Lost Aussie on the loose

Pushing Some Pixels

I spent the better part of the afternoon crafting a new banner from some 15 different images sent to me by my Vision and Verb pals from around the world ....and this is the result.

A little more tweaking here and there but on the whole I am happy, and so apparently are they - Phew!  Taking on commissions of any sort can be a bit of a challenge as you never really know whether you are going to please the "client" or not and wait with bated breath until you get the thumbs UP!  Probably even tougher when they are your friends too...!!

I've also spent some considerable hours today weeding through photo files from 2006 to now.  Junking about 2000 of them and coming across the odd gem or two and working a little more on two that I had on the simmering plate, one from Morocco and one from Venice.

They are both coming along a whole lot better than yesterday's effort which I was not pleased with at all, and have since thrown it in the bin and trashed the offending blog post too. 
These will probably end up in the keeper folder after a little more rounding off!  I'm not happy with the balance of light in the Venice piece so will have to work on that further!!!!

Messing About

Take a couple of images shot in Venice, add one iPhone photo, snapped whilst mid Atlantic, fiddle with them in Photoshop and by the time you are "almost" happy with it, the clock says 2:00am!

In one language it's called messing about, in another it's called faffing about....
take your pick.....

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?......

Posting Over At Vision and Verb

Venice, Italy 2012
© Marie Otero

I'm posting over at Vision and Verb today - if you'd care to pop along!

Makeover Magic

© Marie Otero 2012

I came across this image in my Venice folder and had to share.  The notion of the guy, all dressed in costume, painting art across the woman's face and chest.... kind of leaves for dead the makeover you get at Macy's right?

xoxo

The Colour Purple

Still digging through my Venice images and could not resist sharing.  This was one of the most ornate costumes that I saw.  Goodness knows what it took for her to hold her head up straight!  I snapped her as she was riding the ferry on the way to the Piazza San Marco.

The Other Face

For me, no trip to anywhere would be complete without the requisite "grunge" shots and in that regard Venice was no exception.  Whilst it was full of history and ornament there were also the trademarks of 21st century artists, tags and stencils.  Lots of which found their way into my camera viewfinder and duly snapped!  Probably 15 or so of which I have collaged together here.

I especially liked the paste-ups of flyers advertising Hope and another for Love - you could tear off a strip if you needed some.  By the time I found them, the strips were all taken ...... enough said I guess!

We all need Love and Hope!

The Weekend that Was

Thanks to all the well-wishing, my cold is abating and I am on the mend.  The weekend has been filled with catch-up chores and some time taken for photo editing....

I snapped this lady on the island of Burano and have some empathy with her as that is what I have been doing today, albeit the US "dryer" version!

I primped and preened a little to go out for dinner last night, although not quite to this extent ...

and then today we went out for a good long walk around and about, though can't say for sure that we saw any colors or canals of this ilke? ...

That's probably it for now in the way of Venice pictures.  For sure I don't want to bore you to death with them all.

Perhaps at some point I will get it together and assemble an album or something, though right now other things are pressing!

Ciao for now

A Painted Lady

Click and Mouseover the image for the before and after edits.

It's cold and miserable here in New York today.  Perfect weather for staying indoors, drinking tea and doing a little Photoshopping!  I've also got a case of the sniffles, maybe due to the crazy rocket ride of temperatures here abouts, either that or some less than delicious germs bestowed by the guy who was sitting next to me on the plane sneezing all the time!

This piece has taken about twice as long to concoct as it should have, about half way through working on this image Max the cat decided to tiptoe round the back of my desk and plopped his dirty great paws over the powerboard and "poof" the Mac shutdown and 70% of what I had been doing for the last 2 hours was lost.  Yeah, yeah, I did have a saved version of my file, but it was you know, like Rev 1!!
Just as well I love that cat .....

Anway, here we are. Miss Venice 2012 - well for me anyway.  I just loved her hat! 
I used the "sooc" photo and then layerd a neat image of a big clock face and some architectural bits for the background that I took later in the week.
You can mouse-over the image to get the before and after edits.

Enjoy!

Some Musings on Picture Taking

Our model Julia (SOOC)
© Marie Otero

Clearly going on a rather expensive photography trip and learning how to use your camera in the company of professionals gets you thinking a bit about how and why you take your photos.

I have always been a kind of point and shoot gal, coming to the world of photography from the back end via my experiments in mixed media and photoshop.  Pictures were always a means to another end for me and I never worried about what was in the frame, the camera's shutter speed, aperture or any of that kind of "techie" stuff.
As my friend Nancy can attest, it was always about grabbing some sort of snippet that could be crafted into something fabulous in Photoshop.

Now after spending a week with a bunch of crazy A**ed pro' photographers, learning lots more about my camera and how it can take really rather nice pictures :-) .... I am beginning to see the other side of the equation, where a nicely framed shot (yes I'm watching my edges Gerri!), properly set exposures and some nice depth of field, generated by well thought out aperture and shutter speed settings can be quite rewarding to look at.

I can't say that I've achieved any miraculous level of expertise at taking pictures, I still have a lot to learn but I'm thinking that there is going to be room in the future for some "perfect" pictures now, as well as the on the run "auto" shots.

I can play with them ALL, regardless, in Photoshop - right?

 ..... and here's the creative version! :-)

So what about you? How do you like to snap your shots?  Are you a manual maniac or an auto baby?