golden hop

The golden hop vine in our back yard is endlessly interesting to me as a subject. Every year it races up its trellis and tangles its way across the top, occasionally looping back down, catching in the rosebush, creeping through gaps in the fence, or heading straight up in the air. It’s beautiful against a brilliant blue sky, but also with light glowing in the leaves against a washed out white sky. I keep trying to get the perfect shot, but maybe there isn’t just one.

the girl who played with fire

I love playing with long exposures on the camera, either when there’s a moving light source or a chance to “paint” with the camera itself. This was a campfire just after dark – I set the shutter speed to several seconds, then moved the camera in a spiral pattern. It makes me think of a Chinese dragon, or a phoenix, flaming through the darkness.

golden chard

You hear a lot about “the golden hour” in photography – that moment in the day when the sun is getting low but not quite setting, and the sunlight takes on a brilliant golden cast that makes everything look magical for just a few fleeting minutes. A few days ago I happened to look out the kitchen window at just the right moment and saw the bolting chard plants on the deck glowing in the last sunbeams. I grabbed my macro lens and got myself out there pronto.

feeling sidetracked

I’ve been so busy lately – working my day job, keeping up on food blog posts, framing work for my upcoming show – that I’m not actually taking very many pictures. If you follow my Flickr stream, you may notice a preponderance of food, drink and cat pictures, those being the things I encounter regularly without leaving the house 🙂

In the meantime, I’ve been on the lookout for places to post some of my older material. The picture I’ve posted here is a shot I took at the rim of Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, where hot steam billows up through the trees and flowers. I recently submitted this to Sunset magazine’s Flickr group, for their “National Parks” back page. They may not take it, but it’s fun for me to go back through my old photos and see what I still like. Not to mention daydreaming about Hawaii.

playing with monochrome

I’ve been spending more and more time playing with different monochrome settings in my post processing. I love how it brings out textures and makes familiar objects seem suddenly foreign. Some images simply don’t work in black and white, while others, sometimes rather dull color images, suddenly come to life when I shift them over. This image, of a jolly farmer’s market bouquet stuffed full of herbs and ranunculus, becomes antique and mysterious when put into sepia – a completely different mood from the color shot.