Alley Inspiration

Since my move to Southern California I spend a significant amount of time alone which has been great for me.  I have time to think, create and pursue whatever inspires me on any given day.  I usually get some of my best ideas while walking my dog.  Yesterday Otis and I were coming back from the beach when I spotted this lonely dandelion wisher growing out of the concrete in the alley.  I picked it and decided to have some fun taking pictures of it in different environments with different lenses.  My husband has a Lensbaby that he’s been encouraging me to play with but I hadn’t had the inspiration to play with it until yesterday.  Armed with my new toy and my delicate subject I began taking pictures of the dandelion wisher using different angles, lighting and settings.  It was so much fun.  I spent a couple of hours playing around with it and I kept thinking how much my friend will love the results.  One of my best friends loves 11:11 and once in a while I’ll receive a text from her at that exact time with the words Wish.  She will love the shots of the wisher and I’ll have new images to send her the next time I happen to catch 11:11.  Below are a few of my unedited shots along with the final edited shots and what inspired me to take the photos the way I did.

This shot is unedited.  I wanted to get a low angle perspective so I held up the wisher and shot from below.  I focused on the center of the wisher and used F4 to get some depth of field.  I also shot it in RAW format so I could really mess around with it in Photoshop to get the best result. I love editing because it is such a subjective and creative process.  Ten people could edit the same photo and come out with totally different results.  I love that!  It’s inspiring to see what others will do with the same photo.

This is the edited version.  I used Photoshop and Color Efex Pro 4 to bring out the warmth, contrast and detail.  The edits are subtle, but I love the way I was able to bring out the suns warmth on the delicate hair-like petals.

This is the unedited version.  Again I shot it from a low angle, but this time I got closer with the Lensbaby and tried to get the effect of a bouquet against the blue sky.  I love the softness of this shot.

This is the edited version.  I really love the way this turned out.  I used Photoshop and Color Efex Pro 4 to bring out the warmth and sunlight on the lower part of the photograph.  It warmed it up and gave it so much more character and detail but still kept the softness that I loved about the unedited version.  This might be my favorite shot from yesterday.