Creating an Animated GIF

After the last photo challenge, I received a few blogger questions about how I showed “before” and “after” photos by flipping back and forth in the same photo frame. What is this technique and how to do you do it? Here are the key words you need to know: animated GIF. It’s a single graphic file that contains a series of images which are displayed sequentially to give the illusion of movement or change over time.

Many photo editing programs can help you create an animated gif file. I recommend that you use your favorite web browser search engine to find tutorials for the programs that you use. There are also many free animated gif generators available on the web, but I haven’t personally tried them. Thus, I can’t endorse them.

If you are looking for a good photo editing program that you can download for free, I recommend Photoscape (Microsoft Windows compatible). Besides doing basic editing chores, Photoscape makes many specialty tasks easy, like creating animated gifs and mosaics. That’s what I used to upload two pictures and create the animated picture of Marty shown above. Cool, huh?

To save your gif file for your blog post, upload it to Picasa via your Blogger editor. If you upload your pictures to another photo web host site and then use web links, you’ll have to test out whether the site successfully uploads gif files. I use Flickr and Photobucket links for the finer photographic images in my blog posts. I tested uploads to both sites. Gif files do not work on Flickr, but they do on Photobucket. Go figure!

So I hope that you will try creating a gif file soon! Then you’ll be “winking” right back at Marty!

Spring Decorating on the Blog

Spring is busting out here in east Tennessee! The trees are sprouting their cloak of foliage in brilliant, light green colors. Redbuds are living up to their moniker. Cheerful daffodils are waving in the breeze to their many admirers. And critters, large and small, are rejoicing.

So why not take the opportunity to “crow” about the new season that is now making its appearance? I’ve decided it’s time to do a little spring decorating here on the blog by applying a new custom header and background! To create this set, I used one of my photos of a weathered, folk art weathervane, shaped like a rooster. The image was taken in spring 2009 at the Bruton Parish House at Colonial Williamsburg, and previously featured on my blog HERE.

A Shaggy Dog Story of Digital Editing

The “before and after” theme of the last photo challenge was fun! And it so happens that I have a shaggy dog story that follows along that theme and unfolded this past weekend.

Since my retirement three years ago, I’ve been able to spend some quality time with my photography hobby and learn some digital editing. I’ve discovered so much in just a few short years, but I know that I have oodles more to go! And my time is limited right now because I am doing full-time consulting work this year. Rats! That leaves the weekends to carve out some hours to play with my photos and digital editing. And I get easily sidetracked along the way…

Case in point, I was going through my photo inventory and looking at my Seagrove pottery pictures so that I could prepare a blog post in the near future. While going through the pictures, I saw a rather dismal snapshot I took of an adorable and disheveled canine. I had forgotten all about that pup until I saw the image.

At this same time, I was also trying to find a tutorial for a technique that I used over a year ago. After wracking my feeble brain, I finally remembered that I saw the tutorial on the Adobe Photoshop Elements Techniques web site (membership required). While I was searching for it there, I stumbled onto a tutorial on how to do high-key photo editing using Camera Raw. Whoa, there I went off on a tangent! I told myself, yes, I want to learn more on how to use Camera Raw in Photoshop! And yes, I have never seen a concise tutorial about digitally creating a high-key photo. Never mind what my original intentions were!

Are you still following along? Are your eyes glazing over? Hang in there and don’t let the terminology scare you off. I told you this was a shaggy dog story!  And I have pictures.

So in my usual rambling mode this past weekend, I went through the lesson and then grabbed the last picture I saw – the dismal one with the dog – to do a little playing in Photoshop. To make matters worse, the photo was taken with my little Coolpix point-and-shoot camera, so the image clarity is not up to par with those taken by my DSLR. Heavens to Betsy, there is hardly any redeeming quality to this hastily taken photo of a cute puppy dog, except that it is in focus. Here it is, straight out of the camera with no editing whatsoever.

It’s really a sad picture from a technical point of view. The subject is dead center (a composition no-no). The car is woefully distracting. The unattractive concrete block building in the background (complete with fluorescent light in the window, wires, and conduit) is the crowning touch to the composition disaster. Hey, but the subject is a cute dog – a shaggy one with the wind blowing through his hair! And I LOVE to throw a little test at myself to see if I can create something cool out of almost nothing. Game on!

So the first thing I did was crop the image to just a partial view of the pup’s head. Then I did some high-key tricks via the tutorial. At that point, it did NOT look promising. The grain was bothering me and I wasn’t getting the usual texture that I crave. I quickly remembered why don’t try to create high-key photos! The delete button was screaming for a well-placed finger. It was really awful. What the heck, I figured it was time to break into the Topaz Adjust plug-in and see what freakish things the various filters could do, just for a few laughs!

Like, what was I thinking, trying to coax a decent result out of this image? Geez, the things I challenge myself to do, LOL.

Well, low and behold, the “dark-ghostly” filter made the picture pop and sizzle! I was dazzled by the gritty glows! I whooped and did a little celebration high-five with Marty, knocked back a diet coke, and finished up my editing with some background touchups.

Drum roll, please! Here is the wild ghost dog that immerged from my little creative session!

How’s that for a dramatic “before and after”! I love happy endings, don’t you?

Spring Welcome!

Daffodils

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Photo Challenge – Before and After

It’s time for another Brenda Photo Challenge! The current challenge theme is Before and After.

I love photo editing as much as I enjoy taking photos! As my faithful followers know, I’ve worked very hard the last couple of years to learn how to make the most of my digital photos. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can take a wonderful image, but it can always be improved or made more special with a little editing! I have a couple of images to show you today, where I applied my typical editing techniques and then applied some special effects.

The first subject is the bird feeder located right outside my first floor office window. It is always a delight when the woodpeckers come calling for their dinner. This red-bellied woodpecker has become a regular guest. When I took the image, the camera settings were f/8, 1/160 second, and ISO 800.

I can’t leave well enough alone! Here’s what it looks like with a painterly conversion.

And of course, I am a great fan of textured backgrounds, so here is a version with a rustic texture applied.

I have it all animated for you in this version, so that you can easily see all of the transformations!

Here’s another example of a “before and after” that is rather dramatic. I took this photo a couple of years ago at the Grand Canyon. It shows an interesting old stone building near the Desert View Watch Tower, located on the eastern side of the south rim. The camera settings were taken at f/7.1, 1/500 second, and ISO 200. I applied normal editing in this first image and it quite lovely in its own right.

But I wondered how I could make this image look like an old-time post card! So I applied a Topaz filter on it to give it a bit of spicy contrast and also added a texture layer. I was really pleased how this turned out!

And here is the animated transformation!

Now that you have seen my contributions to the challenge, please click on the link at the beginning of this post and find some other great Before and After images!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

May the luck and the mirth of the Irish be with you today!

First Daffodil Bloom!

We planted several dozen daffodil bulbs in November, much later than we had intended. So we didn’t know how well they would do this year. We missed out having our own blooms last spring because we were living in a rental home.  I didn’t want to go through that loss two years in a row!

After much anticipation, our first daffodil bloom of the season and at our new Grey Havens came to life yesterday! I was so excited! In between the raindrops, I went outside and commemorated the event with this photo. I added a textured background layer to provide a dramatic effect.

I don’t have to look at the calendar. I know that spring 2011 has definitely arrived!

Grizzly Bear Series – Part 6, Momma and Cubs

We’re now at the end of my grizzly bear series! So I saved something special for the finale. We were fortunate enough to see momma bears and cubs – not once, but twice!

The first encounter was a joyous surprise. As soon as we arrived at the bear overlook station on our initial visit, a momma and two cubs ventured out of the forest nearby. The overlook area was a bit crowded, so I had to scramble for a halfway decent position to take pictures. Wicked backlighting was working against all the photographers. It was quite a sight to see, even though they didn’t linger very long! Momma bear wanted to get her babies across the river and was anxious about other bears in the area.

It is very grainy, but here is a digital close-up of her concerned face!

As soon as she determined that the coast was clear, she bolted and swam across, with the wee ones right behind.

They quickly got on the trail across the river, and she took one last glance at the riverside to make sure that they weren’t being followed. (Look for the two little ones on the trail to her right.) Then they disappeared into the forest. It all happened in mere minutes! It was magical.

The next time we saw a momma bear and cubs was a very distressing encounter. We had an incident on the grounds of our lodge where a male bear killed a cub. The whole story unfolded over the course of about five to six hours. The momma bravely fought and was able to save one of her two babies. After chasing the male away initially, she calmed herself and her cub by nursing, a rare and precious sight that we got to witness from a considerable distance. At a later point, the male came back and took chase after the surviving cub, with the angry momma in hot pursuit after the male. They ran toward the river and we lost sight of them in the distance. We were quite worried at that point about the outcome!

We learned about a half hour later that part of the story had a happy ending, when the momma and cub came back to the lodge grounds. We all cheered when we realized they were safe! I took the picture below after all of the drama had completely unfolded and in between their nibbles on vegetation. As you can see, she was still watchful for any potential harm to her remaining cub!

And this picture shows why it was wise for folks to look outside their individual cabins before venturing out! We were staying in the cabin shown in the front!

I hope that you have thoroughly enjoyed all of the images I’ve shared with you from our British Columbia trip last year! If you want to see them all together, you are welcomed to play the slideshow of British Columbia and grizzly bear photos in my Flickr account. This tour with Natural Habitat Adventures was truly spectacular, very unique, and one that we will forever cherish!

Feeder Frenzy

There is an eating frenzy at the bird feeders this time of year. Natural food sources are scarce, so we do what we can to take care of our feathered friends! My new 70-300mm zoom lens arrived earlier this week, the one I have been wanting for a couple of years now. I finally broke down and got it since I know it will come in handy for future trips. After working all week, I tried it out just a little while ago. The late afternoon sun was low in the horizon, casting a dramatic side light. As I settled next to the window of my home office, camera in hand, a red-bellied woodpecker flew in from the nearby forest and offered me a sublime pose in-between nibbles.

God’s creatures know how to make us smile, don’t they?

Jaunt Planned in April

Well, I see that Marty’s guest post (while I was indisposed) was a big hit! All those kind words you said just went straight to his already swollen head. Thank goodness I saw the remnants of rabbit fur all around my keyboard. Otherwise, I might have tried to eat those raisins that were lurking on my desk! Ha-ha!

Hubby and I got a “wild hare” of our own recently and spontaneously planned a vacation jaunt in April! Can you guess where we’re going? We cashed in some more frequent flyer miles and finished making all the reservations! I need a break from the working grind, and we’ve been hankering to do some more southwest explorations. I’ll fess up more about our plans later on!

Hopping-Good Font

Marty here, your charming blog greeter! Donna stepped away from the computer momentarily, and I’m doing a guest post. Ha-ha, won’t she be surprised? She’ll get annoyed when she sees my fur all over the keyboard, but I’ll wiggle my ears and pour on the charm.

I wanted to share with you a bunny rabbits font! Aren’t these adorable?! Yeah, just like me! I downloaded the font HERE. The Dafont web site has a whole bunny herd of specialty fonts to select, along with installation instructions.

It’s the Chinese year of the rabbit and Easter arrives on April 24! So you have two good excuses to use this hopping-good font!

Grizzly Bear Series, Part 5 – Dipping and Dunking

Ah, my work week is over! I can finally relax a bit and also update my blog. So let’s see some more grizzly bears we encountered on our British Columbia trip last year! OK? This time I am featuring images of them dipping and dunking themselves in a cold mountain river.

This handsome fellow looks like he is sizing me up and trying to decide if I taste like fish! Ha-ha, I was safely standing up in the bear viewing station, so I wasn’t worried a bit. I introduced you to this area and showed pictures of the viewing station in the first post of this series. I even showed a picture from the perspective of where this bear was located in the river!

This was one of my favorite bears because he was so photogenic. I particularly love his face here because he reminds me of a soggy dog at bath time. Water is cascading off his chin, and there is even a trace of a smile!

This one was not fishing, but just crossing the river. Why? To get to the other side, of course, LOL!

Here’s another one caught in the act of a “bear paddle”!

I adore the look of intensity on one bear, looking for fish to swim past him. Do you see how his left front paw is poised in the water, right below his head?

This guy found a deep spot near the riverbank to sit and rest a little bit.

And this grizzly gave me a stunning portrait that I will remember always! What a beautiful teddy bear face!

I will wrap up this series next week. You won’t want to miss it!

P.S. I used a Nikon D90 for these photographs and a Nikkor 18-200mm lens.  I also digitally enlarged and cropped some of the images.

March – A Look Ahead

Halleluiah! Spring is coming! When you see a daffodil bloom, you can’t help but feel cheered! Oh, how I miss the hundreds of blooms we used to have at our former country cottage. But we should finally have some new daffies greeting us later on this month at our new Grey Havens cottage. If you recall, this past November we planted some bulbs in the front flowerbeds. There are over a dozen stalks of green peeking through the mulch right now, and I am checking their progress each day. (Yeah, I’m compulsive like that!) We saw some old-fashioned ones blooming alongside a road last week and we let out with a whoop and a holler! It’s such a simple thing, but I do adore daffies!

Hubby already fertilized the lawn last month. We have some rain showers arriving this week, but our lawn contractor should be starting our small hardscape additions soon and extending out the lawn in the backyard. I need to remember to take “before” pictures in-between the raindrops this week!

I am hard at work with my temporary consulting job and telecommuting. It is frustrating at times, but I am soldiering on and getting the work done. And the first couple of paychecks have rolled in to help soften my annoyances! Half of me wishes that I was back to the carefree life of retirement, but the other half recognizes that the additional income is a blessing in these days and times of economic uncertainty. Alas, there isn’t much time for blogging except for the weekends!

I have some more grizzly bear pictures to share with you, though you are probably getting bored with them by now! Hahaha, deal with it! I have lots of other traveling photos that I may share this month if I can find the time to get processed through Photoshop.

I am completing tasks on my “to-do” list for this time of year. I got my annual boobie-check done last week and today I have my annual physical. Also, I prepared our 2010 tax return recently and discovered that we owe some mega-bucks as result of my temporary work stint last year. Boogers! So now I wait until the last minute in April to file and send in a humongous check to our ungrateful Federal government (who will promptly spend it on a $3.4 million underground turtle tunnel in Lake Jackson, Florida, or something else incredibly stupid).