Neodigital Art | Editing tutorial
Neodigital Art is about using your computer to make something artistic; in my case from a photograph and so this means editing. I prefer Windows Live Photo gallery rather than the more complex Photoshop. I opened this photo in Windows Live Photo Gallery. I took this photo of the lake frozen over in December. The light was quite good and in the afternoon I had the light behind me. I was shooting down the lake rather than a cross it to get depth. The trees also add some depth to the picture. At the top of the page you can see an option to click to edit, organise or share; obviously I clicked edit. I chose this picture again. (more…)
Neodigital Art | Update 23
Picnic place
This isn’t a great photo but it was intended as a picnic area and so looked interesting. Some idiot had lit a portable barbecue on top of the table provided and burnt it! There wasn’t that much of interest there. (more…)
Neodigital Art | Update 20
Where the fairies live
If you read last week’s Neodigital Art blog, you will remember these pictures that I took in woodland near Walsall (England) last week. They are really magical because of the green algae on the water. Incidentally, if you use Windows Live writer and Live photo gallery, you can alter the picture to make the trees ‘warmer’ with photo gallery. Then I import the photo into Live writer and I click on the corner of the picture to make it bigger and line up with the text that I have applied full justification to. (more…)
Neodigital Art | Update Fourteen
This first picture is a little grey and boring. This was taken by Simon James at Montgomery in Wales. By contrast the next picture is a little more interesting because I went quite radical when I altered it. (more…)
Neodigital Art | Update Twelve
I have so many good photographs of the lake from last Sunday, it was difficult to choose one. The light was perfect and I got the reflections of the clouds on the water and the waves give an effect that looks like the brush strokes of an artist. I often get a ‘washed out’ look to photographs and this certainly isn’t like that. The difference is the light, the weather was hot and the skies blue and reasonably clear. The other difference was I was alone this time and started earlier. The sun was still high in the sky, the pictures I took later at Moorcroft wood were darker and the sun was not only lower but also obscured in many photographs by the wood. My only reservation about this one is it’s a little too good, like a picture of someone that has been altered with Photoshop to perfection. It’s the imperfections that make a photograph interesting!
Neodigital Art | Update Eleven
I take most of the photographs that I use on my blogs and I used a photo very similar to this one on Monday. I call it Neodigital Art and my artist friends recognise it as art. This photograph has been altered as usual and it is taking the photograph and manipulating it; that is the art. (more…)
Neodigital Art–Update Nine
Before
The photograph above is ‘before’ I altered it and the ‘after’ photo is below. I’ve used a picture of this bridge before and this isn’t a great photograph. You can see the river in the original picture and the small bridge it goes under and the bigger bridge that carries the aqueduct and canal over the top. The photo looks a little washed out with the bright sunshine and so I increased the contrast. (more…)
Neodigital Art Update Seven
The first picture is a simple bridge. I crossed this bridge and was a little confused about what it was for. I worked it out eventually; the river runs at the side of the bridge and when it floods the flood water goes under the bridge. The white flowers in the background line the river bank and this was an important river a few hundred years ago supplying power for water wheels. It’s interesting to look at the geography and history of the places we go. This bridge looks modern but there are eighteen century bridges nearby carrying the canal. The canal too was an important piece of engineering at the end of the eighteenth century taking around fifty years to complete. (more…)
Neodigital Art | Update Five
This was taken at Aberdaron in Wales.
I’ve started today’s blog with a photograph taken by Simon James at Lake Vyrnwy, Monmouthshire,Wales. I’ve been there and I don’t remember that little castle. It looks cool though; I’ll have one of those built in my garden when I win the lottery.
I edited that picture; I cropped it to clearly show the castle and tried to bring out the texture of the stonework. (more…)
Neodigital Art Update
Neodigital Art - A simple bridge can make an interesting picture
My first picture today was taken locally. You don’t normally have to travel far unless you live in the middle of a desert. This was just a bridge over a railway and I added some contrast and cropped the original picture. I think the blue railing make the picture look more interesting. (more…)
Social Media – career enhancement
Neodigital Art - It shows creativity and possibly a respect for nature
Horoscope Aquarius
Sunday 10 April
Look towards your health and well-being. The Moon in your wellness zone is encouraging you to slow down, not so easy for someone who is currently whizzing around at a million MPH. So think about nurture and nourishment. You need the kind of foods that feed your nervous system, brain food, if you like. Eat well like this and you’ll feel so much better.
That’s my horoscope for today. I need some brain food; I have chicken for dinner that is loaded with tryptophan and I’ll have lots of veggies too. My health is the most important thing to me but we have to think about other things and make life interesting. Man cannot live by chicken and veggies alone! (more…)
Social Media – Cascading the portals
Neodigital Art being democratised by social media
I get my horoscope every day, emailed to me with the weather. It’s been spookily accurate this week. This morning it advised I should only confide my worries to someone I could trust; otherwise I could talk about something confidential and it could lead to gossip. Gossip can be destructive and it’s information or misinformation passing from one person to many and they keep on passing it on. It spreads like a virus to a whole community and sometimes beyond. You can spread gossip or information using social media like Facebook or LinkedIn. When it spreads like a virus this is cascading and the portals are Facebook, LinkedIn, email, Windows Live, blogs and every communication method on the internet. These portals of information are important and very powerful. (more…)
Neodigital Art: Update Four
Neodigital Art - A church can look spectacular
My first picture is in silhouette and I altered a few attributes on the photograph to get that effect. In Windows Live Photo Gallery click ‘edit’ at the top of the screen and it’s brings up a lot of editing tools. You need more control and so click fine tune and some useful tools are on the right of the screen. (more…)
The Year of the Ox!
About 8% of the world's population was born in a year of the Ox
The Year of the Ox
1913, 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, 2009
People born in the Year of the Ox are patient, speak little, and inspire confidence in others. They tend, however, to be eccentric; but make very good friends. They are suited to all kinds of pursuits from the technical to the creative. They are easy going but quite stubborn. They speak little but when they do speak they are eloquent and speak after giving the subject a lot of thought. The Ox may be stubborn but can always be relied on to carry a heavy burden. (more…)
Close Encounters!
Neodigital Art - Do you see this when you look at a cloud?
Horoscope Aquarius
Monday 04 April
Words can be your currency this week, and if they are used in a measured, thoughtful way, your communication can make a major impact. However, equally others can feel passionate about their views and someone may spring something on you that will come as a major surprise, like hearing from an old flame, perhaps by email or text message. (more…)
Spooky!
Neodigital Art - this was taken at a nature reserve a week ago - a hidden treasure
Spooky!
Horoscope Aquarius
Sunday 03 April
Keep a pen and notepad handy, and a camera and your mobile. Today is all about thinking and having the most brilliant ideas you have ever had. Make sure you write them down, photograph them, talk them into a recording device and keep them to hand. Your mind is really operating at the very top of its gearing, and this can see you quick-witted too.
Isn’t that spooky! I had just finished writing some notes in a notepad and I checked my email and got this horoscope. I am planning to go out this afternoon to take photographs for my Neodigital Art blogs and so I checked my mobile (cell phone) was fully charged. Actually it rang, it was still on GMT and the alarm went off; that is my emergency alarm in case I sleep through the clock. It went off a hour late because I hadn’t altered it to dreamless time. I feel constantly tired since altering the clocks an hour; I wish the dreamless ones would leave them alone. You cannot save daylight! I say it every year, twice a year; it makes no difference. (more…)
How to write
Images for Neodigital Art can be found just about anywhere.
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T. S. Eliot
A good writer steals just like the poet or the artist. I read a story by a writer some time ago and knew what she watched on TV many years ago; she had used the same ideas. I saw the work of an artist and could see the impressionism of the last century and influences from this century. The artist’s work has since changed, I can’t see the influences so much; it is still impressionist but the influences are more diverse and more complex. She steals her ideas from many sources. (more…)
My Exhibition
I wanted to have my exhibition here - it was handy for the supermarket
Victorian Art Gallery
If you have been following my Neodigital Art blogs, you will know that it is an art form based on photography and the finished images can be printed out for an exhibition or they can be uploaded to a server to be viewed online. When I thought about an exhibition, I thought about my local art gallery. It’s a traditional Victorian building and has the grandeur that the Victorians were so fond of creating. (more…)
Neodigital Art – Update Three
Neodigital Art can be found everywhere - this was a nature reserve.
Nature reserve
In previous blogs I have said that anyone can be a Neodigital artist who has a computer and a digital camera. We took these photographs two days ago and they were edited with Windows Live Photo gallery which you can download with the Windows Live suite of programs for free. The first picture was taken in a nature reserve and it was quite sunny. The intense light made the colours quite muted and so the software was used to adjust them later and bring out the reds, oranges and more interesting colours of winter. The very early signs of spring were apparent and people were fishing in the pool. We don’t have lakes, we have pools and canals. I also took photographs of the canals and even a demolition site. I’ll send the demolition photographs to my artist friend. The photographs have been commented on because uploaded lots on to Facebook and the ‘pretty’ ones like this one aren’t always the most popular. I do like this one though. (more…)
The Dreamless Ones
It's not that time really - we are now on dreamless time...
The Dreamless Ones
One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas I’ll never know: Groucho Marx. 🙂
Which do you think is the predator and which the prey, the man or the elephant with its great strength and huge brain. (more…)
Creating a phenomena
This photograph was altered using Fotosketcher to good effect.
I wrote about Neodigital art yesterday and did an update on my original blog. I spent a few hours taking photographs for that on Sunday and interest came from people who want to become involved and also people who naturally just want to just look at the pictures. This could be the beginnings of phenomena; you never know. I may even start a group for people who are interested on Facebook. (more…)
Neodigital Art: Update One
Neodigital Art
Neodigital Art - Try unusual angles, pointing the camera up at a building.
Neodigital Art: Update One
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.
I wrote my first blog about Neodigital Art, last week and it seems to have captured the imagination of the imaginative. There were many schools of impressionism in the 19th century besides that Parisian one. The reason why the Paris based one was more successful and better known was that simple reference to it by Louis Leroy in his satiric review. I hope my reference to Neodigital Art will have a similar effect but again there are many different schools or styles. (more…)
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