It is easy to get sidetracked. A few months ago a post called Creating Painterly Photographs popped up on my Facebook. A few like minded friends had ‘liked’ it so my curiosity quickly arose. Eventually I couldn’t resist so enrolled (while a CreativeLive special was on) and it turned out to be a totally enjoyable online course on photographing flowers with Kathleen Clemons. I liked her easy going style – and her photographs. The course is listed on https://www.creativelive.com/class/creating-painterly-photographs-kathleen-clemons

I must have taken hundreds of photos and recorded my progress in a lengthy  – at least a 100 page – Powerpoint document. I was really in my element – photographing, researching, documenting. I pulled out forgotten lens’ for my Nikon, and some old extension tubes, and hid in bushes with foliage brushing my lens. I posed flowers in front of patterns and behind wiggly glass; I wound lace around my lens and rubbed Vaseline on my cling wrap covered lens. I visited the Maleny Botanic Gardens taking multiple exposures and waving the camera around to get blurry shots. Here are some of my favourites:

Not even a flower shot! A departure from in-camera intentional blur. An existing photo was blurred in Photoshop (try it – use the motion blur) and a mask applied to preserve the unblurred figures. Nice effect.

Yes – a flower. Actually a flower plus with petals extended and replicated in Photoshop. Kathleen calls this her Dancing Flower technique.

No Photoshop – just taken with some green see-through polyester fabric wound loosely around the lens, pulled forward with a space in the middle to focus and held in place with a rubber band.

Yesterday a friend posted about a natural history illustration course with Edx – now that would be nice. Another diversion?

Originally posted on 14th September, 2018