Flickr and blogging tip

Posted on October 3, 2010 by pearlsandprose

Hi. I’m popping in on a Saturday to share a very useful tip about linking Flickr photos to your blog.

If you choose to make certain blog photos (like shots of your house & pool) private on flickr by clicking “Only you can see this,” because you wouldn’t want your flickr peers to review stuff like that, make sure you keep them that way. If you, by chance, decide to make currently public pics private, but they’re already on the blog, they will disappear from your blog. You will then see the following:

“This photo is currently unavailable.

(Actually, “from Yahoo” doesn’t show up, but it insisted on coming along this time.)

You will then have to spend quite a lot of time restoring said photos one by one, and that is not fun. Hopefully you’ve only done this to a few photos. Know what else? This will happen on the day you have the heaviest traffic on your blog that month. Guaranteed!

Let me recap in case I wasn’t clear. My brain is a little foggy after all that uploading last night:

1) Photos that are private on Flickr will still show up on your blog, as long as you don’t touch them.

2) Blog photos that are public on Flickr will vanish from the blog if you later you convert them to “private.” I knew that deleting pics from Flickr would delete them on the blog too–duh–but didn’t know about the privacy thing. The link between Flickr and WordPress is good, but it’s not magical.  Don’t screw with it like I did. Also remember that tweaking a photo in flickr causes it to disappear from the blog too.

See, I make these errors so you don’t have to. I’m generous that way.

OK, go back to enjoying your lovely weekend. Or check out my blog. There are actually photos on it now. Feel free to let me know if I missed one.

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La Boquería, Barcelona

Posted on October 1, 2010 by pearlsandprose

A recent comment served to remind me that I never finished posting photos from our honeymoon in Spain. I thought for sure I’d put up this shot of fresh figs in La Boquería, but a search told me “no.” So here it is, one of my favorites.

If you ever get to Barcelona, check out this incredible fresh-food market right off La Ramblas. You’ll find all kinds of good stuff….

We never tried the candy, but it sure looked good. Our favorite thing? Drinks made from fresh fruit blended with ice. Any combination of fruit you could think of, and not thick like American smoothies.

This market is serious about making food look fantastic.

(the tomato shot in the sidebar)

Even the onions are good-looking.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Sun oils

Posted on September 30, 2010 by pearlsandprose

A sunflower to brighten your morning. Taken with the iPhone, no processing. I’m fascinated with the texture that comes with iPhone photos taken in bright light.

Remember the PaintMee app? Here’s the same sunflower:

Another (iPhone) sunflower shot:

A bit too much grain for my tastes, so I turned it into an “oil painting” with Photoscape:

Simply open your photo in Photoscape, click on “filter,” “pictorialize” then “oil painting.” All of this takes just seconds. The technology today!

Um, have you noticed anything new in the last two posts? Like my photos are much, much bigger? When I uploaded the Swedish images yesterday, I noticed that the large size didn’t get scrunched by my WordPress template. When I tried that with my pictures a while back, the crunching happened big time. I must have tried only the HTML versions. If I use “Visual,” the shots are larger and distortion-free. The catch is that they’re no longer linked to Flickr. What I can do is add a Flickr button to the sidebar if anyone is interested in seeing my photostream.

I’m finding that I like staying with the old, familiar methods when it comes to editing photos. It’s going to take a while to wean myself off the free programs and get into Photoshop and LightRoom. I have two really thick books to study, so will have to cut back on the photos for a while. A lot of photography blogs have only one photo per day, but this isn’t solely a photography blog. I’m interested in sharing more than that, and am still figuring out how to do it. Your patience is greatly appreciated.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blog–now on steroids. 🙂

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Holy Sweet!

Posted on September 29, 2010 by pearlsandprose

I don’t know about you, but I love looking at food blogs every now and then. Not for the food so much, but for the gorgeous photography. Can’t remember how I found the Swedish blog Holy Sweet, but I certainly won’t forget these photos:

photo by Aleksandra Olejnik

photo by Aleksandra Olejnik

photo by Aleksandra Olejnik

photo by Aleksandra Olejnik

I’m drawn to things Scandinavian, probably because one of my grandmothers was Norwegian. I once researched her side of the family back to the 1500’s (Norwegians were fierce recordkeepers) and discovered I still have relatives living on the ancestral farm in Norway. One of my dreams is to walk that land one day.

In the meantime, skol!

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Four ways to look at an old house

Posted on September 27, 2010 by pearlsandprose

Well, I just upgraded from Photoshop Elements to Photoshop (CS5) because it was half price. I used it years ago, but I was shooting only film then and found it a bit overwhelming. I was also kind of a “purist” in those days and thought it was “cheating” to use an editing program. I know, silly.

On to Photoshop. I did the following project in just a few minutes with a Photshop preset, except for the last image.

white house original

A so-so shot of an old house in Middleburg, Va.

white house teal

I switched up the color, but still wasn’t satisfied.

white house green

I’m kind of likin’ these crazy colors.

white house

Finally, I added some Kim Klassen and Johnna Riddell textures for a more vintage look. I did all of this in Elements before getting Photoshop. I’m not crazy about the PSE cropping, but I can live with it.

Tomorrow, some prose. I’ve had some thoughts bombarding me lately, and had to write them down before my head exploded. See you then.

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Strolling through a foxhunt village

Posted on September 24, 2010 by pearlsandprose

Crème de la Crème

Crème de la Crème boutique

entrance, Red Fox Inn

Red Fox Inn

Red Fox Inn & Tavern, est. 1728

parrots

reflections of parrots and pillows

caladiums
caladium

display

a ceramic apple tree

blue awning
blue shutters and awning

apples

and a bowl of very realistic “Granny Smith apples”

Photographed in Middleburg, Virginia, September 2010

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Summer’s end

Posted on September 23, 2010 by pearlsandprose

Today is the first day of autumn, but you’d never know it around here. 95 degrees yesterday, and probably today too! It’s getting a little old, but I shouldn’t complain after the beastly winter we had last year. Please, no more storms with four feet of snow.

Here’s what’s blooming in the Washington D.C. area….

Beautyberry

Beautyberry or Callicarpa. It really is this color.

blue light

I caught this mahonia at the end of the day when the sun was just hitting it. The blue background surprised me afterwards. “L’heure bleue” was a little early that day.

I think this is a lacecap hydrangea, but I’m not sure. It’s awfully late for this spring-bloomer, but maybe the extra-warm days have extended it.

The photo below signifies summer’s end for me the most, because I’m no longer working in the garden. This year gardening has mostly consisted of watering new azaleas and transplanted forsythias so they don’t die in all this heat. I’ll probably clear out the cobwebs and plant a few bulbs, though.

Summer's end

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New Market, Maryland on the iPhone

Posted on September 22, 2010 by pearlsandprose

gate

Hello there. I shot this on my iPhone in a 200 year-old Maryland town called New Market. The population was less than 500 in year2000, but it’s known as the “Antiques Capital of Maryland.”

Back to the photo. After removing some color and boosting the brightness, I used one of the “antique photo” filters in Photoscape.

Want to see the original? Here you go:

original gate

An OK shot for an iPhone, but kind of dark and blah. I also didn’t like the buildings in the back and left side, so cropped them out.

Next up, the top of an object that I think is a vintage barber pole….

barber pole

Just for fun, I processed it with Lo-Mob’s “AE TTV saturated virage” effect. That app is like crack too. 😉

Barber pole

While in New Market, we stopped at the little general store/soda fountain/pizza joint for lunch (their Caesar salad is actually quite good) and I took this shot of the doors and transom:

exit

IPhone app: Hipstamatic; John S lens and Kodot Verichrome film.

The last photo is an unadulerated iPhone shot of a collection of antiques:

New Market antiques

I love that antique patina on everything.

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Another surprise

Posted on September 21, 2010 by pearlsandprose

I received a nice surprise the other day: the very talented and funny blogger over at Thoughts Appear just gave me the “One Lovely Blog Award.” 

The only “rule” is that I have to pass it along to three more bloggers. I’m awarding this to blogs that are beautiful and inspiring at the same time. No repeats from before, which makes it a little bit harder to decide. But here you go:

1. Brooklyn Limestone. One of the most amazing house renovations I’ve ever seen. Check out these before-and-after photos of their place in Brooklyn, NY: http://www.brooklynlimestone.com/search/label/kitchen

2. Manon21. Gorgeous French blog with photos that will make you want to book a flight to France immédiatement. Written in French, but trust me–these pics need no translation.

3. My French Country Home. Another blog set in France (I am a francophile, after all) written by an English expat living in–you guessed it–a French country home.  Truly stunning.

Enjoy.

And because this is a mostly photography blog, here’s a recent shot of an Oriental Lily I bought at the grocery store:

Oriental Lily

Posted in decorating, home, photography | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Painting with an iPhone

Posted on September 20, 2010 by pearlsandprose

I am still having a lot of fun with my iPhone camera. I even started a 365-day project on Flickr. You can see it here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/50590703@N02/sets/72157624778144161/. Someday I want to do that with my Nikon, but thought it would be easier taking an iPhone photo every day. The camera is really small and convenient, but you still have to think of something good to shoot and actually do it. Sometimes I’ll forget, and it’s a mad scramble to beat Flickr’s 8 p.m. deadline (they’re on GMT). Luckily the group is flexible about that.

As Twitter followers already know, I did a “painting” of one of my iPhone shots of a children’s boutique. Here’s the original photo:

yellow nightstand

I then loaded it into the “PaintMee” app and watched the almost-instantaneous transformation into this:

nightstand "painting"

Is that insane? You can adjust the style, brush width, paint thickness, brushstroke, etc. The only negative is that they crop your image a little more than I expected.

I also enountered a problem after doing my first “painting”: I couldn’t get the finished image off my iPhone screen after saving. The direcs say to tap the upper righthand corner of the image, but no dice. I emailed the company and they got back to me the same day. If you tap the (very tiny) thumbnail, it will take you to your camera roll and you can start over that way. The company rep thanked me for pointing out the problem, which was nice.

I tried the same app on this shot of some asters:

asters

I’m finding that iPhones do interesting things with flowers. They either look really sharp and natural, or they look like watercolors. Not sure what I’m doing to get that effect; I have a really steady hand, so it’s not focusing. May just be the ambient light.

OK, so here’s the PaintMee version:

asterspaintMee

I don’t like this one nearly as much, even after playing around with all the variables. It has too much of a paint-by-number quality. Probably determined by the quality of the original.

Anyhoo, have fun this week, everyone.

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