the return of the poppy

Some time ago, I downloaded GIMP. It’s an open-source photo editor, and it’s free.

Have had it before, but it’s been a long time and I found it too confusing back then. Thought I’d give it a try again since it’s constantly being updated and I like to see what’s going on.

It was like a whole different world opened up and most of it I didn’t understand. Thought I’d make an attempt at creating my usual, blue orb at least…. just to see what I could do with it.

There would be a lot to learn to take full advantage of it, and I don’t know that I’ll even start, but I’ve seen amazing work being created with it.

I have another photo editor, for whatever little editing I do. While Gerry was in France, I tried once again, to get back into creating graphics, but it just didn’t work. It can’t be forced.

I love the idea of GIMP, though … the fact that it’s free for everyone to download. You don’t have to be «filthy rich» to create graphics, when you’re so inclined! There are others too … paint.net, aviary, pixlr just to mention a few…

I’ve never picked up a paintbrush in my whole life … I’ve done some pencil drawing … but I did do some «virtual» painting for a while. It was a lot of fun, but also difficult, using just the mouse. Sometimes rewarding. This poppy, and the lilies too, I made totally from scratch. If I’d been into painting in ‘real life’, so to speak, Georgia O’Keefe would have been my inspiration. Now, when I’ve been searching for my own images for this post, I can still remember how much fun I had making these… I didn’t know about Georgia O’Keefe when I made these. Found out about her in some graphics challenge we had back in Yahoo 360. What a revelation that was to me! A person who had already painted what I wanted to do.

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Easter Sunday 2011 …

is extremely foggy here in Saint John. Were I to go out on the balcony and take a shot, it would be pure white.

One thing, that I really love about Easter here, is the Easter Lily. We don’t have that tradition in Sweden. It’s one of the most beautiful flowers … even though I think all flowers are beautiful, but this has come to be one of my favourites. Maybe I have a thing for white flowers … Gardenia is another favourite of mine.

I never tire of taking photos of them. Flowers are very gratifying as photo objects. When I got my first DSLR camera, it was just after Easter, so we had a white lily here at home, that I practised on. I was in awe … «Did I really shoot that photo?!»

Four, five years ago — when my main hobby was making graphics in Paint Shop/Photoshop — Easter would have been my time of glory. I just checked out my Flickr and found that I’d produced 235 images labelled «egg».

I used to make them at night, while watching TV … the glossier the better! Not only eggs, but all kinds of graphics … flowery background images for blogs, and stuff like that.

At some point, I lost it and cannot seem to get it back, even though I’ve tried several times … Perhaps the photography just took over as my creative outlet. I think, more importantly, back in those days of Yahoo 360, we were a big bunch of people who shared our creations with one another, which made it funnier than to just make a lot of stuff just for one self.

Either way … I guess you could say my graphics were eggsquisite! LOL