pigeons

This is sort of a throw-a-way photo, but school has been keeping me busy. I promise better tomorrow!

Pigeons. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Skylight

Skylight. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

peaceful

Peaceful Photo by Antonieta Rico,

Skyline

Skyline. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

monument

Monument. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Pink

Pink. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

On the Farm!

On the farm. Photo By Antonieta Rico.

      I like the 'old' feel to this photo. Next week I'm going to tackle the adding a 'professional' or 'magazine' type gloss to my photos. I'm talking about the 'tack sharp' feel that professional photos have...I'll research how to achieve that and see how it goes.

Solitary

Solitary. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Blood Flower

      This isn't really a flower, It's a leaf. But it reminded me of blood and its kinda catchy.

Blood Flower. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

A Short Conversation

Conversation. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

'A Short Conversation'
by Antonieta Rico

I asked if I could take her picture. She looked up and smiled. "Yes," she said.
"What are you making?"
"A scarf."
"My grandma used to crochet. I haven't seen anyone do it in a long time."
"You know, I could make you one," she said. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. "If only I knew where to send it to..."
"No, Thanks," I said, and edged away.
"You know, it would be free," she called after me.
Somehow I doubted that.

One fish, yellow fish

Yellow fish. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Photo from Meadowlark Gardens. You can feed the fish, too!

old flower

Old Rose. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

I'm not pretty happy with the lighting on this photo- full on front flash :(

Reflection

Reflection. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Self Portrait

Self Portrait. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Photoshop fix

      I've been trying to improve my Photoshop skills. Here is a before and after Photoshop 'fix' of one of my photos. Not sure how successful it was but I will keep trying!

Before

After

      I used Layers>Adjustment Layer
      Exposure
      Levels
      Hue/Saturation>Blues
      Curves

      It still looks pretty dark but I did not want to lighten it more because the day was pretty dark and blue-gray.

Leaves

      I love the way leaves look when back lit. It reminds me of a network of veins. This particular one reminded me of a stained glass window, when I applied different tints to it.

Stained Glass. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

      The shot below is of the same leaf, different angle.

Leaf. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

       I placed the leaf on top of a lamp to get the back lighting. Photoshop effects are: Adjustment Layers>Curves>Black and White. And then I added various tints and saturation to play around with the 'stained glass window' image I had in my head. In the top photo I just put three different versions on one canvas. Enjoy!

Web

         Mother Nature keeps leaving me some gems.  I looked out my back porch this morning and was immediately captured by this lovely web!

Droplet necklace. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

      I draped an old sheet on a chair and placed it behind one side of the web and took the photo from the other side. Here is another shot without the sheet:

Web. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Both photos were just cross processed in 'curves' in Photoshop.

Artificial

   I'm pretty happy with this shot because the highlights are not blown out. I can still see detail of the lightbulb, despite aiming right at the light.

Artificial Sun. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Top 3 things I learned about life and photography in my first week of blogging

   My effort to capture beauty with my camera and post it on this blog has already been challenged, primarily by real life. However, already I have learned a couple of things about 'beauty' and everyday life:

1) When trying to look for beauty in my everyday life, I found it in the little things. A drop of dew, a flower, a bird. To neatly wrap it up in a cliche, it's really the little things that count.

2) You have to get off the couch and out of the house to experience beauty. Admittedly this blog is about finding beauty in everyday life, which right now for me revolves around my kids and house cleaning, but I found that getting out of the house and driving five minutes (or a bit more) out of my home opened up a lot of opportunities to appreciate life around me. Last week I took the kids to the aquarium, on a trail walk and to an amazing botanical garden. And our lives were enhanced with beauty because of it.

3) Creativity and imagination can transform everyday things into masterpieces. From a flower that looks like a couture gown, to a kitchen bowl and food coloring that looks like an abstract painting, imagination rocks!

Now for the technical lessons:
1) All the highlights in my images are overblown, there is zero image data there, any suggestions on how to fix that?
My first instinct is to deliberately underexpose, or set my exposure off the brightest point and then correct it on Photoshop. That is what I will work on next week.
  
    And now for today's photo, it is one from the botanical garden. Although I didn't take the photo today, I did work on it on Photoshop today. Photoshop is definitely a skill that an aspiring photographer needs to master!

My 'Alice into Wonderland.' Photo by Antonieta Rico.

The following  steps were done on photoshop (not in order):
De-saturation
Brightness contrast
Burn
Photo Filter
and
Levels

ENJOY!

Nevermore

I wanted these tree and Raven to look a bit like a postcard/ Japanese feel.

Photo by Antonieta Rico

Oil and water

Interesting painting with kitchen ingredients!

Photo by Antonieta Rico

Light Experiment

It's a plastic diamond from a craft store. I played around with off camera lighting, again using a flashlight. Not a very sucessful picture but I'm learning more about lighting everyday!

Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Leaf

This leaf reminds me of feathers:

Green Feathers. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

 One more extra for today:

Red. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Fashion by Mother Nature

I only had to go as far as my front yard to capture this image.

                                                                                             Photo by Antonieta Rico
I actually used black shorts as the background, and no the flower was not harmed in the making of this photo. Looking at it, I thought; "surely I have seen this as a dress somewhere..."

Anyways, I had some problem with making it sharp. I hand held the camera. I will try and use a tripod next time. Does anyone have a suggestion for how to get photos 'tack sharp' and clear?  

"Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs..."

Not much time today, but I saw an article in jpg magazine about a photographer who photographs signs. I liked his work and looked for a couple of my own. These are a poor imitation. His looked vintage and were on polaroids which are totally cool. I have to get a polaroid camera! All Photos by Antonieta Rico (me).

Colors

I played around with colors today:

Vase and cooler. Photo by Antonieta Rico.

Technical info: For those interested the streak of white is actually me doing the lighting for the photo. I don't have professional lights so I set the camera on a chair (my tripod) put the shutterspeed at 20s and manually used a flashlight to light the items while the shutter was open. If you move fast the camera won't catch you, In here it just caught the flashlight a little bit.

A few more shots:

And a shot from yesterday:

ENJOY!

Trying to catch a glimpse of the sublime, in the mundane

‘the first blush’ is my photo blog. I’m launching my first photo project on my birthday August 5, 2010. It is a daily photo documentary of the beauty (the harsh, and at times gentle, beauty) that surrounds our daily lives. During the next 365 days I will attempt to upload a photo a day trying to glimpse the sublime in the mundane. But the documentary is not about inspiration, but reflection. It is also a quest. I hope that in finding the exceptional in the everyday I will mark the course for an epiphany.
Without further ado my first photo is below.

Jelly Flower. Photo By Antonieta Rico.

This was taken at the Baltimore Aquarium, August 5, 2010.

I considered other options, but I liked this one the best. Runner up was 'diamonds'

Diamonds in my back yard.

Other interesting shots from my back yard:

White Sky

Tree

Dew on leaf

All three shots above were created with 'camera shake' mostly do to an ISO of 100, for those who want technical stuff.

I just started this blog and don't yet have the hang of it, but I'm sure the design and layout will get better as the year progresses. So will the vision and the photos...
Enjoy!