Författare: Leya

Lens-Artists Challenge #188 – A Special Place

/ Leya / 76 kommentarer

Karina of Murtaghs Meadow is our lovely guest host this week, and she wants us to show something of our special place. She writes: ”Many of us have a special place; maybe it is a place you like to escape to when you need a break from the ups and downs of the everyday; or it may be just a place you enjoy spending time. Your special place may be a certain room in your house, it may be a place you like to visit, or it may be a building such as a library, museum, or church.”

Today I chose my own room – left to me when my daughter, Emma, moved out. I have all my hobby materials here, and the window is facing south, so it is always sunny and warm. A welcoming space!

More than me love this room, and last week we had Milo’s girlfriend, Esther, here. Both sweeties kept me company every day when they had got tired of playing outdoors. Reading was not easy though…as the young lady liked to sprawl her longlegged body all over my chair. I had to put a blanket there.

In this chair, I do my knitting and crocheting too, so that had to be paused for some days… I also keep my dried and pressed plants in this room , ready to be put into frames or fit into a card or a book.

The light makes it perfect for my scribbling, painting and doodling as well, as I try to find the old me again with watercolours, pencils and pens. In the yellow box to the right, new little plants find this sunny spot a nice place to start life, or restart it. I think we somehow share this feeling…

Finally, special thanks to Anne Sandler for her Water challenge. We all love water, and your variety of beautiful photographs and posts made the importance of water really shine!

We hope you will join us this week, and we look forward to seeing what makes a place special for you. Get inspired by visiting Karinas post from beautiful Ireland, and link to her original post with the Lens-Artists tag to help us find you.

Next week, Tina will lead LAPC #189, on the subject ”Odds and Ends”.

Thursday Thoughts – Orb Formula!

/ Leya / 63 kommentarer

As so many readers have been asking how I made the water droplets for LAPC’s last challenge – here is the formula. Originally I learned it from always innovative and informative Dina and Klausbernd at The World According to Dina.

1) Open an image in Photoshop
2) Crop it to a square format
3) Go to filter – distort – polar coordinates and click polar to rectangular
4) Go to image – rotate – flip vertical
5) Go to filter – distort -polar coordinates – rectangular to polar
6) Expand canvas: go to image – canvas size; expand to your liking but choose the right colour before saving

A small warning though…you will get addicted! Here are a couple from my garden last year – snow on the tiny spring flowers. The original scilla image is in the opener.

Scilla and daffodils after a snowfall

And here is what is coming in a month or so – sweet Anemone hepatica.

Have fun ”orbing” your world! Please tell us about it or post some of your results! We certainly need some fun these dark days, don’t we. ♥

Lens-Artists Challenge #187 – Water

/ Leya / 64 kommentarer

We welcome Anne as our host this week! She has chosen Water – we cannot exist without water, and we admire its beauty and love the many ways we can interact with it. I am sending some water thoughts from a rainy Sweden. Water, water everywhere…

Roni Horn is the creator of the Library of Water (Iceland) in the opener.

Water is the driving force of all nature. – Leonardo da Vinci

I am merely an insignificant creature on a microscopic blue dot in the vastness of space.

– Abhijit Naskar

I always welcome this feeling, it gives me a refreshing insight and reminder of my place in this world. The endless sea is there to show me.

The sound of water is worth more than all the poets’ words.

– Octavio Paz

Because no matter who we are or where we come from, we’re all entitled to the basic human rights of clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and healthy land to call home.

– Martin Luther King III

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.

-Lao Tzu

We live on a blue planet that circles around a ball of fire next to a moon that moves the sea … and you don’t believe in miracles? – Unknown

I always reflect upon life while walking in nature, I guess many of us do. A Miracle, yes, she is, Mother Earth and everything living on her. I am grateful to be here for a short second.

Yesterday I learned how to make droplets out of my images…so, from my garden I am sending my dewy autumn aster and some clear droplets for you to reflect upon too.

” Within a single drop of water, an astrologically large number “sextrillion or 1.67 x1021” of molecules exists. The size of the tiny water molecule is approximately 0.275 nanometers or 2.75 Angstrom (x 10-10m). Water is the most abundant substance on earth.”

Finally, a favourite image from the Galápagos Islands. My dream of endless, warm water with an abundance of life!

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women’s empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.

– Ban Ki-moon

Please show us your thoughts and images of water. Go through your archives and retrieve some memories or make new photographs this week. We’re looking forward to seeing your images. Please remember to use the Lens-Artists tag and link to Anne’s original post.

Thank you for participating in Sophia’s beautiful challenge of “Low Light” last week. Next week we are pleased to have Karina of Murtagh’s Meadow as our guest host. I wonder what she has in store for us…

If you would like to participate in our weekly Lens-Artists Challenge, we have easy to follow instructions. Just click this link and join us:

https://photobyjohnbo.wordpress.com/about-lens-artists/