One of my favorite parts about coming home for Christmas is seeing my cats all puffed up in their winter coats. I guess I never really noticed them getting fluffier in the winter when I was in high school and saw them every day. The first time I came home from college freshman year, I thought my cat Patti (pictured here) looked like a snow beast. So here she is today in all her snowbeast greatness. I took this picture the other day because she was just so cute and puffy during this crazy rain we’ve been having. I love her facial expression as she looks out into the distance at some unknown entity. I wonder what she was thinking about… Probably “Why is that lame Potassium taking pictures of me when she could be petting my soft winter fur?!”
In other news WOW! Did anyone else see the eclipse last night?! Awesomeness… I was out in the cold taking tons and tons of pictures! So… look forward to some of those soon! :D
Author: iampotassium
Portrait: Perfect Postcard
Back to Portrait Monday already?! Craziness… Anyway, I hope you all are having good times getting ready for the holidays… I know there has been a lot of crazy weather in the western half of the US for a few days. I hope it hasn’t made anyone’s holiday plans too soggy…
For today’s picture, I have a portrait of our family friends Amy and Gene at a caroling party we go to every year (in fact we went last night but this picture is from last year’s party…). I had gotten my DSLR earlier in the year and I brought it to the party just in case I had any opportunities to snap a few pictures. I took this one of Amy and Gene and then had so much fun playing with it on Photoshop that this is actually version 7. As you can see, I’ve done a lot to this picture, editing the background so that it is blurrier than it was in reality and editing the photo itself to make it look more painted than photographed. When I sent it to Amy, she told me how much she rarely likes pictures of herself but that she really liked this picture! Yay! I felt so honored! I love making people happy with the gift of photography…
Cell Phone Picture: Don’t Forget the Shark Treats
Today’s picture is a picture of my travel buddy Scrarmpl (pronounced Skrarm-pel). Scrarmpl and I have traveled to many states (I used to have an exact number but I forgot now) together. He’s pretty much a stuffed shark version of a traveling gnome basically. Once he even got his own seat on an airplane trip to Ohio (no one was sitting there… I didn’t buy an extra ticket…)! He thought that was pretty sweet. I hope some day I’ll be able to take him on an extra long plane ride to somewhere outside the country…
Anyway, yesterday, Scrarmpl and I were on a plane together again and this time, he really wanted to eat my complementary peanuts. I said no because I wanted to eat them. Luckily, I brought along some goldfish crackers for the trip so I gave him some of them. That actually sounds a bit better for him anyway seeing as he is a shark and all…
I hope you all have great weekends!
Whoa! Look at this, children!
Today’s picture is a chance to show a funny picture I took of Cobalt and to advertise his wing blog a little. For the wing blog – he updates it about once or twice a week with ratings on different chicken wings served in Boulder as well as ratings of various hot sauces he’s encountered over the years.
As for the picture, Cobalt and I were eating at Wahoo’s Fish Tacos one day and he was reading The Onion while we waited for our food. We sat next to a windowsill that had a bunch of bottles of Tapatio hot sauces sitting on it. I thought it’d be cute if Cobalt read The Onion to them as if they were his children because… well… he really loves hot sauces. You can read his blog to find out more…
Black and White: Now we’ll never know
For today’s black and white picture, I have this crazy picture for you. I like it because it looks like I took a boring picture of bars until you look at the stuff in the background…. which seems to not be oriented correctly. Actually, this is a good time to point out one of my favorite features about black and white pictures – the fact that you notice so much more of the details that you might not notice if the picture had color. For example, if I post a picture of me with green skin, you will probably notice the fact that I seem to look very sick but you might not notice the finer details of the picture besides my green skin. If the picture were black and white, you might not notice that my skin was a different color and you’d content yourself with looking at the rest of the details. That’s my theory at least…
So… today’s picture: So sneaky. So confusing! What is going on?!?!
Well… if you must know, then I guess I can tell you. I took a picture of a railing that was diagonal… but then I tilted the camera so that the railing appeared horizontal… thus tilting everything else in the picture and confusing you. Ahahaha…
Wranglin’ up some Tumbleweeds
I thought we would have a silly “free Tuesday” today so I posted an ad that I made up for delicious Tumbleweed Tuna!
Let’s start with a story. When Cobalt and I were headed back to Colorado from visiting his family a few weeks ago, we were “lucky” to witness an entire tumbleweed migration across the interstate. I narrated it very loudly as I drove, screeching to Cobalt: “OMG THERE’S ANOTHER ONE! WHOA LOOK HOW BIG THAT ONE IS! GEEZ… IT’S LIKE A FREAKIN’ TUMBLEWEED MIGRATION… WHERE ARE THEY ALL COMING FROM?!?!! ALL LURKING ACROSS THE FREEWAY!!!! AHHHHHH IT’S COMING RIGHT FOR THE CAR NOOOOOO… WOOT! TAKE THAT, TUMBLEWEED!” etc etc etc. It was pretty hilarious. So as Cobalt and I were headed back down to visit his family this weekend, we discussed said Tumbleweed adventure and Cobalt suggested that it would be funny if there were a brand of tuna called Tumbleweed Tuna. And then Sal the Tumbleweed Tuna mascot was born…
So this actually is a photograph sort of. It was a long process that started with me drawing Sal on a pad of paper. Then I took a picture of him with my baby camera and opened that in Photoshop. The rest was Photoshop magic: cleaning up lines, playing with paint ideas, etc. Now, I had other plans for Sal that didn’t work out… so don’t be surprised if you see Sal reappear sometime in the near future… especially with Winter break coming up and giving me a lot of free time for playing on the computer…
Portrait: Three Little Angels
Welcome back to a new week! I can’t believe it’s portrait day again already! You may remember two people in this picture from portrait day last week… that’s right! Cobalt’s niece and nephew are back and cuter than ever in this picture with their friend! I love that her robe is so big that you can’t even see her little hand!
(Potassium’s quick note on posting pictures of kids – I feel really awkward using their names on the big scary internet but if you are a parent of the photographed kids and you give me permission, I will use only their first names in future pictures)
This weekend, Cobalt and I did a whirlwind trip down to visit his family and see his niece and nephew get baptized! This was a very special day for the kids and also kind of a special day for me for two reasons. First of all, baptisms are always so full of joy that they never fail to make me cry. This one was even more special though because I love these kids so much! I was so proud that I was literally blinking away tears so that I could focus on taking some good pictures!
Second of all, this was probably my first opportunity to take pictures for someone. Usually, I’ll bring my DSLR somewhere and snap some pictures and if they turn out somewhat decent, I’ll send them to whoever is in the picture. This time, I was really trying to get good pictures for Cobalt’s sister. I was so nervous that I wouldn’t get the lighting just right, I made Cobalt stand in random places around the church so that I could snap a few pictures of him and make sure I had good settings! I think it was a good experience for me. I still have a lot to learn but I think the best way to learn some of these tricks is just to get out there and practice!
For those of you who I promised baptism pictures to, this is your sneak preview! There will be many more in your inboxes… soon… hopefully.
Cell Phone Picture: Someone Needs to Find Nemo!
Happy Friday everyone! Today’s picture comes to us from Boulder Gas… I was walking around Boulder (if you can’t tell by the gorgeous flatirons hiding in the background) one day and I passed this Boulder Gas only to see that someone had lost their Nemo! Poor Nemo was sitting all dejected in the middle of the gas station as you can see! I thought it made for a bit of a silly picture… Nemo lost at sea… er… the gas station! I hope they found him soon. I know I’d hate to lose my Nemo…
More Leaf Tears
This poor picture has been waiting weeks to be posted! I wanted to post it before Thanksgiving but alas! It just got pushed aside! Finally, it gets to have its turn to shine! I figured since I posted the twig tears on Tuesday, I could post the leaf tears today.
I took this picture when I was taking pictures of Meghana and Janet during that snow a few weeks ago. We were taking pictures near this bush when we saw this really nice frozen water droplet falling from a leaf all covered in snow and all three of us agreed that it needed its picture taken!
Black and White: The Sun Has Gone to Bed
And so must I…
This weekend Cobalt and I went for a walk around my neighborhood. On our way back, we saw these poor dead sunflowers lurking over the top of a fence. Cobalt thought that they looked like nosy neighbors, looking over the fence to see what their next door “friends” are up to. I thought they looked like a giant claw coming up over the fence. I like the way this picture turned out – the fence is really neat and of course the sunflowers are epic… Good night sweet prince(s)… ;)
Potassium Photography 