Saturday, April 02, 2011

Macadamia nut blossoms original

Pixellated macadamia nut blossoms
Clambering around on the hillside, looking for something to photograph I stumbled onto my macadamia nut tree. It sits on the slope year after year, mainly out of my regular sight line, doing little. In response I give little thought to it or put effort towards it's welfare. Was I surprised to see this marvelous blooming show. Perhaps it's the abundant rainfall this year? - or is it finally mature enough to produce nuts.

I fool around with photographic effects on my mediocre pictures trying to make silk purses out of sow's ears and occasionally it works. I tried a number of things to dramatize this photo - adding borders, trying a blur effect, altering the colors. Nothing worked very well but I think the pixellating, while making the
image unrecognizable as macadamia nut blossoms, created a pleasing combination of colors and shapes.

The camelia is also overlooked much of the year but today some lovely blossoms have appeared. The first photo is the original and on the next two I used Picnik.com to crop it it, make a 60's version with the sepia tones and a focal focus version.

Amazing that so much fabulous photo editing software is available free "in the cloud". And even more amazing that it's so simple and easy to use.

Camelia original

Camelia 60's version

Camelia focal focus


2 comments:

  1. The focal focus version really sings. Softens the outer petals in a very lovely way. I am a big fan of picnik.

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  2. Wow!!! You ARE an artist. I'm impressed. Very, very pretty.
    I'm going to get on over to picnik.

    I didn't know macadamia trees bloomed. We have two at our gate entrance. Lots of nuts but no blooms.
    We've never even tried to crack them. I've heard it's really hard to do.
    Barbara

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