Patterned green:

and shadow green:

Infinite green:

These are all photos of a small(ish) tree in the driveway.  Now at the height of it’s summery powers, every leaf is luminous, perfect and virtually unblemished.  Aside from providing great leaf patterns, this tree also has the job of telling me when autumn starts as it’s the first tree in the immediate area to drop a ruddy leaf - we’re still a long way off… what date will that be this year I wonder?

Within a very short distance of my front door, (and yours too I have no doubt) there is a bounty of little picture pearls to discover:

Each image is usually taken with minimal contemplation, usually the dog is more interested in pressing on to the ‘off lead area’ than watching me take photographs - pulling her lead to reach the best sniffs, chasing a passing moth… her excitement generally wobbling the shots…  The side of the welly becomes an impromtu tripod, I press the shutter without looking at what will be recorded, the flies harrass.  The ’looking’ part doesn’t begin until I sit down at the laptop, the coffee is made and I start to trawl through the ‘catch’ searching for what visual gems there may be hidden amonst the plain.  Hours can pass easily, surprises are common, sometimes the pictorial haul turns out to be paltry and I have to leave it for another day when the eye might see something I don’t today.

The finished pictures often emerge from a very unlikely starting point as I crop down, rotate and discard most of any image.  This way of working suits my camera which takes a large 12 mega pixel image - with that advantage, the image quality doesn’t turn to dust as I mine away for a satisfactory composition.

dried leaves tangled in some abandoned fence wire in the forest:

The much knitted Shedir:

Yarn used :: 70gms

Needles used :: 3.25mm circ & dpns

I used my own dk silky wool which I overdyed to give it this ‘texturey’ look.  I used only four rows of the pattern before starting the crown decreases (i.e. I omitted rows 45-53), I would change that to knitting only three if I did another shedir in this yarn, but I’m sure when winter comes I will be as happy as Larry with such well covered ears.  I was quite content nibbling away at this pattern, nothing hard going on, just a knit to linger over.  Just one little oddity with the pattern, row 63 should have a star after it and you need to move the starting marker back one stitch as with the other rows. 

And no sooner do I turn my back from the ’shedda-shoot’ in the garden, but check out the dog moving in quietly to dismantle the props…

And, the photographer has had to pose here because the sash just doesn’t have the right shape of head for this sort of work…

You can see I’m expressing my elvish side here, but on the plus side, plenty of room left in the crown incase I take to wearing my hair up in a bun.  I’ve donned a wintry wrap here and tinged the photo with blue to get the chilled air effect going on.  But don’t believe all you see here…

The truth is today the sky was as blue as the first summer cornflower and down in the marsh the bog cotton was beautiful, I was blissfully snapping away and getting eaten alive by a zillion flying beings at the same time.

A final shot, the dog eating the props:

I seem to have inadvertantly found my calling as a book cover designer.

‘Piece of Beauty’ - the new novel from first time novelist Sashie Houndiedog

And below must be the cover for the United States and Canada version - why are they always different I wonder? 

So if you’ve just finished writing that novel and it involved dogs, beauty and um…. nature, feel free to enquire

Sasha dog has got to stay in position for the great laundry shoot! :

But, she’s not for complying, so I make do with the abstract…

The billowing sheets call to mind sails in the sun. I add some suitable textures:

Later I get some secret snaps when the dog thinks she’s off camera… and have fashioned her image into the cover of a romantic/poetic novel I might some day easily read, I name it ’The Hound Whisperer’ heh heh.

The scene below as it is.  Dye shed in background. 

…and I add some suitable texture, naturally.  

While one picture can be good, two can sometimes be even better…

I’ve been mixing up my photo’s of late with great creative delight - below we have a cone I collected attached to its swirly branch.  Placed on a picnic table with a rusty bracken filled vista in the background, I merged it with a flat shot of the pale grey granite stone that decorated the forest path.  I like the result, the disparate elements brought together in a single image, each affecting the other with its special qualities.

And yes, the houndy doesn’t escape the decorating spree either

She sure does blend in with the furniture…

And finally, the bright!  Take a bunch of striking blue flowers… add some crushed thick drawing paper and bring the two together in a tasty photoshop sandwich…

Yum!

More playtime with the camera today.  The sky was a tad uninspiring from a photographers point of view, the rain lashed, the wind ruffled the dogs fur and flapped her ears mightily with every gust, but she was as happy as only a hound can be.  Below is one of the footbridges we crossed on our morning trek, see it bigger and the others on this post here.

I’ve used this editing technique to create the ethereal atmosphere of the footbridge, if you’ve got a hang of working with layers and using Photoshop, you might like to try it out. 

And next up, chillaxing back at the casa… what’s not to love here?? I just can’t see anything :-) 

And finally, an alternative view of the sash… the underchops study.

 Heh heh - check out the big furry neck she’s growing as she gets older, like a lion’s mane!

For every good shot of the Sash, there’s about 10 others of her with her nose stuck to the ground, or her face crumpled in mid chomp, so I was pleasantly surprised to get her looking like a model dog during a long walk through forest and around loch.  After 2 hours of ground level deer tracking, she may have sniffed everything there was to sniff, and so was now just making do with the air.  Luckily I had camera to hand and for 10 seconds, she paused…

We took a little time out at this view point, sun and tiny raindrops = rainbow!

You can see it bigger down over by flickr way… but here you’re getting the craggy gist of the highland landscape in condensed form.

And, one I’d forgotton about, languishing in the ‘to blog’ folder, taken before I changed to the Canon, here we have some caledonian pine forest, lit by winter sun.

I hope everyone has had a good weekend

The snow falls suddenly, often overnight, then disappears just as quickly.  Despite the wet flakes blobbing on the camera, a few good shots were taken of the beautiful wintry scene.

The trees at this time of year seem to show more of their true twiggy personalities.

And of course, the lovely Sash is my constant companion on all outings, here she is resting on the heather, having a little chomp of the snow and posing in a manner not unlike her little deer pals she glimpses occasionally.

And, the dog pauses for contemplation of the almost horizontal flakes.  We had a great walk - there was no one else around!

With all the festivities behind us, the months of January and February can be a little, well, ‘dour’ as we say here in Scotland.  The novelty of winter and the beautiful festive lights have come and gone and we are mostly returned now to our familiar routines with naught but the first snowdrops to look forward to…

Well, now that I’ve lifted your spirits let me take up no more of your precious living time and move swiftly on to the eye candy…

That Shedir, she started well, has stopped momentarily before the decreases for the crown, but will be back on her merry way soon.  I use my own yarn here in dk weight, a wool/silk blend in overdyed colours ‘nut over orchid’.

A little more daylight above shows the ‘flavour’ of the yarn some more.  It’s hard to photograph it just right.

And, just a little something as I had the candles out anyway… a stained glass candle holder, reminds me of a church.  There is something quite solemn and religious about this image.  It’s calming. 

I am rejoicing in my improved imagery courtesy of the excellent Canon G9 Powershot.  It does so much so well and fit’s in my pocket! It’s great, thanks Mum!