings.... and rather think it fits the bill ...

”When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes.
But when you photograph people in B&W, you photograph their souls!”
– Ted Grant

Amen to THAT!

Food and Friends

Despite the continued rain, 22 days in a row, this weekend has been filled with fun, food and friends - so far.

Last night we met up with a couple of friends and ventured to downtown Charlotte and tried out BLT which was an absolutely stellar experience (and you all know how picky I am when it comes to restaurants!).

Today we "hoofed" off (yeah bad pun, sorry!) across to Harrisburg to visit other friends at their "ranch", I guess you could call it, and enjoyed some country hospitality.  DH did a little hiking whilst I headed off with some four legged friends for a ride through the forrest, wading creeks and rivers and toning down the pace so that the horses did not falter in the heavy mud.

Surprisingly, there is no horse racing or polo hereabouts but, horse riding is very prevalent and since it's something that I enjoy a lot, I think a little exploration of the local amenities is in order!  I could easily get used to some relaxing rides round the lake and through the woods.

Pelican Portrait and Profile

Fiddling tonight with some of the images that I shot in Florida earlier this year with a view to using one or two for Pixoto or some Nature comps and this particular fellow caught my eye amongst the slew of RAW files ...

... a Pelican that I shot sitting on the end of a dock down by the water at Fernandina off Amelia Island.  I managed to get within feet of this lovely creature, clearly being used to being gazed upon by the riff raff, hence the lack of camera shy ....

On the Tech side of things, I have finally finished my migration to Photoshop CC.  All filters, fixin's and go funky stuff migrated and installed and CS6 has been removed from the system.
It's a chore, chore, chore to reinstall all the extra Plug-Ins, but on the upside, most of them have been revamped to work with the current version of Photoshop and getting everything up-to-date is never a bad thing and I have noticed that my computer is happier to have only one version of Photoshop to talk to....

 

 

Sunshine and Rain Along the Blue Ridge Parkway

It's been raining on and off now for 14 days here in the Carolinas.  Lots of flooding and soggy ground and so the sunshine moments need to be grabbed while you can.

Today's Carolina adventure was off up into the mountains again, this time to Saluda to check out  Coon Dog Day.

For the uninitiated, Coon dogs are hunting dogs.  Several breeds and the cheeky pup above is an English Red.

There were LOTS of dogs to be found in the doggie exhibition area but fearing the loss of yet another pair of shoes to Carolina Clay mud, I opted for the main street jaunt, filled with food vendors, music and sundry other goodness.

From Saluda we ventured off along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  An awesome visual feast for anyone interested in mountain and landscape imagery.

Sadly not long after we hopped on the parkway the weather started to close in.  We stopped for a bite to eat at Mt. Mitchell hoping to wait the storm out, but to no avail and found ourselves climbing higher into the clouds and getting colder and wetter by the minute.
Eventually after leaving the restaurant were greeted by this.......

....  at which point we cut the sightseeing short and headed for home. 

The Beemer did a grand job of navigating down the mountainous hair pin bends, but I daresay it might have been quicker in a raft!  Probably could have sailed right down the river to the dock in the back garden!!

Out And About In The Carolinas

Inbetween thundery evenings DH and I have been traipsing about the Carolinas this weekend.

We headed back to Dupont State Park to visit Hooker Falls again.  Little did I know that in the Summer time it turns into a watery playground and less of a spot for tranquil photography adventures....

Nevertheless there were a few interesting photo opportunities and the summer frolikers to watch....

Like the kids jumping off Hooker Falls , the ones creeping behind the falls and then the ones careening down "Sliding Rock" at Pisgah ....

 

Then today we snuck off to the Carolina Raptor Center, which is not that far from our house.

There were lots of lovely feathery creatures there to take pictures of ..... the English Barn Owl, and a few more to boot...

The last pic is of a Bald Eagle that was part of the "educational" presentation.

He was a magnificent creature despite the fact that he was securely tethered to the handler's glove... and he seemed to be quite keen to participate in the event and was even taking questions afterwards.... at least that is what he looked like he was doing....

Fluff and Nothing

Ever have one of those days when you tweak and twiddle and nothing seems to be "just right"?

Well today was one of those days. I worked on several images and the ideas and concepts were there but nothing gelled quite the way I wanted to ..... so pooooof .... off into rubbish they went.  Hours of work dissolved in the crinkle of the right click, move to trash icon.

At 7pm I was forced to shut down all the technologies as we started to be battered by massive thunder storms, non-stop lightening strikes and a deluge of rain.  My rain gauge outside (aka empty flower pot) reckoned on about 3".

At 9pm, a brief lull in the storm sent DH and I out in search of some dinner and we tried a new pub, barely a few minutes away, which was a good thing as flash flooding had many of the roads here abouts totally impassable.
After a few pints of stellar NC brewed beer and some tasty "fixin's" (see I am learning the southern lingo!) we snagged another lull in the storm and made it home with only a few raindrops for decoration.

I did brave a little more editing after dinner... perhaps the beer and delicious spinach and artichoke dip helped?  the PG version of one of my recent Art Nudes is above and if you are brave and not particularly uptight or naked people phobic, you can see the full version on Pixoto. 

NOTE though... please don't go and look at the image on Pixoto and then write and tell me you are offended.  I had some woman write last week demanding that I remove my link to one of my fine art nudes from my FB page.  It's a link,  you click on it, you dont like it you close it.  End of story.  It was INCREDIBLY easy to remove her from my Friends list!!

 

New Creative Bits...

DH is away this week for work and on the nightly phone call this evening there was "hello, how are you?" which was immediately followed by " where's the blog post for yesterday and why is there no new art posted ?"........

Hmmm like one makes art like one washes the clothes or vacuums the floors? .. On demand?

Fortunately for me, (or for him, I'm not sure)? ... there was some new work in the wings....

"Racing For The Edge "
© Marie Otero 2013

 Another piece of Surrealism .... Sailboat off the beach at Mullaloo, dolphin and a whale tail from off the coast of Perth, coupled with skies off Jones Beach on Long Island.

And then there's a bit of pseudo fantasy art, created using one of the images shot from the Belly Dancer event...

"Forrest Dance"
© Marie Otero 2013

Is that enough to garner my "productive" points for the day?  I can throw in a few hours of weeding in the garden and and hour swimming laps at the pool if I need to....and let's not get onto the subject of laundry OR vacuuming floors!

Some Meetup Belly Wiggles

Today I joined in with one of my new Charlotte Meetup Photography Groups to take pix of Belly Dancers.  It was my first time working with this crowd and hopefully not the last as it took a little while to get hold of the vibe of the group and figure out how they work.

I have my doubts that the models do too much work as Belly Dancers (for real) and possibly prefer just to wear the costumes and have fun with it.  Regardless, they were a nice crowd and there is always something new to be learned from a different environment and seeing how other photog's do their stuff.

My fave pix were the ones that were not necessarily technically correct in any way, shape or form but we were just having fun messing with the strobe lights and dragging the shutter for up to a second or more, so you get one crisp image from the flash event and light added into the capture for as long as the shutter stays open and at the same time you deliberately move the camera to capture more movement.

Some really interesting and very creative images were shot by doing this and these are probably the ones that will end up finding their way into some piece of "altered reality" in the not too distant future....as I really like the ghosting and ethereal effects that turned up, especially after a bit of tweaking in Camera RAW.

Reflecting On Things

I spent a fair amount of time today helping a friend figure out how to make effective reflections in Photoshop and it rather got me thinking about some new ways to interpret some of the model shots I garnered in Perth last month.

The reflection part is not too hard, copy paste, flip vertical, add some motion blur and add a displacement map to give the reflection an authentic "wobble", but the darned thing looked a bit boring so, I added a huge flourish of red across the canvas, modified it with the warp tool and added a bit more motion blur for good luck and lo you have a streaming ribbon which has been gently masked away.

Much better, or well, at least a little more interesting than the SOOC image on the right!

I never really tire of tweaking and fiddling in Photoshop.  The results are not always particularly replicable and to that end I suppose I should make better notes or create actions to mimic what I do... but for me the spontaneity is half the fun!

Here's wishing you all Happy Summer Solstice and a good Weekend!