Wordless Wednesday

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Sunflowers Make Me Smile

(affiliate links to my designs)

I've been collecting sunflower photos in my garden this year because the photos are fun to collage when I can't sleep at night. (I did a sleep study last month, and I have an appointment with my primary care this week to review options, now that we know I have sleep apnea. Perhaps my sleepless nights might be soon coming to an end. Let's hope the photo creativity doesn't jump ship with the sleeplessness...)

Last week I noticed pairs of sunflowers that looked like eyes. So, of course, I had to play in Photoshop. But first, I had to get just the right eye shot. I got a few "on the vine", so to speak, but I didn't really have enough room in the photos to later compose a smile, especially given some of the backgrounds.

After a few fun Photoshop smile attempts, I decided to shoot a few more eye shots with better backgrounds. During the process, I accidentally broke two of my Ring of Fire snowflakes from their mother stem. As a result, I got to pose them in what I thought might be more photographic locations.

The nice thing about removing a sunflower from its stem is that other sunflowers likely will bloom from the multiple side buds below. Especially with the red and chocolate cherry sunflowers!!!

I'll probably keep trying to create more sunflower smiles as long as I still have sunflowers. And inspiration... But for now, I have a few new to share.

I needed extra reasons to smile last week, and I hope these sunflower smiles make you smile, too.

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Enhanced

I keep hoping for bears in my backyard, but there have been other great visitors to my little neck of plains meet foothills. We had a gorgeous buck in the field on the other side of our fence, but all I had with me was my phone.

We had a Cooper’s hawk on the fence just after sunset, so it was nearly dark, and I had to fully zoom my point and shoot. Both photos came out pretty grainy, so I ran them through Photoshop filters and then an AI program to better illustrate the moments. I’m pretty pleased with the results.

Last weekend I got to sit on the porch for about an hour. I don't get to do that often anymore. I used to watch the birds through my window while I worked from home until 2024. Then we had to take down the birdfeeder from April to November due to bears. Now that most of the garden is going to seed, the birds are feeding again. Watching them from the porch, without a double sheet of glass between us was thrilling.

I've been cutting down most of the wild sunflowers because I didn't want them to overgrow the garden. Now that I've been able to photograph the birds feasting on the wild sunflowers again, I'm thinking maybe I'll let the sunflowers go wild again next year. That will extend my flower season by a month or more, too!

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Wordless Wednesday

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Blue Me Away

(affiliate links to my designs)

I think it's been a long time since I created any new Spoonflower fabric. Kind of fitting, I guess, since I haven't had time to sew anyway. And I already have so many Spoonflower cheater panels in my stash I haven't even begun to put together as quilts yet.

I did finish a new floral Spoonflower cheater panel AND baby quilt last year for my then newest little neighbor. I incorporated photos of pink flowers in my garden. I've wanted to create a similar quilt top using my blue flowers ever since.

I tried my hand at a blue flower collage back in 2017, and I had a couple of yards printed by Spoonflower. I thought it might look cool as a dress or skirt, though. Not a quilt. Haven't finished that project yet either. Perhaps that yardage now can become the quilt back to go with my newest Blue Heaven cheater panel, once I'm able to get it printed.

I wanted to jump for joy when I finally finished my newest panel. It has many more flower photos than my previous flower fabrics. I think the blue flower collection will make a stunning quilt. I get so excited every single time I look at it. My chicory is in full bloom right now, and I think it's just about the prettiest shade in my garden. Of course, I would say that about my delphiniums, too, if they were blooming right now!

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Not Easy

We had the most awesome storm last week. The weather forecaster said it would have been 25 inches or better if we'd been cold enough for snow. That much snow would have flattened all my flowers, but I might have shot a bunch more snowflake photos...

We had a great snowfall April 5. I think we got about 9 inches, but most of the flakes weren't so great. I'm still not done editing.

Editing takes a lot longer now. I'm stacking images, and that takes so much longer than just editing photos one by one. But stacked images are SO much better quality than single images.

Not perfect; sometimes far from it. But the clearly focused images are knocking my socks off.

I am so grateful for my garden. But boy, do I miss winter!

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Flaky

Until this year, I typically would shoot two or three shots of each snowflake, hoping at least one shot of each flake might turn out.

When you're shooting with a long lens (I use extension tubes on my macro lens to enable closer focus), the tiniest motion can blur the shot, or wind can move the flake!

I typically would try to get about 200-300 shots during a storm, and I'd typically be happy with 50-75 of the pictures after editing. (Oh, and the best flakes generally are at 15-17 degrees, so it needs to be chilly.) I'd shoot for an hour (or as long as my fingers could tolerate the cold) (plenty of peppermint hot chocolate might be consumed!!!), and editing would take a day or two.

With image stacking, the idea is to intentionally move while shooting as many shots as possible of each flake, hopefully capturing all aspects of the flake in perfect focus. I'm still new at this new method, so I'm trying to get 20-30 shots of each flake. Some of the masters say they shoot 200-300 shots of each flake. My 2006 camera isn't that fast, and my ring flash can't recycle that fast. :) (No complaints!!! I LOVE my camera and my cheap ring flash!)

All similar images are then stacked into one photo, then aligned, then blended, using only the sharpest aspects of each image.

During last month's storm, I shot for about an hour four times, resulting in a total of 1,867 total shots. I finished editing snowflakes from the second batch nearly two weeks later, resulting in 48 surprisingly clear photos from 657 shots. The first outing, which was about 24 degrees, featured a lot of frozen water droplets on each of the 16 snowflakes I shot via 277 images.

A lot of math, I know. A lot more time spent shooting. Also a LOT more card and external hard drive memory! Oh, and more frequent battery recharges. And a lot more time!!! The final two sessions of photos took another two weeks to edit! I think the photos speak for themselves, though. Worth all the extra effort, don't you think?

Once I finished editing the final two batches (62 out of 624 from the 3rd session and 28 out of 309 from the 4th) (which I must say resulted in 154 total snowflakes from 1,867 shots, 73 of which are acceptable and only about 20 I really love), I decided to create a montage of the tiniest flakes I hadn't aimed for. These babies are microscopic. I think I'll continue adding the tiny little flakes to this image as I continue to attempt to perfect my technique, but for right now, I thought this was pretty cool!

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The Chase

heavily photoshopped, no regrets

We got to see the Northern Lights!!!

For a couple months now, I've hoped we could go far north when northern lights were expected to break into Wyoming and Colorado. Last Thursday was the first time I was actually able to leave home to chase the aurora borealis. I am officially addicted now!

tiny hints of northern lights over the Denver metro

We watched the weather and smoke forecasts prior to the big event. We'd planned to go to Estes Park and drive up Trail Ridge Road. The forecast there, though, was cloudy and possibly stormy. So we thought perhaps Fort Collins or Cheyenne. But both were forecast to be too smoky. So were Fort Morgan and Sterling.

The only north part of the state, which was about all Lizard thought he could handle, with a possibility of clear skies was directly east. I thought perhaps Last Chance might be far enough from the metro city lights for us to see what I expected to be a tiny band of color.

Denver metro northern lights

Neither of us had ever been to Last Chance, so we didn't know we passed right through it. We kept thinking we would find this little town with the final gas station before the Kansas state line. I could see what looked like smoke to the north. I kept trying to look for color as we passed through one tiny little blip on the map after another. Nothing was open.

Last Chance

Finally, at 8 p.m., I noticed two beams of white emanating from the "cloud" of smoke. I knew that wasn't smoke. I told Lizard we found northern lights, and I pulled over on the very next county road, which had power lines, but what we saw was so overwhelming, I didn't mind the distractions.

straight out of camera

Once I got out of the car, the white "cloud" was no longer white. The tint on the car windows had camoflaged the pink and green. The naked eye view wasn't intense, but it was most definitely northern lights, and I could see them! I snapped a phone photo, and it captured an explosion of color! I'd heard that often happens, that the aurora is more dramatic via digital images.

straight out of camera

We watched the lights dance all the way up over our heads for about 15 or 20 minutes. I took a few photos. The wind was blowing, so I had a hard time keeping the tripods still, but my phone has image stabilization, so my photos aren't too bad, in my opinion. They are not perfect, but they captured what might be one of the best nights of my life.

filtered

We decided to continue looking for Last Chance because I was getting low on fuel. Next thing we knew (had to wait a long time for cell phone signal), we were 39 miles from Burlington, where I hoped we could get gas. Gas was available, but food was not. Both of us were hungry. All we had in the car were cheese crackers, cashews and a few chocolate mint wafer cookies. Oh, and one bottle of water.

filtered

We kept seeing fields of flashing red lights. Lizard thought they might be directional assistance for flights. We noticed the outline of a windmill, and Lizard announced, "They are windmills, and a lot of them!" Boy, there really were! Fields and fields full of them for miles!

All the way back into the metro area, almost everything was closed. It was after midnight, and both of us were hungry. We finally found a McDonald's in Limon. I didn't know what I was going to eat; I don't eat beef because it's too hard for me to digest. They had chicken Big Macs!

We got home about 2 a.m., so it was a long day. We both were so exhaused, we both fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows. I think we both will be dreaming about northern lights for many days to come!

heavily photoshopped, no regrets

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