Captivating. Downtown Portland on one of my morning commute walks, in front of The Portland Plaza, a condo skyscraper.

I couldn't get enough of these beauties. And I hope that someone in charge of their care cut off the spent blossoms. Because I'd hate to think that a passerby with a sharp knife just decided to take the three that are obviously recently removed. To me, the flower on the right looks as if it could be made of paper, complete with the curled petals.



Do you like the mood of this shot, as I took it?



Or as it appears here after I clicked on Edit in Aviary, the Enhance, then Illuminate?



First, I didn't like a flower that was in the bottom left corner, so I cloned it out at BeFunky.



Then I wondered about the exposure, so at BeFunky, I worked on the highlight and the fill light. Hmmm.



This is the original photo. Do you agree with me that the flower in the lower left corner detracts from what I wanted in this photo? I'm curious. Thanks!



All I did with this one was crop off a spent blossom and some ugly concrete in the background--driveway, retaining wall. I really like the patina on the petals, the sheen.

Altered with Picnik, Basic Edits: Exposure, Sharpened, Cropped; and Effects: Advanced/Cloned, No. 4

Pioneer Courthouse Square, Portland's living room. I cloned the young man's backpack out of the photo and a small round object which was in front of him on the bricks. Normally I wouldn't do such cloning, I'd try cropping it out. However, I decided, "Why not?" I've got little more than two months left with my beloved Picnik, so I'm going to go for it. I really like the results, too. I like the sunshine, especially below his right knee and the sort of glow around him on the bricks; the shadows following the concrete forms along the curve; and the glistening, rain-wet bricks in both patterns.

I took this photo on an unusually sunny winter day in Portland, January 21, 2012, downtown. It would have been my dearly departed husband LeRoy's 65th birthday. I was out and about after that morning's top-knotch lecture at the Architectural Heritage Center--one of the best lectures I've attended:
Real Estate Development and the Re-Shaping of Old Portland
Focusing on the early days of Portland, Dr. Tracy Prince, author of Portland’s Goose Hollow, presented a slide show of historic photos and maps to demonstrate how dramatically different the terrain of Old Portland (the west side—from the Willamette River to the West Hills) was from today’s terrain. This changed terrain includes: building the Great Plank Road which ran through the narrow and dark Tanner Creek Canyon; burying Tanner Creek, Johnson Creek, and Balch Creek; filling Couch Lake and Guild’s Lake; filling the 20-block long, 50-feet deep Tanner Creek Gulch; building streets upon 30-50 foot pilings in areas that today’s residents would describe as flatlands; and 1870s Oregonian stories about 25-foot deep cuts required when B Street (Burnside) was graded beyond the gulch. Such incredible alterations to Portland’s natural landscape were seen as necessary for growing a young frontier city and to accommodate real estate development.


The photo as it came out of the Nikon D50.

The view from ... ?

Guess, anyone? Looks like I've been to an exotic locale and didn't let you know I was going, doesn't it?


I will tell you that I took the photo, uploaded it from the D5100 to Flickr, opened it in Picnik where I altered it with two effects, vibrance and HDR-ish, then I cropped it as a square before putting it here on the blog. Then I looked at it for a while and decided to try to clone out the upright that is on the window pane. That's the photo you see at the top of the blog. I tried to clone it out, and for the most part, I'm pleased with the results. Well, sort of pleased. It's not easy to find colors and directions that you can use to cover up what you don't want visible.

Here's the original photo, straight from the camera.


OK. I'll spill the beans. My living room has four windows which look out onto the sidewalk that goes from the building's front door out to the sidewalk along the street. I pulled the blinds up on the east-most window and liked the look enough to grab my camera and take a few photos. I distinctly thought, "These should be fun at Picnik!"

So, I'm not crazy just because I thought this would be fun to play with at Picnik. You can see why when you look at the altered photo above, can't you? Hope so. Such outcomes are one of the reasons I adore taking digital photos and having a great camera to do so and then having a great computer, my beloved iMac which I have named ALL, a place to get busy with my photos.

No, I'm not crazy. I'm keeping myself sane.