From Dragonfly to Grasshopper (Hopper)

Thanks to Pixar's "A Bugs Life" I saw something in a photo yesterday that was really quite fun. Observe as I show you what I saw while in Photoshop.

 It all started when a co-worker came back from lunch with a dead Dragonfly. When she looked at it's little face she saw a Chinese Dragonfly, I suppose the China Olympics might have inspired that thought.  So here below is a closeup of the little face and from this perspective it looks more like the face of a sea lion pup.

Then as I was shooting pictures of it for her, since it was an extremely colorful and beautiful creature, I took a few closeups of various parts of it's body just to catch all of the beauty that I could.  The first close-up was over exposed but gave way to a different image of it than I had expected.  I took it into photoshop and added the black background.  I love the patterns in it's wings which was what I was really shooing for in this shot.



However the next less exposed image started me on a little journey that was quite fun. Look closely at it's body and then compare it to the next image where I have isolated or cropped out a certain part.


Can you see where the image came from? This is when I saw something that I had least expected and that was an image in the likeness of Hopper from Pixar's movie "A Bug's Life". Can you see him? Yes it isn't exact but that was the character I thought of as I looked closely at whet I had isolated.


So I decided to go one step further and kind of isolated the likeness of Hopper from the image. It is just a portion of his face but it made me wonder if artist's don't often get their inspiration from looking at things just a little bit differently than the rest of us.

Now obviously this isn't really Hopper and I am not saying that it is, and you may not even see the likeness that I do, but as I photographed that beautiful Dragonfly I least expected to find something like this.

Canon Beach Oregon

Our official first day of the reunion took us to Canon Beach to go out and see the sea life on the rocks at low tide. I think most of the families were expecting a sunny warm beach but in June it was still pretty cold. I have now been there three times and could go several more since it seems to be so different each time. The first time I went in late June of 2006 it was pretty nice out on the beach, and the second time in Dec of 07 it was bitter cold while this time was not too cold but not a "wear a light shirt" type weather either. There were statements made that there wasn't a lot of sea life out this time but I found plenty and enjoyed just thinking about the magnificence of the rocks and all of the creatures that live on them. I was also again intrigued by the lighthouse on one of them far in the distance and could only wonder what tales could be told about what had happened in history during the time that is has stood there some distance out at sea on that lone rock of considerable size. Here are a few of the images I took of those rocks. I would love to be there at sunset sometime still as that would be a grand site.

Summer Vacation Part1

I have decided to take a few days and blog some of my images from our trip to Oregon in June. I have posted some of these and hope not to duplicate them again but as I was looking through them the other day I realized how many I had not done anything with and figured that I would put them here. 

Of course you have your own free choice to look at them. For me it will be a way to share them with the family that was there. I have prepared a DVD for them with the family pictures included but very few of the scenery ones that they waited on me to take. So this will give them a chance to see them without having to load their hard drives down with them.

So here goes something!

This was the first day as Marie and I drove down the Columbia River Gorge toward Portland.We had no more than left the freeway and started down the frontage road when this little buck came out of the brush and probably wanted to cross the road to get to water but as his luck (and Mine) would have it I was in his path and stopped for several pictures of him which that changed his mind for a few minutes at least as he turned away and went back into the brush.

Multnomah Falls. Very beautiful and this is our third time to stop and photograph them. It was early morning so the sun was just above the falls and made it very difficult to get good images. I tried anyway wanting to improve on the last ones I had taken but I was not as successful as I had hoped. The lesson in this experience is to try to always shoot images during several times of the day and the seasons. My other two trips included photographing these falls in the late afternoon during the summer and the mid-morning during a snowstorm in December. All three times rewarded me with totally different images of the same exact place.

The side roads are always fun to photograph in Oregon as many of them are lined with beautiful trees that create a canopy under which you drive sometimes for miles. I have always loved trees that draped over a road and created the tunnel type of atmosphere. It reminds me of the deep south and their old plantations that would often have the roads lined with the old oak trees. I have always loved that look.

RELAX, SUMMER IS SLIPPING AWAY

Sometimes it is wise just to go lay in the grass and relax while the summer quickly passes into fall. (That is unless you have allergies then you might want to wear a gas mask and tight closed clothes before you do too much frolicking or relaxing in the grass.) Or you just might want to look at pictures and imagine the days when you could lay in the grass and watch the clouds and enjoy a lazy summer afternoon.

Try it, You'll like it.