Passion perspective

Everybody has a passion for something; passions in your life bring excitement, joy and in all ways enhance your life.  These Passionflowers represent two of my passions, photography and gardening.  With the advent of digital photography I have been able to grow and develop my skills simply because now I can take many pictures of the same object and experiment to my hearts content

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Just recently my Passionflowers have started to bloom and yesterday there was a particularly pretty one in bloom so I decided to take many photos of it and see how changing the angle of my camera would change the look of my photographic art.

I edited them in Picasa keeping the crop dimensions and color editing the same for each photo.  The only differences come from the camera angle.

 I was surprised when the camera angle did on occasion make a difference in the colors that showed up.

My garden and flowers brighten my day.  After I have left my home I always come back to the beauty that my family and I have created.  My garden; my other passion.

“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel quotes (German Philosopher and Inventor, 1770-1831) Enjoy ☺☺☺Johnina☺☺☺

No place like home- Front door greeting

Welcome home rose

Having spent most of my summer in Kingsport Tn with my daughter and two grandsons, I have come to appreciate the comforts and routines of home.  While I enjoyed my visit I am glad to be home.  My husband did a great job of making my front flower garden flourish.  My roses and flowers were there to greet me.  My front garden always makes me sigh with pleasure as I pull into the driveway.

I got out my camera early one morning in order to catch the early morning dew.  Using my macro setting I was able to capture that shimmery quality that comes from the morning dew.

Early morning dew

I switched to my landscape mode to better show my roses as I approach my walkway and my front door giving an entirely different perspective on my roses and my garden.

Hope You

Enjoy

♥♥♥Johnina♥♥♥

Morning Glories

A good garden may have some weeds”

Thomas Fuller quotes (British Clergyman and Writer, one of the most prolific authors of the 17th century. 1608-1661) Sometimes there is a fine line between flowers and weeds and sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.  Some of my herb plants look like weeds but they are wonderful smelling and tasting and add so much pleasure to the other senses.  Some weeds are beautiful and add vibrance to the landscape, but choke out the useful plants. Even though these Morning Glories are really pretty flowers they are none the less a weed here in Georgia.  They are so invasive that they will choke out all other plants, useful or not. As you can see from this photo of my veggie garden the Morning Glories have indeed taken over.  This picture is simply the same picture as the one at the beginning of this post just taken from a different angle where the weediest shows. I was just going to post the top photo with a short quote on flowers and weeds, but in seeing these two pictures and remembering why I started this blog in the first place I expanded this post to use my photos as a way to show about my survival of all the things that I have been through, both the abuse of my younger years and the struggles with health problems of my more recent years.  As a way of expressing what it means to me, what I've learned and how I've learned to see the beauty in spite of the struggles. Growing up in my household meant living with the unwritten rule of 'Make it look good to the world'.  Much like the  top photo only the good was to be seen.  It was incredibly hard work and those who knew me as a child never knew of the abuse that went on behind closed doors and most still don't know unless they read this post of course. Then there is the second picture that was just taken from a different angle that shows how this beautiful covering is in reality strangling and taking over the garden.  That beautiful covering that masked the problems and kept me from growing, being productive and getting the sunshine, the help, I so desperately needed. In spite of the struggles I have learned to see the beauty of the things that I learned, the strength that I have gained and the gratitude for being alive. Since I got a late start on my garden; I have planted some Morning Glories on purpose in my front garden because they are pretty and fast growing and will cover my trellis quickly.  I was cautious when I planted them, planting them in a pot and setting it on plastic.  I have indeed conquered the weed; tamed it using what I have learned and am enjoying the beauty that it can provide.    Enjoy ☺☺☺Johnina☺☺☺ PS please remember the giveaway and check it out and enter.

New Dazzler Blanketflower

I planted seeds for the blanketflowers from a package that was labeled as having assorted colors, but I never expected to get such a pretty pale yellow from it.

What a delightful surprise- I guess I'll just have to plant all the seeds to see what colors come up.

Enjoy

☺☺☺Johnina☺☺☺

Play to learn~Insight #2

This post in in response to the comment made by Janet http://jkbees.blogspot.com/ on my last post.  She said that she wasn't very good at photoshop; well I didn't start out doing very well with photo-editing.  I still don't own photoshop most of my photo-editing is done with free software and then I just played with the programs to see what each would do.  I had lots of fun learning because I was just playing and on the computer if I didn't like what the program just did I was able to hit Undo and it went back to what I had before.  Some programs will Undo for quite a few steps till you get back to your original photo.  No money spent just play time and everyone needs to spend some playtime sometimes.This is the original photo and while I liked the flower I did not like the background so I cropped it in a square to hide as much as possible.

So far I have tried many different programs but my favorites are Picasa which is a good basic editor,  but it is just a basic editor, just google it to get the download.  Go to http://www.picasa.google.com/

 the second picture was done on picasa.

 Next in line is picnik at http://www.picnik.com/ for download.  you can get there from Picasa but I find it is more convenient to go through picnik after saving in picasa if you used it.  Picnik is a really fun program that does not take up computer memory as it stays on the Internet and the free version shows all the steps you took on the last 5 edits you do.   They also have a pay for service which adds to the basic program including keeping track of all your editing steps for all the photos that you edit. These next pictures were done in picnik.

Layered with star background

Hypnotic effect

Next is Photoscape which can easily be downloaded from http://www.cnet.com/.  I usually go through them as they check for virus, etc. and the download is easy.  This program has a little more finesse to it, especially when it comes to tweaking your colors and they do it on two different levels of skill.  Plus cnet has lots of other programs to try free, free to try, and purchase. This next picture was done in photoscape.

Color adjusted, selected Region out of focus- pixelated

Region out of focus- zoom

The last program to get is gimp which I also downloaded from http://www.cnet.com/ This is the only website I would recommend downloading gimp from there are many listings for downloaded gimp and I tried a couple and had some really horrid experiences until I found it on cnet.  Then I had no problem.  This is the closest free program I have found to photoshop.  There are also plug-ins like photoshop available for it.  It is however the hardest of the different programs that I have recommended and I am still learning about it.  There are you-tube instructions available and also books. see amazon though my website for gimp books.  Search Amazon.com for gimp books.  I use it for all kinds of more complicated operations like removing power lines.  I did not edit with gimp this time due to time constraints.  Between these programs I find that I can do pretty much all the editing that I want to do.

I hope you will try some of these programs you have nothing to lose and a lot of fun and learning to gain

Enjoy

☺☺☺Johnina☺☺☺

Playing with my garden photos

It is so hot and muggy here now that even getting up early and playing in the dirt is very hot sweaty work.  Not something I tolerate very well so I do the minimun, only that which keeps the garden going, and will continue that  until the morning temperature starts to drop again.  In the meantime I am playing with my flower pictures and having fun with them.  I hope you enjoy them too and they cheer your heart.

Good Morning



Dazzler Blanket flower

Dazzler blanket flower



Balsam flower volunteer



Balsam flowe volunteer



ENJOY

☺☺☺Johnina☺☺☺