Catching Up and Happy Earth Day 2010!

  It's been a pleasant week here in Northern Arizona, sunny with daytime highs hovering in the mid-sixties, not too windy. It's been a week for yard work, pruning, transplanting hollyhocks, mulching, prepping the vegetable garden, pondering what to put where. With an eye to the oncoming dry season we spent a couple of afternoons raking nearly a foot of accumulated needles and debris out from beneath a huge old ponderosa pine in the side yard. Fire season will be on us soon, but for today there's a welcome unseasonable rain, a little thunder, hail off and on. Chilly and wet. I'm grateful we crossed off much of our outdoor "to do" list earlier in the week.

  Studio play this week has revolved around projects for Kris and a box of photos she brought home from a recent trip back East. Old family photos - priceless! One of her grandfathers was a photographer, so many of them were not only taken by him, but processed  with a grandfather's loving hands. This is one of my favorites:

  It's a photo of Kris, taken by her grandfather. Don't you just love those red shoes? I'll confess to manipulating this one a bit. The original photo was somewhat faded by time, but I wanted to make it seem even older while at the same time emphasizing those precious red shoes.

  Here's the process I used. Opening the scanned original photo in my image editing software (PaintShop Pro9), I duplicated and then pasted it as a new image, twice, so there were now two copies of the original photograph open in the window, then closed the original. (A lesson learned the hard way, closing the original keeps me from inadvertently making irreversible changes to it.) One copy was saved in its original form and set aside for a bit. The other copy was digitally greyscaled and then colorized with an old newspaper-ish sepia tone. Next, I copied and pasted it onto the set aside photo as a new layer. Reducing the opacity of the pasted layer to 85% allowed just a touch of the color in the original bottom layer to bleed through. Finally, I erased the shoes in the sepia-toned top layer, so that the red shoes in the bottom layer could shine and go "bam!" Merged the two layers into a single image and saved it. Wah-lah! I SO enjoy playing with digital imagery.

  To the left is a digital project I made for Kris. She loved the three Earth Day stamps I'd already produced, and asked for one of her own. The original photo was shot last year out at Wupatki National Monument, at dusk, looking toward the east, out across the Painted Desert. They're hard to see in this tiny version of the photo, but if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it, you should be able to make out "anti-solar rays" emanating from the center point of the horizon. A beautiful and fleeting phenomenon.

  Kris also asked me to produce a stamp featuring a special photograph of her grandparents, taken when they were young, and I was more than happy to oblige. This is an extreme crop of the original picture, with a gamma correction applied to increase the brightness and bring more light into it. The photo had a fabulous border that I cut and pasted onto the crop. I thought it would be a sweet touch to make this a "forever" stamp...

(Untimely interrupted and resumed on 5/22) 

  As sometimes happens, the snow, hail, and rain knocked out our internet access for the rest of yesterday, right in the middle of writing a post! So, I'm finishing this up on Earth Day, 2010, the 40th anniversary. A blessed celebration to you all! Do you remember the first Earth Day? Are you doing anything special in observance? Drop me a line! I'd love to hear what you're doing to honor the mother of us all today!

  Me, I'm not doing much at all, sad to say. I've been struggling with severe allergies this week, taking the maximum safe dose of benadryl, mentally out of it and pretty dopey, a little slow and physically clumsy. It's definitely not a good idea to drive, and yesterday's journal page reflects my frustration with this annual intrusion on my routines.

  I want to find some kind of harmony with this seasonal rhythm, make peace with myself for having allergies and the physical dibility associated with medication. I should actually be grateful for the meds, side effects and all! The alternative ain't pretty! 

  We're headed down the hill tomorrow, into the Valley of the Sun, for a weekend of R&R: outdoor hot tubbing, swimming, socializing, dining, and classes with Kelly Kilmer at Frenzy Stamper, in Phoenix. Kelly and Debbie (the owner of FS) are two of my favorite people in the whole world, and Kelly's classes are always loads of fun, so we're looking forward to an awesome, creative weekend. In a place where allergy season is over, no less! (Phoenix is about a mile lower in elevation than Flagstaff and, consequently, way ahead of us seasonally.) Where they have Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods! Woo-hoo! I look forward to reporting that a fun time was had by all...

  Thanks for visiting; come again soon.

Comments

[Kris (HTGRS)]

Thanks for making the stamps, Spike! Spike also made first day cover issues of the Earth Day stamp in the form of postcards and envelopes that are waaaay cool. I have sent one of the postcards already to a friend and am just itchin' to send the rest. I get so excited about mail art and making my own stamps (or having Spike make them) - I could just burst. Perhaps I really am my father's child. He was a serious philatelist.
Love what you did with the picture of me. Life's short wear red shoes. The grandfather who took that picture is featured on the Forever stamp. He just passed away a few weeks ago at the ripe old age of 94. I'm off now to mail art!

[kelly]

Can't wait to see you both!! Safe travels! :D

[sharon]

safe travels to you, too kelly! see you this evening!

i couldn't agree more, kris! life's short - wear red shoes! lol!