Gorgeous and Fun

Clouds and Confessions

Clouds. Thick, fluffy, grey clouds, seen through a Lensbaby. It makes the sky look stormy.

 

A tiny little confession that I have been meaning to make. When I first started this blog I knew I wanted to blog about things that inspire me. And it has been a creative journey for me. I've done all kinds of creative things ......paint watercolors, paint silk scarves, paint acrylics, mixed media, among other things.

Who knew that all that time I was gravitating towards photography. I wanted to create images. I have ogled at beautiful images, marvelled at how people enhanced their photos with Photoshop and wondered about the techniques.

I have found my way to the camera and Photoshop. Someone had once told me that it is a journey to figure out what kind of creativity you are drawn to. It is so true. When I travelled and saw beautiful landscapes I wanted to be able to paint them. But I couldn't quite translate what I saw into paintings. And then I discovered the art of photography. 

My heart has settled on the camera. The idea of images that tell stories is thrilling. I have been drawn to stories since forever. As a kid my summers were filled with "story books", as I called fiction then.

This blog was always about images. Now this blog is about the images I capture. More images, less words.

It is nice to have done so many different things and to know that this is what I want to do - now. 

 

 

 

Photoshop Magic and Totally Rad's Radlab

I used Totally Rad's Radlab plugin for Photoshop to play with some of the photos I took of the historical fair.

Now if I hadn't told you about the Photoshopping, you might have thought that I had found vintage pictures. I think the chain link fence behind her might have given it away :-). I don't think they had chain link fences back then.

The black and white pics:

And here's the original.....

Pretty cool, right?

Day of the Dead

Here in New England Halloween has been postponed. Thanks to a freak snowstorm on Saturday that left loads of people without electricity.

But my friend had a Halloween party on Saturday afternoon before the storm hit. And she had made these awesome party favors. Take a look at the details she worked in and she must have made at least 15 of these. And I thought that the subject befit the "Day of the Dead" as well so here's commemorating "Día de los Muertos".

She made each of these hats!

 

And the tag.....

 

And glittered those eye sockets....... 

Twilight in Cambridge

Twilight and city lights in Cambridge (the town in Massachussetts). Twilight in September and October is so beautiful.

Magazine Collage 2

Some red more red, black and white to whet your appetite. Another magazine collage.

 

6 Sites For Printing Photographs in Different Ways

If you have any interest in printing your photographs in different ways check these sites out:

Blurb - You can make your own photo book! Cookbook, Instagram picture book, albums, pretty much any kind of book!

 

PostalPix - Right now this is an app only available on the iPhone for printing out pics. I tried this out, I printed my instagram pics out in a square format - and the pics were great.

My only problem is that since this is available only as an iPhone app and doesn't have a web area for picture uploading, the photos have to stay on my iPhone to use this.

 

Printstagr.am - Printing out your instagram photos as posters or tiny, tiny books or stickers and some more ways.

 

Postagramapp - Send real postcards from your iPhone or Android phones.

 

Keepsy - Print out albums of your photographs. They hook up with  a bunch of places including Facebook, Instagram and Flickr.

 

Easy Canvas Prints - Have any photograph printed on a canvas! You can hang your on photography on your walls this way. Love this idea! I have got to try this out.

 

My image for the day - the statue of Captain Parker in Lexington, MA. Photo taken with Instagram on the iPhone and manipulated with different iPhone apps.

 

Magazine Collage 1

My heart has been wanting to tell stories!  Telling stories with images.  At some level, don't we all like stories? Stories intrigue the imagination.

So starting today I am sharing images that I am calling magazine collages. Something about these pictures in magazines appealed to me. Say hello to inspiration!

 The color palette of the bold reds and blacks......

Images are from magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, Instyle..... I wish I had written down the exact publication months. Some of these images are ads.

Flowers for the weekend

Tomorrow is the d-day, the teeth get pulled.

At this moment I am distracting myself. Catching up with the last season of  the 'Big Bang Theory' before the new one starts, playing with Photoshop. Just trying not to think about surgery.

Here's the result of today's playing - flowers - dreamy and vintage.................... The last vestiges of summer. Some of the trees started changing their leaves in August! It is starting to feel more and more like Fall.

Papers and Colors

One of the things about being interested in collage or mixed media is that inspiration can come through pretty much anything. There is a serious risk of becoming a pack rat :-). But I am finding that I prefer minimalism. Less is more. More is overwhelming. I love and admire the work of artists who create many, many layers. But in my own work I like to keep it minimal. 

I don't collect a lot but I am still slowly weeding out stuff that I know I don't want to use. I give it to friends who I know will like it. This weekend I sifted through my stash and found tissue papers in different colors. They look so lovely. To keep or not to keep is the question.......

 

Instagram and the iPhone

I am hooked, completely hooked to Instagram. And I am loving my iPhone, not that I didn't love it before but I love it even more now.

Every once in a while a device comes along that I absolutely love. I remember when my dad surprised me with my first walkman, I hadn't even seen one before (it came to India later than the US). It was love at first sight.

And then when my dad bought me first pocket computer (it looked like a small computer) I fell in love with programming.

And then my first computer.

And now the iPhone. Yes, there were several cell phones in between and my first iPod. But the iPhone has captured my heart. And Instagram helped with the capture of the last corner of my heart.

If you haven't seen it yet, it is an app for the iPhone that lets you take pictures, apply some filters (effects) and share them on Instagram and other places like Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter......

Why do I like Instagram so much? Because it let's me be creative every day. All I need is 5 mins to 15 mins. And I take pics where ever I go, I don't have to remember to carry my camera or worry about trudging around with my camera in rain etc. I get my creative fix even when I don't have oodles of time.

I take a picture in Instagram or my normal iPhone camera app, manipulate it and then share it using Instagram. Easy, peasy! 

 

Even when I don't have words to share I do have pictures. Catch my pics at gorgeousandfun.tumblr.com every day or on Instagram my id is @gorgeousfun.

All pictures here were taken and manipulated by me on the iPhone.