12/25/2012

Serendipity with a single keystroke

14


My thought was to compose a lovely, ethereal tree photo for a Christmas post ...

The roast was cooking, the dogs were fed, a bottle of red
opened, poured and  emptying  being enjoyed.  And then came some spare minutes to play with photos.
This always works best when I have no preconceived notions of an outcome ... 
it's so much better that way (giving up control)
but I have to say, this happy accident 
takes the cake.

With one mistaken keystroke  this  popped up ...


my mind FLEW!
What had I done???
Here was a quilt of my tree,
a  mosaic,  tree-ness broken into thousands of pieces;
I saw a  graphic map  for intricate stitching,
maybe a pattern  sketch  for weaving cloth,
some  boro pieces  on a faded ground.

It was all of these things
and I had no idea how I got here.



This was the tree I was working on.
Tentatively, I began to hit the "undo" button
and traced backwards to see where I'd come from.

Then I began to wonder ... what if I try to make this happen again  on purpose?






Just some used twine from dyeing bundles this summer,
wrapped now around a new idea.


May serendipity lead us all astray.

  







14 comments:

  1. I love it when that happens. Serendipitous art surprises. There is much potential here. You could go in many directions with different mediums..... I like the Boro idea1.... and the undefined outline.

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    1. thank you, Robyn...seems it only happens to me when I *give up control.*
      Wish I didn't forget that fact so readily!

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  2. superbe résultat! joli travail!

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    1. Merci, mon amie ~ suite à une nouvelle feuille de route pour l'aventure !

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  3. Serendipity is a wondrous thing, isn't it? LOVE the mosaic-ed photos and especially all the ideas they offer. Would you mind sharing which button you pushed? In Photoshop?

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    1. Of course not, Jennifer! Let's see, it's a little complicated but here goes. I used two desktop photo editing apps for these. I first took the straight out of camera image into Snapseed where I cropped, added the tilt-shift effect, turned them into black & whites and played with the contrast and tones, then saved them as new jpegs. Next, they went into FX Photo Studio Pro and this is where it gets tricky...I just ran with instinct while playing with multiple layers of textures & filters stacked on top of each other, adding color back in. I did that until the image felt *right* [fingers flying, no set course or direction!] and then came the icing on the cake: the 'Rippled Glass' filter and my ahhh haaa moments ;>]] You can set the intensity of the distortion of that filter, also the "frequency" of the distortion, meaning if your "mosaic" modules are large or small. The possibilities are endless every step of the way...and much is given over to ***serendipity.***

      Hope that all makes sense. Best wishes!

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    2. Wow! Thank you! Obviously, I need to check out Snapseed and FX Photo Studio Pro. I've been using Photoshop forever and very rarely ever play with the filters that it has. Seeing what you did though...it's sublime.

      Thank you again for sharing your editing info! Have a wonderful New Year!

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  4. Hey - you gave yourself the lovely gift of 'discovery' - what a wonderful way to celebrate the holiday!

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    1. Certain friends in my environs think nary a good thought about [too much] time spent in front of the glowing box. But can one argue with the possibilities/discoveries, new ways of looking at things?!

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  5. it's the principle of following that piece of dried Marmalade on the map...

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    1. ...being sidetracked with no particular "eyetinnery" [had to revisit your blog to refresh me brain cells about marmalade & Paddington]; not knowing where you're going till you get there...or something similar. Add in some flying fingers not at full attention, yup, that was the recipe alright.

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  6. Wow, isn't that awesome! I love it.

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  7. If this isn't fun, I don't know what is!

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