Days That Used To Be

Over and over. I took a step back and tried very hard to slow down. I supposed that’s easier to do when I am well rested.

For some reason after going to bed at an early time for me, 12:30am, I awoke very late at 9:40am. Everybody was up. They decided to let me sleep. Even the dogs left me alone.

I must have needed it, but I didn’t have any kind of level of exhaustion. We watched a couple of movies last night and that was it.

Normally, my mornings are pretty fast paced. Since I already was more than half way through when I started, I decided to slow down a little. Well, a lot. I decided to do what I normally don’t do.

Mornings are normally quiet. Not today. I started playing music as soon as I sat down at my desk.

I didn’t answer as many emails as I normally do. I just answered two, from a friend of mine with whom I’ve been having a long running discussion about art, photography and the meaning of luck.

Music and a discussion about art. That’s a great way to discuss the day.

Oh, and I took The New York Times Friday news quiz. The way I score my results is backwards. The fewer questions that I answer correctly the better I feel. That means I didn’t spend too much time worrying about things over which I have no control.

That’s it for now.

Layers. That’s what makes this picture anything at all.

I started with a picture of the sky. That’s the first layer and the background of the image. I had to crop it a bit because there is train on the bottom of the picture. It’s gone now.

I added the top layer which is the lawn with all those little snowball like shaped wildflowers. They are everywhere right now so there’s no way to ignore them.

I started blending and subtracting color. Layering often magnifies the saturation.

Doing that also allowed more background to make its way to the top. You can see the clouds floating through the lawn.

A little sharpening to keep the flowers from looking like white blobs and I had what you are seeing right now.