Ginger's Wood Burned - Serving Spoons for Thanksmas

Ginger(daughter)  used some wooden spoons to perform floral wood burning design for me for an early Christmas present. A famous artist, Julie Fei Fen Balzaar had this technique on her blog this last week.  Need to figure out how I can display on the wall. I think I need a ceramic piece to hold them.  May have to go to a place that fires green ware.to get what I want.  My kitchen walls are now yellow.  It was raining the day I wanted to take the image with the iPhone 6.  So, decided to use the front porch as my outdoor studio.  The piece of  12 x12" cardstock I used for the background was actually amedium coral color. The original image I sent upside down to Instagram.  The left image I did post processing in PS Express app which has filters and changed the color to more pink and put on a vignette.  I took the image without vignette into Pixlar app, rotated and then applied a seasonal frame that looks like frost or snow.

Cinda's BD Wire Wrapped Pendent - Outdoor Lighting.

Today I took a photo of the Pendant Cinda had wire wrapped for my BD minus the silver chain.   I used sunlight in L image and that made a highlight which was distracting.   Then I put the jewelry box in the shade out of doors and took the same image.  I also used an in camera app: PS Express to apply a Bueno filter which changed the colors of the blue a little. I only cropped the image, did not use any macro settings or sharpen as made the wire look wierd.

Yellow Spotted Salamander. "Shadow"

When the Dawson's came to visit for a week, they could not find a baby sitter for their salamander whose name is "Shadow". He is a yellow spotted salamander. Logan brought him in an aquarium. It is Logan's pet and he had his own ideas about where I could take the image, i.e. no bright lights or going outdoors as an option.  I would have preferred an image with him holding the salamander in his hand but I did not have a plain backdrop option. If I had tried that poise, then I might have gotten to get the salamander's face and eyes but not much of his body as Logan would have been holding in his hand. It could have also been a problem with movement of the hand or the salamander's head, leg, tail, etc. I decided to try a still life but the salamander's eyes were not facing me.
I put the salamander on a red towel on the bathroom sink.  Definitely need more practice taking critter pictures. I did sign up for a workshop (if I get to go to Photofest in Sept.) about taking those kind of images.  I changed the midtones, increased saturation and tried to decrease red hue to yellow spots and sharpened slightly in PSE 11.
.

Crepe Myrtle Blossoms Macro - Stamens

 More crepe myrtle blossoms. Yesterday, I was trying for macro still life.  The owner gave me some blossoms and decided to use window lighting and try to get better view of the stamens.  At least I did not have sun shining on my LED screen,  the wind was not blowing and I could stabilize my shot with restingmy arm against a chair.  Cropped the left imaged for better composition, sharpened.  Right image I increased midtones, sharpened in PSE 11. Both images look more pink than purple/ I probably could have experimented more with WB. At least these images you can get a better view of the frilly petals and the left image almost looks like a painting related to shallow depth of field.  

Jack's Father's Pocket Watch - Still life

Today I am trying a still life object for my image. I used daylight window lighting. My husband has a pocket watch that belonged to his father. Because of the convex glass covering the face I knew it would be difficult to avoid glare. I still have some shadow on the clock hands but I feel it is minimal. Original photo taken in color with square format. The object was lying on a dark green piece of cloth that I use for backgrounds. I cropped and converted to Noir in native camera app. I did add some shadows, cloned out dog hair and lint, and sharpened using PSE 11. Did not want to use an special apps.  I think ti avoid lightness at the top edge I could have applied a vignette.  May try later with a macro lens just to see if I get more clarity with the numbers on the watch face. It definitely would not have worked using the overhead lighting from the stove light.