Sometimes, fiber art starts in an unexpected place. When I’m shooting, I look for interesting patterns. The original shot might not be scintillating, as this shot isn’t.
I took the shot and had fun in editing.
It’s an improvement, but I took the photo as the sun was going down and I didn’t want a shot that looked like it was taken during the day.
First, I used the surrealistic feature on PhotoScape X.
Then I used an overlay and a texture. I like the result and I may have this printed by Spoonflower and turn it into an art quilt.
I wanted to play a bit more, so I used the underwater feature and made extreme bends in the shot.
Next, I played with the tiny planet feature.
Then, I used the kaleidoscope feature.
It reminds me of a tile floor and it could make for an interesting quilt if I had the design printed by Spoonflower. It could be a contemporary approach to a pieced quilt.
Because of the delay in shipping caused by the vile pandemic, Spoonflower sent out coupons for a discount on a future order. I need to put together a list of all the fabrics I want printed up both for art quilts an for garments. Some of my designs would make great yoga pants. Others would be good for garments. Some would be printed and turned into little quilts.
I’ve been working on product photography and put some new jewelry in my store.
Fires in Arizona, the Gila Wilderness, and abut 100 miles north of where I live are causing Jim and me allergy misery. The fires are too far away to be a danger, but the smoke particles in the air are causing misery. The DEA has made it difficult to buy decongestants, and has forced drug companies to lower the amount of pseudoephedrine in decongestants. Claritin-D used to have 750 mg of pseudoephedrine. Now, it only 240 mg. That means I need to take 3-4 pills to get relief. But one can buy only so much pseudoephedrine at a time, only so much per month, show ID and sign a statement that one is complying with federal law. I wouldn’t bitch about this if the laws had achieved their stated purpose: slow the production of meth. That experiment has been a resounding failure. As a criminal defense attorney, I’ve represented a multitude of drug addicts. I’ve seen no decrease in the number of people using meth since the feds have made purchasing decongestants so difficult. I once asked a client why he was using Sudafed with a mere 50 mg of pseudoephedrine to make meth when he could be using Claritin-D which at that time had 750 mg of pseudoephedrine. The extraction methods are different and it’s too difficult to extract the pseudoephedrine from Claritin-D.
It was cool this morning, so I opened the sliding glass doors. I wanted fresh air. I got a bushel of allergens. Bleah.
I’m still trying to figure out how I want to quilt the latest suicide quilt. I thought about lightning bolts, but quilting experiments on a quilt sandwich were less than exciting. I tried FMQ with a twin needle. That resulted in a broken needle. So much for that experiment. I know what I want to say with this quilt, but I’m having a hard time speaking in free-motion quilting. I’ll keep experimenting until I find something that looks like I feel.
I’m still photographing whatever is blooming in the yard and still playing with special effects.
I took this photo because I liked the lights and shadows.
Here’s what you can do with one photo and special effects.
There’s a whole lot to be gotten from one photo if you focus on patterns when shooting.
Anxiety shows up in one of three places – right on top of my sternum, lower left quadrant of my abdomen or last molar on the bottom right. I’ve been to cardiologists, dentists, had a colonoscopy, had ultrasound, and every time I’ve been told my tooth is healthy, my heart is healthy, there’s nothing in my abdomen that shouldn’t be there. I take an anti-anxiety med. I munch on edible pot. I get some relief.
I’ve had chronic insomnia for about 10 months. The insomnia got worse as soon as the governor shut down New Mexico. I’ve got a prescription for a sleeping pill. I munch on edible pot. I don’t go to bed until I’m sleepy. Lately, that’s been around 3 AM. I get up around 8 AM. I’m living on 4-5 hours sleep a night. My sleep is mostly light sleep. There are some dreams, and almost no deep sleep. I can’t remember anything for more than a few seconds. I can’t think clearly. I’m moody. I read that pink noise will induce deep sleep which is when a whole lot of healing goes on. Pink noise sounds like fuzz looks. I tried listening to pink noise while I slept the night before last. For some reason, the 9-hour Youtube video only lasted 15 minutes. I did sleep better than usual, but still very little deep sleep. For last night, I downloaded a noise app onto my cellphone. I slept soundly, but still very little deep sleep. I’ll keep experimenting.
Some of the anxiety and insomnia is likely from bipolar disorder. Most of the anxiety and insomnia is from being in the middle of a pandemic. Because of my age, I’m high risk for a nasty outcome if I’m attacked by a tiny virus. I over eat. I under exercise. Yoga doesn’t help. Getting on the elliptical machine doesn’t help. Art helps.
Yesterday, I decided to refrain from Facebook which is filled with politics, knee-jerk reactions, and misery. Instead, I made jewelry. Art cures everything. A few months back, I bought peace jade beads. I bought them because I liked the color. Now, I like the name as well. I need some peace. I made earrings. By the time I was finished, the outside temperature was 100 degrees. Way too hot to go outside and do photography. I prefer shooting outside in natural light. The colors seem to come out more accurate when I shoot outside.
Today, I was able to shoot new masks and earrings outside before it got unbearably hot.
Peace Jade and PearlsPeace Jade and Carved ShellPeace Jade and African JadePeace Jade and Blue GoldstonePeace Jade and Swarovski crystals
Our 48th wedding anniversary was Wednesday. Jim bought me flowers and I worked on focus stacking. I put the camera on the tripod, and took several shots each focusing on a slightly different part of the flower. Then, when I edit the photos, I use the focus merge function in Affinity to make a final photo with every part of the flower in focus.
I’m stuck trying to figure out how to quilt a suicide quilt. I don’t feel like making garments. Or jewelry. Or much of anything else. I need more quilt binding and I hate buying what I can make. I cut strips of fabric 1 ¾” wide to make ½” binding. The strips are cut edge to edge rather than on a bias. This binding works for quilts, but not for garments. Binding for garments, because of the need to fit binding around neck openings and sleeve openings must be cut on the bias.
Once I got strips cut from one fabric, I used a metal binder clip to hold the strips.
I cut the ends on a 45-degree angle so I would have an angled seam rather than a seam straight across. A straight across seam makes for a bump in the binding. I made markings on ends of a couple strips of fabric so I could make sure the strips would fit together. Turns out, the ends have to be cut in a specific direction in order to match the ends. This isn’t critical for batiks and solids because there’s no right or wrong side. It is critical for prints. Rather than mark every strip or use a quilter’s ruler and rotary cutter, I folded the end over to form a 45-degree angle and I cut along the fold.
The seams are a bit tricky to sew. If you match the seams without any overlap, the result will be an off set strip of fabric and it will be difficult to fold the binding. You have to leave about a ¼” overlap in order for the edges of the strips to match up.
I need fancy threads and I need fancy stitches. I use most of the 300 different stitches my sewing machine will make. My thread collection has at least 200 different threads. Variegated. Single color. Shiny. Matte. Metallic. Thick. Thin. Silk. Cotton. Polyester. Skinny spools. Fat spools. Small cones. Large cones. Really, really, really large cones. Very old thread wound onto wood spools.
I had a coupon for 25% off from Superior Threads. Superior makes King Tut threads, and those are my favorite. Today, my thread arrived in my post office box.
I’ve been battling chronic insomnia, and read that going out into the sunshine in the morning can help reset my circadian rhythms. If I’m going to go outside, I might as well be doing something so I take my camera with me. Yesterday, I worked on macro photography. I am getting better with this lens. It’s a prime lens and the last “prime lens” I had was a Kodak Instamatic when I was in high school. All my other lenses are zoom telephoto lenses. With a prime lens, I can’t adjust the lens to accommodate the subject. I have to move the camera farther from the subject.
My first macro lens was attached to a Minolta SLR which I bought used. I got a decent SLR and the lens I wanted for less than the cost of a new macro lens. I used that lens to photograph antiques when I wrote for Antique Week 25 years ago. I learned to use my lens by photographing marks on the back of china pieces. The mark gives both the manufacturer and the approximate age of the piece of china. I was happily photographing a flat mark on a flat piece of china. That didn’t require a whole lot of thought.
Now, I’m using my macro lens to photograph flowers and that requires a whole lot of thought. I’m photographing round objects, and a macro lens has a shallow depth of field. Even at f/14 I can’t get the entire flower in sharp focus. It was suggested I use focus stacking to solve that problem. Focus stacking requires a tripod and involves taking several shots of a subject and focusing on a slightly different part of the subject with each shot. My editing program then blends the shots into one sharp photo. I’m not about to take the tripod into the yard, find a relatively cactus free space, and fight with adjacent bushes for space to put the tripod legs while being careful not to step on a rattlesnake and hoping the wind wouldn’t move the subject flower around.
Instead, I set up the tripod on the patio, put up a neutral background on the table, set out the spools of thread, and started shooting. Because these were just practice shots, I didn’t bother to remove the labels on the spools. When I was editing the photos, I started playing around with the photos. Swirls. Kaleidoscopes. Waves.
I liked what happened. I can’t sell fabric designs if I’ve got a label showing unless I have permission from the thread manufacturer. Tomorrow, I’ll work on focus stacking thread shots after I removed the labels from the spools.
I am having a neuropathy flare up. Bleah. The pain goes away when I make art. The pain comes back as soon as I stop making art.
I’ve been making face masks using up leftover fabric. I make many yards of binding at a time. Each mask takes two ties 34” long. Making binding isn’t my most favorite thing to do, so making miles of binding at one time means I only have to burn my fingers once every couple days.
I’ve been designing fabric which can’t be sold in my Spoonflower shop, https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman until I have proofs of the designs. What to do with 90 proofs? Make reversible face masks. One down and 14 more to go. As I finish them and photograph them, I’ll be putting them in my store, Deb Thuman Art. This one is in my store now.
Reversible Face Mask
I’m still photographing spring in the desert.
YuccaSeed Pods. Prickly Pear
I’ve been working on the suicide quilt. I’ve gotten the appliqués sewn on. Now, I have to figure out how I want to quilt it. This piece is larger than my usual quilts. Most of the time, I am making art quilts the size of a fat quarter.
I started working on the suicide quilt. Art is a way for me to get the feelings I don’t understand out from inside me. Sometimes, the feelings start to make sense while I’m working on the piece. It has been more than a year since someone I knew committed suicide; I still haven’t worked through all the feelings.
I inadvertently hung this upside down so I flipped the photo. My hand reaching for answers. The hand I can never grasp.
I’ve been documenting spring in the desert as it appears in my yard. Cheap gas, and no place to go.
Cholla. The spines are vicious. Using pliers is the only way to remove a thorn if you get one stuck in you. This is a strange prickly pear. The flowers are peach in the morning and evening, and yellow during the rest of the day. A normal, full-time yellow prickly pear.
Now for a few words about a day I dread each year. I detest mother’s day. I grew up in a house run by a pair of violent drunks who thought they were adults. The most appropriate gift I gave my mother was a Venus flytrap. The most appropriate gift I gave myself was to eliminate that woman from my life. I refuse to lie to myself and celebrate having her for a mother.
I chose not to have children and I’ve never regretted that choice. It’s not easy to swim upstream. I spent 20 years listening to people demand I have children. I could never bring myself to tell these people something pithy like: I can’t have children. If I did, ignorant people like you wouldn’t be able to make disgusting comments like the one you just made. I did tell one ignorant person that there’s more to life than changing diapers and wiping snotty noses. I did finally tell someone that I have worth and value but I could win the Pulitzer Prize and she still wouldn’t think I was successful merely because I didn’t produce a child. Turning 40 was wonderful because they finally shut up. Mother’s Day accompanied by flowers and syrupy poetry is horrible if you don’t have children whether it is by choice or by uncooperative biology. It’s even worse if you had a horrible mother. Combine the two, and the day is nearly unbearable.
What to do to survive Mother’s Day? I can celebrate having the courage to make an unpopular choice.
I am not handling quarantine well. The anxiety is constant and is now starting to feel normal. The insomnia is killing me. I turned in a paper for a class today. In a page and a half, I blatantly told my teacher she was full of shit. It took a page and a half because I wasn’t quite that blunt. I sent another teacher a terse email about a major error intended as propaganda for the coal mine owners that I found in the textbook and backed up what I said with case law. I’m not eating a healthy diet. I’d get on my elliptical machine, but I don’t have the energy because I’m not sleeping. I’m eating too much because I have no energy and my brain keeps thinking if I eat, I’ll be able to stay awake. Other than that, everything is dandy.
I’ve been doing photography and working on composition. Some experiments are better than others.
I may decide to crop this a bit, but I like how the light comes through the flower.Cohen in a rare moment when she chose to pose. Tinker guarding the TP – not a great composition.
I’ve been designing fabric, and I sent for the third set of proofs from Spoonflower. When I get the proofs, I’ll be putting new designs into my Spoonflower store, https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
I listened to the suggestions and comments made when I asked about fabric combinations for a quilt about suicide. I took one comment and ran with it. Here’s the semi-final, maybe final combination. The splotch print represents the emotional mess left after someone commits suicide. The other print represents how rational, logical and normal it felt when I was deciding how, when and where to kill myself. Except it’s not logical, rational or normal. I’ve got to let that combination sit for a bit to see if I still like it. Then, it’s time to trace the pattern, cut fabric, and figure out how I want to apply the appliques.
My brain is having a difficult time picking out fabric. I auditioned a number of color combinations. A few I rejected. A few have possibilities. Most, I have no idea. And so I turn to my quilting friends around the globe for advice.
This quilt will be about suicide because I still haven’t worked out all my feelings. I’ll just have to keep arting until everything inside of me is resolved. The quilt I saw in my head has a solid background, one amorphous fabric and one graphic fabric. I’ve pretty much settled on the amorphous fabric, but I’m having a hard time figuring out the graphic fabric. Would you please look at the photos of fabric combinations and tell me which you like best. Many thanks. PS….I had come color problems with the amorphous fabric. The fabric on the left, I want to keep. That fabric looks a bit different in some of the photos. The one that comes closest to the fabric in real life is Fabric 12.
I have the parts all drawn out. I know what I want this quilt to look like. Now, I’m auditioning fabric. I’m not sure about the fall print. All the other fabrics I auditioned today don’t look right. I wanted one fabric to be muted and the other vibrant but the original muted fabric I thought I would use looked terrible against the teal background.. Maybe if I borrowed from the movies and had sex with my fabric I could find the right fabric.
This is for a quilt about suicide. A year ago, someone I knew committed suicide. Since then, I’ve written my feelings, I’ve quilted my feelings, I’ve lectured about suicide, and I’m still trying to find reasons why. What was happening in this person’s life that was so horrible that death was preferable? I want the universe to make sense. I know from all the biology classes I’ve taken and all the times I’ve stared into a microscope that there’s a phenomenal amount of order in the universe. I can’t find the order in suicide. I know it’s there; I just can’t find it. Maybe suicide is the entropy all things are rushing towards.
Every personality test I’ve ever taken has shown I’m equally introverted and extroverted. That goes along with bipolar disorder. When I’m manic, everything is magnified. I can talk to anyone about anything. I have no social anxiety. When I’m depressed, I isolate. Isolation seems to be my default. Maybe that’s because for a huge chunk of my life, I was depressed. The introverted part of me is having no problem with staying home, not dealing with people, and only venturing out occasionally to go to Starbucks. The artist part of me went to Baylor Canyon to photograph the Mexican poppies. These flowers only bloom if there’s sufficient precipitation in late winter. It’s a spectacular show of brilliant color and the show doesn’t last long.
Covid-19 has made me exceptionally anxious and that much anxiety causes physical pain. Yes, I’ve had the pains checked out. Every doctor, with the exception of my dentist who suggested I may be clenching my jaw, has found nothing physically wrong. I’ve decided to increase the dose of my mood stabilizer. My doctor knows I do this. The extreme anxiety is gone. I’m not in pain. Instead, I have Zombie Brain. This will be helpful in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse.
The increased dose of my mood stabilizer doesn’t seem to be helping with depression. I find I’m being hit with rolling depression. I’m not suicidal, but I am depressed enough that I want to curl up into a ball and cry. When this happens, I need to immediately start making art. Then, the depression goes away.
I have an online store that I built with the help of Wix. Something is wrong with the site because I can’t upload photographs. Without photographs, I can’t upload jewelry that I want to put into my store. It took quite a bit of internet searching to find a way to contact Wix. I got an email back saying they couldn’t help me because they weren’t employees of Wix but here’s the secret phone number. I have to wait until Monday to call.
I learned how to do focus merge in Affinity. I take several shots of a necklace and focus on a different spot for each shot. After downloading the photos, I merge all of the shots into one shot where everything is in focus.
My anxiety is close to out of control. I’ve had anxiety pain for a week. Yes, I’ve had the pain checked out – three times over the years. Three doctors said there’s nothing physically wrong with me. Klonopin isn’t calming the anxiety. I’m scared. I’m tired of being at home. The university admits some of those who tested positive for covid-19 in the county where I live are students. HIPPA mandates the person’s name and sex can’t be given out. But what classes these people were in can, and absolutely should be given out. People shed this virus for up to 14 days before they become symptomatic. They infect others who infect others who infect others and so on until we’re all sick. My age and a health condition put me at high risk. I need to know if I’ve been exposed.
Yes, I washed my hands – soap and water – when I used the restroom at school. Here’s how this works. Hold onto handrail to get downstairs to the restroom. Open restroom door. Open stall door. Close stall door. Do what I came to do. Touch handle to flush toilet. Open stall door. Touch tap to turn on water. Touch soap dispenser. Touch tap again to turn off water. Touch paper towel dispenser to get paper towel to dry my hands. Touch the restroom door to get out of restroom. Hold handrail to get upstairs so I can leave the building.
I made Jim and I masks although I don’t think they will protect us from a virus. They might protect us from something else. Spring in southern New Mexico features intense wind. Pollen, spores, dust, small children left unattended, and desert detritus blow around and eventually enter our noses. We both have allergies that get irritated in the spring and I hope these masks can help.
Bipolar disorder magnifies everything. I’m scared and I have severe anxiety. Klonopin doesn’t help. The insomnia is back. I listen to relaxation music. I meditate. I do yoga. What seems to help the most is art. I’ve been working on fabric design. You can see my latest fabric designs here https://www.spoonflower.com/collections/379032-playing-around-3-27-20-by-deb_thuman My Spoonflower store is here https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman I’ve ordered proofs of another 30 designs. The proofs should arrive in a few days. I’ll put the best of the lot into the store.
I’m learning how to do focus merging. My macro lens is a great lens, but it’s tough to get a large depth of field. Consequently, my jewelry photos have a couple beads in focus and the rest is blurry. I got out the tripod, attached the Canon 90D, laid out jewelry, and took several photos of each piece of jewelry. Focus on the first bead, take the shot. Focus on the next bead, take the shot. Repeat until all of the piece has been shot in focus. I use Affinity for editing and it has a nice focus merging function. I’ll need to take a few more shots of each and I’ll be ready to list them in my store http://www.DebThumanArt.com
I’ve also been working on making boring shots more interesting by using creative editing.
My age puts me at high risk for death by coronavirus. I haven’t gone anywhere since March 14. The university shut down at close of classes on March 13. That gives us an extra week of spring break. Not that we can go anywhere for spring break. I had planned to go to Truth or Consequences for a day and do some shooting. Fear has kept me home. When the university “reopens” on March 30, all classes will be online. Students who left the dorms for spring break will not be allowed back on campus. Commuter students aren’t allowed back, either. Jim has to go in to work every day. We don’t know why. There won’t be another play this semester. There are no sets to build. He’s been cleaning and organizing the scene shop.
At the moment, the New Mexico Department of Health is telling us that there are 65 cases of coronavirus in the state. That number is dangerously misleading. For two weeks, testing was only done in the northern part of the state. Dona Ana County where I live has more than 100,000 residents. Las Cruces, the state’s third largest city, is about 40 miles north of the US/Mexican border. Apparently we don’t count. Testing wasn’t done until March 20, and the testing site ran out of kits in less than two hours. The Department of Health sent another, more generous supply of kits for Saturday. 350 kits. We’re told we can’t be tested unless we’re symptomatic and that results won’t be ready for 7-10 days. Why bother with testing? By the time the results arrive, the person is either dead or better. How many people around me are carriers? Isolate the carriers and stop this virus.
I’ve made Jim and I masks. I’d photograph them, but Jim has them. This is good. Provided he’s actually wearing one. Spring in New Mexico comes with WIND. Lots and lots and lots of WIND. Pollen, spores, dust, desert crap blow around and enter our noses. Both of us are having allergy attacks. I’m thinking that perhaps the mask will keep out pollen, dust and desert crap while I’m outside.
My excursions now are walking around my yard photographing the progress of the claret cup cactus blooms.
Oddly, each clump of claret cup cactus seems to have its own blooming schedule although all the clumps are in full sun.
I’m still working on playing with photos and using them for fabric designs.
I’ve been making jewelry as an antidote to peripheral neuropathy pain.
I still need to learn how to use focus stacking in my Canon 90D. One of the reasons I wanted this camera is to do focus staking in the camera rather than trying to figure out how to do it in editing. The problem is I’m having a neuropathy flare up and I’m not sleeping at night. Last night, I woke up in pain at 2:00. By the time the pain subsided enough that I could go back to bed and get some sleep, it was 4:30. I woke up promptly at noon. Mornings are generally wind free. Afternoons we have WIND. I’d prefer to do photography outside when there’s little or no WIND.
Once I learn how to do focus stacking, I can list the jewelry I’ve been making in my store, Deb Thuman Art http://www.DebThumanArt.com
I’ve been taking photographs, manipulating them, and turning them into fabric designs.
This is the original photo of a leaf on an agave in my back yard. The leaf is dying which is why it has an assortment of colors. It’s not a particularly interesting photo.
I use PhotoscapeX, a free photo editing app for Mac. There’s a kaleidoscope function. After playing around a bit, I found a kaleidoscope pattern I liked.
I went back to the original photo and started playing with light effects.
Next, I used overlays to emphasize colors.
Back to the kaleidoscope and played around until I found a pattern I liked.
It’s International Woman’s Day. We’ve come a long way since Catherine Greene had to have Eli Whitney put his name on the patent for the cotton gin she invented. A long way since Watson & Crick ripped off Linus Pauling’s research, and took credit and the Nobel prize for Rosalynd Franklin’s work with x-ray crystallography which showed DNA is a double helix. A long way since I was told, time after time after time, “We hired a woman once. She didn’t work out so we don’t hire women anymore.” A long way since I had to terrorize the banker who demanded I use Jim’s last name to apply for a credit card. I told him my next stop was the NY State Department of Human Rights to file a formal complaint. He decided to let me have a credit card in my name. A long way since I had to file a formal complaint against an employer because I was paid less than the man who had the same job. Mine was the first law school class at SUNY Buffalo that was 50% women. It only took 101 years to reach that mark. Someday, we’ll have equality.
I made two more pairs of yoga pants. I can buy 10 yard of cotton lycra from Dharma Trading for $10 more than a pair of ready-to-wear yoga pants. I can make 5 pair of yoga pants from 10 yard of fabric. I dyed one pair yellow and the other an intense purple. I failed to mix the purple dye sufficiently and my pants have red spots. It’s a design element. Design: what happens when the dye batch turns out different from what’s expected.
Here in southern New Mexico, it normally rains during July-September. The rest of the year is sunny and dry. We’ve been having rain lately. Today, it’s cold, damp, raining, and we have fog. Perfect photography weather. I had read all the geology homework my brain could hold. Perfect time for photography.
There’s a mountain behind those raindrops. Look carefully and you’ll see a foggy outline.
I played a bit with composition in this shot. I haven’t decided if I like it.
A more successful shot from earlier in the week.
I’m having another peripheral neuropathy flare-up. I spent nearly three hours last night making necklaces before the pain went away. When we have a sunny day again, I’ll learn how to do focus stacking so I can get all of the necklace in focus. With the Canon 90D, I can do focus stacking in the camera.
I’m having fun playing around with my photos and coming up with fabric designs.
I made croissants today. The recipe I have makes about 12 croissants which is way too many for two people. The last time I made croissants, I cut the dough in half after the final turn and froze one half. I thawed and baked that half today. Turns out, croissant dough freezes quite well.
It snowed on Tuesday night, and we had a snow day on Wednesday. Almost a snow day. The university was on a 2-hour delay. We don’t have plows here, and the snow is usually gone by 10:00 AM. My class is from 9:30 to 10:20. No point going in for 20 minutes. The teacher must have agreed with me because she cancelled class. So, we went to Aguirre Springs to do some snow shooting. Aguirre Springs is a multi-use area run by the Bureau of Land Management. And it was closed on Wednesday.
I learned that fog plays havoc with auto focus. Fortunately, I frequently prefer to use manual focus. I tried photographing the strange light, but I wasn’t successful. I got some interesting shots, but all the editing I could think of didn’t make the photo look like what I saw.
I learned how to make collages and combine photos in PhotoScape X. It’s a free app for use on a Mac. The resulting photos make intriguing fabric designs.
For Valentine’s Day 1980, Jim gave me my first SLR – a Canon AT1, the last fully manual camera Canon made. Today, he gave me my second DSLR. I have a Canon T3i that came out in 2011. My Canon 90D, which just came out, will arrive in 2-3 days. The 90D has some features I’m going to love. In camera focus stacking so I can get every bead of every piece of jewelry absolutely in focus. There are 40+ focus points. I like to use manual focus and when a focus point lights up, I know what part of the frame is in focus. It’s handy for macro photography. I bought extra batteries, because one can never have too many batteries. I do a whole lot of outdoor photography and if I don’t have spare batteries, I can only shoot until my battery is dead. I bought an extra memory card because it’s impossible to have too many memory cards. I shoot in RAW and those files are huge.
Deb's Art 