Author: Shelly

Photography

Fun with Filters

Shelly

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Shells, Bones, and Stones, Kodak EasyShare DX4530 with blue Holga SSFS-120 filter

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Shells, Bones, and Stones, Kodak EasyShare DX4530 with red Holga SSFS-120 filter

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Shells, Bones, and Stones, Kodak EasyShare DX4530 with grey Holga SSFS-120 filter

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Letter Stamps, Kodak EasyShare DX4530 with grey Holga SSFS-120 filter

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Ivy, Kodak EasyShare DX4530 and Keystone 60 Second Everflash

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Duck, Kodak EasyShare DX4530 and Keystone 60 Second Everflash

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Field, Kodak EasyShare DX4530 and Keystone 60 Second Everflash

You can see why I have a hard time getting my letter stamps oriented in the right direction. It might help if I put them back in the box correctly!

Pets

YouTube Goodness

Shelly

We had a Fake Blog assignment to use YouTube. I thought I’d share the video I used for that assignment. The dogs belong to one of the dog group folks.


Rooroo

It is beautiful, especially that last, lone, plaintive roo.

When I was a kid, we had a dog who rooed (Bear). He taught other dogs in the neighborhood to howl along with him. I remember, in the summertime, when the windows were open, the neighborhood dogs hanging around outside the little Methodist church building and “singing” hymns along with Dorothy Humbarger.

Photography

Shells and Stones

Shelly

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I shot these with my Kodak EasyShare through the viewfinder of an old Keystone 60 Second Everflash camera. Of course, I didn’t try it until after it was dark out, and so there wasn’t enough light to shoot without flash. I want to try it again, with natural light, because I think this might be a fun lomo-ish sort of toy to play with.

Since you’re obscuring the viewfinder, there’s no way to tell exactly what you’re shooting. You just kind of have to aim and pray.

The Keystone is a Polaroid clone. There’s a built-in timer on the side of the camera. It takes the old peel apart pack film, which I’m amazed to find out is still being manufactured and sold. I’ll have to give this one a try when I get a little extra cash.

And speaking of Polaroids, I figured out the overexposure problem with the little Land camera I’ve got. It needs a filter, because the modern 600 film that’s currently available is waaaaay too fast for it. So, there’s more to play with there, too, when I get a chance.

Crankypantsing, Meta

508

Shelly

I’ve got 508 posts to go.

I had planned to paint today, but I got sidetracked by other things: washing the dog, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the studio, and straightening up my coffee table mess. And then, I spent some time fixing bad links, until I got so tired that I literally fell asleep in front of the computer. At that point, I decided it was time to go take a nap. When I woke up, The Amazing Race was on, and now it’s bed time. Where the hell did my day go?

The litterbox is clean, though, and the dog smells like Garnier Nutrisse, so I guess it wasn’t all wasted time.

Crankypantsing, Meta

Rain and Links

Shelly

It’s been raining all day. I’ve been on the computer for most of it, fixing broken links. This is the only room you can really hear the rain from, because the downspouts are right outside the window. Over the past couple of hours it’s gradually been raining harder and harder.

I keep hearing sirens, too. They’re distant, but close enough to be distracting. It must be pretty crappy weather to be out driving in. In fact, I just heard an enormous crash, like a dumpster being dropped or two trains connecting. I haven’t a clue what it was, but yikes!

Fixing all those broken links is a tedious and thankless task. I’ve been working on it for a couple of hours, and I think I’ve got about 100 entries done. Going backwards, I’m at 682, which means nearly 700 entries to go. So, to repeat, if you are looking at older posts, and you try to click on an image, to embiggen it, you will likely be taken to a random image. I’m working on it, but it’s going sloooooowly. In the meantime, everything is working properly within the gallery, so you can easily access images from there.

Art, Collage, Drawings, Journals

Asian Pear

Shelly

Asian Pear
Asian Pear (detail)

I (sort of) tried the pear crisp recipe, as promised. I used Bartlett and d’Anjou pears, and substituted sucanat for brown sugar and old-fashioned rolled oats for quick oats. It worked fine. The oats were a bit chewy, which is to be expected, but it was damn tasty. However, in the future, I think I’ll dust each layer of pears with flour, because the juice was pretty runny.

Pear Crisp
1/2 C rolled oats, uncooked
1/4 C packed brown sugar
2 Tbls flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 C cold butter
3 sliced pears
2 Tbls lemon juice

Preheat oven 375F
Combine first 6 ingredients in bowl, cutting butter with knives or a pastry cutter. Toss sliced pears with lemon juice. Layer pears in 9 inch pie pan and top with oatmeal mixture. Bake for 20 minutes.

Art, Collage, Drawings

Saint Mary of the Pears

Shelly

Bosc Pear
Bosc Pear (detail)

I used graphite on another page from the patent book, but this time, I primed it with a thin coat of gesso.

Every time I see a Bosc pear, it makes me think of the Gothic S curve. If you look at the figure of the Virgin, you’ll see that it’s just about impossible to stand in that position. Her hip is thrust out in the opposite direction from both her feet and shoulders. Bosc pears have much the same sort of, um, stance.

(Apologies for the moire. I tried descreening the scan, but the image of the Virgin and Child was taken from an auction catalog, and the print quality was pretty bad. You can easily see the dot pattern with the naked eye.)

Crankypantsing, Meta, Photography

Comments

Shelly

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I’ve been a bad blogger lately. Most of my free time has been taken up with genealogy crap. I’ve also been inundated with a spectacular amount of blog spam. I’ve installed several filters on the back side, but a large volume of spam is still getting through. Not to the blog itself, but I get e-mail notifications for all the ones that the back-end filters miss. That number has gone up to hundreds each day, which means I’ve had to filter my e-mail, too. Some of the notifications for legit comments have gotten lost in that mess. Not the comments themselves, just the notifications.

That’s all by way of explaining why I did not realize there were comments. Oops!

And now, another random pee-chur from last Sunday. This one without pretty cyan skies. I don’t know why I’m fascinated with electric poles and pylons, but I am. It’s hard to believe that something so primitive could have such a huge impact on our everyday lives.