Does it count as “Waves” if there’s only one thing Waving?

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Photo #553: Wave Of GrassLocation Taken: Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland
Time Taken: July 2012

Ah, here’s the amber waves of grain missing in yesterday’s…

No wait, that’s grass again.

Ah well, close enough. This is the flowering part of whatever variant of grass this is. After a bit longer, these will develop into little seeds of their own, or, in other words, grain. Einkorn wheat looks a lot like this, and that’s the strain humans domesticated your everyday bread wheat from.

So yeah, amber waves of grain, sure.

Not that it’s really that close to the color of amber, and it’s not waving that much, and…

  

The Rolling Hills – I mean, Dunes – No, Let’s Go With Hills

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Photo #552: Hidden DesertLocation Taken: Northern Nebraska
Time Taken: November 2012

Ah, the gently rolling hills of the great plains, filled with amber waves of grain! Is there anything more pastoraly idyllic?

Vocab lesson! Pastoral refers to the lifestyle of shepherds leading their flocks from pasture to pasture. It’s also a style of art and literature that glorifies the simple life of the empty pastures and fields, the joy of being the only human around as you wander through somewhat tamed nature.

Well, I suppose it’s not truly pastoral. I don’t see any sheep, after all.

And wait, that’s not grain. It’s just grass. Dead dry grass at that, faded away by winter’s arrival.

And those hills aren’t exactly good for farming. Though, amusingly enough, sheep would probably do just fine on them. Cows certainly do, since that’s what they’re being used for. But these hills are part of the Sandhills of Nebraska, which is essentially a desert with a layer of grass on top.

Seriously, desert. During the Medieval Warm Period around a thousand years ago, these were active sand dunes looking and acting just like the Sahara. The grass took hold when the world cooled down a bit, but well, this is a land existing on the edge between desert and grassland. It doesn’t take much to tip it either way.

Who knows, maybe the climate will shift in the region someday, bringing a little less rain and letting the desert take over again. Those sorts of shifts happen all the time, even without human influence.

I doubt you’d see any cows in the area then. Or sheep, for that matter. Or shepherds.

  

It’s a pity seeing morning fog requires waking up in the, you know, morning…

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Photo #551: Morning FogLocation Taken: Illinois River, Illinois
Time Taken: November 2012

Yeah, so, my brain has decided that powering a whole two neurons to rub together is far too much effort today. I’ve been zoning out and watching a whole lot of really weird anime instead.

So I’m going to put up a pretty picture I can’t say much about, and call it good. This one has marvelous morning fog on the Illinois River, not too far from where it joins the Mississippi.

Morning fog is pretty, isn’t it?

  

No, Firian isn’t a real planet. Not anymore, at least…

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Photo #550: Hailing FirianTime Created: March 2005

It’s my 550th post today. Go me!

So to celebrate, I’m pulling out one of my older pieces, more specifically one of the oldest pieces I still solidly like.

This was made back when I was first wrapping my brain around Photoshop and this whole “digital art” thing. It would be five years until I purchased my tablet, and even working with a mouse was challenging. So I was mainly sticking to basic shapes and following tutorials and the like.

One of those tutorials was how to make planets out of simple texture editing. I was also playing with such advanced stuff as *gasp* embossing!

…Yes, I know that’s a one or two click thing, but still, that was pretty advanced for me at the time. I even made a border around shapes and embossed THAT! I was getting really fancy!

But it’s not the technical skills I still like, but some of the design choices. The font choice, color, and background all add a, shall we say, paleofuturistic flare to the piece. In other words, it evokes the idea of what the future looked like when I was younger. Green text on black backgrounds was high scale future tech once, you know!

I also liked the subtle effects I added to the display screen. I thought back and forth on that lens flare, you know. They’re misused in so many places you know. But here, you’d expect there to be a camera taking this picture before it was put on the display screen! And it’d probably still use lenses, too!

But my absolute favorite aspect you probably can’t really see. I added scan lines to the display screen. Talk about paleofuturism! Scan lines were once a symbol of modern screens. They were barely visible horizontal lines that moved up and down the computer or TV screen, refreshing the image. They were on their way out when I was quite young, but I still think of scan lines when I want to show that it’s a display screen and not, say, a window. Technically, they’re still used today. The process has just become so quick and subtle that the human eye can’t catch it.

Cameras can, though. Try taking a picture of your computer monitor sometime. It helps to put up a pure white background to really see it. You’ll see a perfectly white image on your camera’s preview image, but once it’s taken, things will turn out quite different! It’ll be all wavy multicolored lines and the like! It’s awesome!

  

Quick, what’s purple and white and has a really unusual shape?

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Photo #549: Sprinkler FlowerLocation Taken: Savage, Maryland
Time Taken: May 2010

This is another of those flowers whose name I haven’t a clue about, but whose shape and color I find awesome.

I mean, look at that marvelous shading from white to purple! A rather pretty purple, too, and there’s a fantastically colored center area too!

And then there’s those petals! Look at that center-petal curl! And all the other curling aspects! They kinda outline each petal in a really artistic fashion. I especially like how it forms those circles at the end.

I don’t think I’ve seen that shape anywhere else, really.

Except…. Wait a second….

That’s it! It looks just like some fire sprinkler designs I’ve seen when randomly staring at the ceiling!

What, don’t you stare at the ceiling at times? You should! There’s all sorts of nifty things up there! Like sprinklers that look like flowers!