View allAll Photos Tagged siderssunday
Just a fun frame of forest fantasy, it is true Fairies do wear boots.
a misty morning in the forest, listen really close to hear the songs of the fairies as they sing.
#siderssunday
A backyard in the always hip and tourist-favourite Hackescher Markt area, where all the "it companies" have shops and flagship stores. The house in the background is probably proof of the owner's somewhat "laissez-faire" attitude of "It only needs to look good from the outside". But it does have a certain rough charm, and not all of the backyards we curiously explored (also to flee the crowded streets) had houses that looked so shabby on the back.
If you zoom in, you can see a slice of the Moon in the blue sky and, next to it, a dove sitting on one of the chimneys of the "shabby backyard wall house". There are also tiny façade climbers, red and white striped figures, attached to one of the walls/next to a pipe, which I will post a different view of soon.
HSS, Everyone!
#siderssunday
A happy spring dance that I spontaneously captured today across the street and duly slid in Color and Analog Efex for Sliders Sunday. There's a bedding of snowdrops in one of the front gardens in my street which reliably announces spring's arrival each year. Not that we needed that hint this past week because it has been beautifully warm and sunny, and only the chilly wind was a reminiscence of winter. Alas, temperatures will drop considerably again next week but let's be fair, March has only just begun.
One of my favourite filters in Color Efex is "Brilliance and Warmth" which has the "Perceptual Saturation" slider. The latter often brings out the most unexpected hues in an image. For a natural look, it's best to use it carefully, but here, it brought a cheerful, "bouncy" note to the image, and since it's Sliders Sunday, I went in a little bolder with that particular slider than I usually would.
The colour burst also corresponds well with the weirdly-coloured chromatic aberrations of the 20mm F/1.4 lens that I couldn't completely remove in LR. I don't know, if I got a de-centered or otherwise faulty copy back in 2020; in every other respect, the lens is beautiful, so I decided to see the chromatic aberrations as a special "characteristic" of that lens.
I also added a hint of fine, small grain in LR because LR Raw Denoising (not that the original image had been that noisy) made the image look too clean and therefore, a little "clinical".
Happy Sliders Sunday, Everyone!
#siderssunday
Well, it's not the longest possible ride (or walk) because this is the shorter part of the three-part collonades that surround the so-called Kollonadenhof (Collonade Courtyard) that is a part of Berlin's Museumsinsel building complex, a UNESCO Heritage site, at Berlin's historical center.
The title is inspired by the bike, of course, and if you look closely, you can also see a person disappearing between the columns. This is a well-frequented, photogenic spot (right behind the Berlin Cathedral) in an area replete with photographic subjects, so I had to wait a little until the scene was (almost) clear – except for the person walking out of the scene, of course ;)
The image also lent itself to some sliding. When we arrived there, the blue hour was just setting in and lights in the collonades were on but I didn't like the yellowish hue. Since I was also torn between colour and monochrome, I processed both in Photoshop (in NIK's respective tools Color and Silver Efex), and then layered the colour version with the black and white version which helped reduce the unpleasant yellow tone and brought in some nice pinkish notes. Mere HSL sliding didn't achieve this but just added a "paleness" to the image that I didn't like too much.
HSS, Everyone, and have a nice new week ahead!
The 2016 White House Historical Association Ornament.
My White House Annual Christmas Ornament collection started in 1970 or soon after.
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Table settings have become more of an art installation for me!
Our dining room is an extension of our kitchen
and we just love the coziness of the setup!
Had fun with this abstracted view for "Sliders Sunday" . . .
Supper will be served around 5!
#siderssunday
The afternoon March sun creates interesting shadow patterns right now. This is from a recent walk at the Berliner Regierungsviertel / Berlin's government district when we had the first true week of spring with sunshine and pleasant temperatures. The entire city seemed to be up and about, and many people enjoyed the afternoon sun and the warmth on one of the many benches along the Spree's riverbank.
This scene lent itself to contrasty black and white with selective colour. In LR, I desaturated all colours except red, increased the clarity and structure, and tweaked the Tone Curve's sliders so that the shadows were clear and of a deep black while retaining structure and tones in the other image parts.
I am aware that the crop/composition is somewhat off. The bicycle's shadow had caught my eye, and I zoomed in with the little LX100II, but I also didn't dare to get any closer because I didn't want the guy to notice me. I don't do "open" street photography with people right in the image (except when they are far enough away, or I can photograph them from behind, or the place was super crowded anyway) because I'm uncomfortable with that. So I tried to get the person's and the bike's shadow into the frame but not the guy himself. In the original Raw file, there was lots of "empty" (or rather: wall) space next to the bike's shadow so I had to crop in considerably.
Happy Sliders Sunday, Everyone, and have a nice spring week ahead, dear Flickr friends!
#siderssunday
More city stairs plus an escalator from our photo walk with [https://www.flickr.com/photos/m_lars_k/] in late September. These stairs lead up to Potsdamer Platz from the S-Bahn (urban railway) and railway station of the same name. The buildings visible in the frame are the Forum Tower (left) and the Kollhoff Tower. The ads on the stairs on the left are for the Frans Hals exhibition at the nearby Gemäldegalerie.
Wishing you a nice new autumn/spring week ahead, dear Flickr friends :)
Happy Sliders Sunday, Everyone!
#siderssunday
Blue hour view of the zigzaggy roof of the MIM (Muskinstrumenten-Museum Berlin/Berlin Musical Instrument Museum) and a glimpse of the Kammermusiksaal/Chamber Music Hall's roof at Berlin's Kulturforum. The Kulturforum (Cultural Forum) is a building ensemble in Berlin's Tiergarten district near Potsdamer Platz. Next to the Philharmonie and the aforementioned Kammermusiksaal several museums and the "Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin" (Berlin State Library, affectionately also called "Stabi" by the users) belong to the ensemble.
This view from the outer west of the former Sony Center was a little tricky to catch because the white "wings" on top of the Kammermusiksaal were visible only from one particular position. The image might have benefitted from getting closer to the roof but that would have required a longer telephoto range than the maximum 75 mm my LX100 II offers.
Taken on an epic afternoon/sunset/blue hour/evening photo walk with m_laRs_k and magrit k. :) This was also the "It's going to be dark but we won't bring a tripod" walk because Mathias travelled lightweight with only his X100V (and no tripod). So this was also an opportunity to put the high(er) ISO capabilities of both the little Lumix and my OM1 to the test. I must say, both cameras faired pretty well. Especially the much newer OM1 (as was to be expected) but the little Lumix also did a pretty good job, better than I had expected. And what didn't look so nice was handled well with the modern noise reduction tools found in DXO PhotoLab and Topaz DeNoise. So no more fear of using high ISO values ;)
I also toyed with the idea of removing the three lonely stars that were in the image but since their triangular pattern echoed that of the MIM's roof and they also added something to the otherwise cloudless, "empty" sky, and so also created a better balance in the image (methinks), I decided to let them in and highlighted them with some dodge and burn instead.
HSS, Everyone!
#siderssunday
#urbanpoetry
Rails and (real) clouds (and a little bit more) on the opposite side of the entrance to the DIY superstore Bauhaus Halensee (please see the image in the first comment). The entrance to the Bauhaus store is on a fairly high bridge, and the two-story Bauhaus building was built on the premises of the former goods station Halensee which was closed in 1990. The rails on the right of the pretty old signalman's house ("adorned" with the inevitable graffiti) belong to Berlin's extended S-Bahn (city train) network, here the circle line that was completed as early as 1877, but several steps of extension followed. During the Berlin Wall, the circle line was interrupted and was operated independently in both parts of the city.
The red train on the bridge is a regional train. Regional trains are typically built as double-deckers, so people with lots of or large pieces of luggage or who bring their bicycles are supposed to stay downstairs, and everyone else can go upstairs (when you zoom in on the train, you can see a huge bicycle sticker). Well, that's the theory. Regional trains are often overcrowded, especially on the line to the Baltic Sea. The people who visited Germany for the Euro 2024 and travelled by train can now tell their personal stories of the DB's (Deutsche Bahn) "efficiency" and (un)punctuality ;)
In the background, you can see a few Berlin landmarks: the Berliner Funkturm – the city's first radio tower (opened in 1926) – behind our West Berlin "spaceship", the now closed congress centre ICC. The smaller tower behind the ICC belongs to the RBB TV centre (RBB: Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting).
The image is an HDR made of a three photo bracketing (combined in HDR Efex). I tweaked it further in Color Efex and in LR to make it a true slider (but then, all my images are sliders).
HSS, Everyone!
#siderssunday
As you know, I often photograph sunsets or interesting clouds from my balcony. This strange-looking mid-August cloud simply had to be photographed, don't you agree? It reminded me of a huge winged creature like a Phoenix or a dragon (or even Fawkes from Harry Potter).
But since Berlin is densely (over-)populated by city pigeons, it most likely was a "dragon pigeon", German: Drachentaube, Italian: Colomba dragonata. A dragon pigeon is a mythical, heraldic chimaera. Its head and body are that of a dove (depicted in white), while its legs, wings, and tail are that of a dragon (depicted in red). There also is a real-life pigeon breed called "Dragoon" which is the offspring of the once-extinct Horseman Pouter (which got revived). According to a German dove club website, Dragoons are of "bold appearance due to upright posture of body, neck, face, and beak, with a bright eye colour." Well, that describes this cloud phenomenon very well, doesn't it?
Happy Sliders Sunday, Everyone, and have a nice autumn or spring week ahead!
#siderssunday
Usually, you don't go to a DIY superstore/warehouse to photograph the building's façade but buy DIY stuff (which we did, too, of course). Unless it's the "Bauhaus Halensee". This DIY warehouse in the busy and densely-populated Charlottenburg borough (Halensee district) is located between an urban railway line and the urban motorway, its entrance facing the busy Kurfürstendamm, one of Berlin's most famous and well-known boulevards. Its façade, consisting of textured, structured, 3D-shaped aluminium panels, is very photogenic.
This is the façade on one of the building's long sides in a wide-angle close-up view, as I stood right in front of it. Stupidly, I shot at F2,2 (I had photographed a flower growing on the adjacent green strip, wanted a blurry background, and had forgotten to adjust the aperture back to "architecture-suitable" when taking the first shots of the façade), so the roof area was a little blurry so I sharpened that part in post (Topaz).
Please note that this is not a mirrored image. It is the façade "as is", and the only manipulation here is that I removed a roof overhang on the lower left side because it was distracting.
HSS, Everyone!
#siderssunday
#urbanpoetry
These yellow coneflowers (the high-growing variety) grow in the same spot every summer in a front garden around the corner. The "house" to which the front garden belongs is more of a hut, and the owner or tenant built a recording studio with padded walls in the two tiny rooms. The adjacent house, the one that is the background of this image, is very old and battered, and it's under heritage protection. I assume that the owner, an old gentleman, can't afford the renovation which must follow the strict guidelines required in heritage protection. So one thing is clear: a future owner will have to put a lot of money and work into the renovation of that house.
There's a busy bee on top of the tallest flower. I just so managed to catch it before it flew away in search of more delicious pollen of which there is plenty in the front gardens.
For Sliders Sunday, I gave this image the full (well, not quite, but you get the point) Nik Collection treatment, adding the texture in Analog Efex, and the other processing was done in Color Efex.
HSS, Everyone :)
#siderssunday
More time travel back to the summer boat trip in July 2016 and the m.zuiko 17mm 1.8. The Spree is Berlin's main river, and the lush river bank with these gorgeous weeping willows belongs to the borough of Moabit. It was first inhabited quite late, in 1685, and was one of the first localities to be incorporated into Berlin in 1861, when the city began to expand heavily. During the German division, Moabit was a part of West Berlin and belonged to the British sector. Today, Moabit is part of the inner city area.
Happy Sliders Sunday, Everyone!
HSS 😊😊😍
Peace is liberty in tranquility.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Peace begins with a smile.
Mother Teresa
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix
Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one.
John Lennon
Love is such a powerful force. It’s there for everyone to embrace-that kind of unconditional love for all of humankind. That is the kind of love that impels people to go into the community and try to change conditions for others, to take risks for what they believe in.
Coretta Scott King
Passion makes the world go 'round. Love just makes it a safer place.
Ice-T
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love recognizes no barriers.
Maya Angelou
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
Nicolas Chamfort
I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.
Anne Frank
Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.
Sean O'Casey
There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well.
Nicholas Sparks
I know that there are at least a couple of quotes I have used before, and no doubt will use again, they mean so much to me.
Thank you for your kind visit. Have a beautiful day and spread love and kindness! ❤️❤️❤️
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.
Auguste Rodin
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle
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#siderssunday
Fun "looking up" snap of the Upper West building (which, among office spaces, houses a hotel of the Motel One chain) with the Waldorf Astoria hotel reflected in the many windows. The Upper West is a high-rise building 118.8 meters high with 33 floors.
I did some sliding in Color Efex to make the image "Sliders Sunday ready".
HSS, Everyone, and have a fine first week of June :)
© Copyright Patricia L. Walker for PrayerSpaces 2011 All Rights Reserved.
My images are not to be used, copied, edited, or blogged without my written permission. Thank you.
Taken from the Griffith Observatory area of Los Angeles. Though I like the original (below) it was fairly drab. I thought it would be a good one for Sliders Sunday if I could find a good processing style for it. I think the name says it all... Thanks for your visits, comments and faves, Everyone, and keep 'sliding'!!
P.S. For those who are not familiar with the group "Sliders Sunday" - it's main focus is on the photo that has been processed - or where the processing has been 'pushed'. I enjoy the group for that very reason - it allows me to think about what I have that I could use in this way. For me the group helps me think outside the box of SOOC as well. I would never have thought to try this processing seen here on such an iconic sign otherwise or had the courage to simply post it to my stream without a group in which to place it.