Morning Coffee and a Mimosa to Start the Day

Continuing the Kitchen Macro Challenge at Fine Art America

My participation in the “7 Day Kitchen Macro Images” challenge continues with my own “breakfast” theme interpretation of that challenge. Of course we start breakfast with a beverage, either hot or cold. My first images were of a pot of tea being brewed for my wife. Next up is coffee and a breakfast cocktail.

The coffee at our home is normally from a K-Cup of a good blend and produced by a Keurig-style coffee maker. I do like one full cup to start the day – just the way it comes out of the bean – no sugar or cream(er).

On occasion we will also enjoy a breakfast cocktail, a Mimosa to be more exact. That gives us our dose of Vitamin C in the Orange Juice. Grape juice, too, right? LOL

The Champagne and OJ should be from the refrigerator. The glass should also be chilled. Here is a narrow Champagne-flute-style glass with a single ice cube chilling the rim. The image has been “adjusted” to bring out the shapes and edges with the dark background. It might even be considered to be an abstract. Regardless, the end result, the Mimosa, was just fine. Maybe even perfect.

The following links will let you browse larger images and see the choices of wall art and home décor products on which they are available.

Link: Brewing Coffee With Expressionism

Link: Ice Cube in a Mimosa Glass

January 8, 2022January 20, 2022

Brewing a Pot of Tea as Part of a Challenge at FAA

A pot of hot tea is a great way to begin the day – even with camera in hand.

Being a fairly active member of the art Discussions (forum) at Fine Art America I have been involved in several “Art Challenges” over the last year. These involve posting one new piece of art based on a theme, one piece per day for a set number of days. The Forum Moderator, Abbie (a talented painter and photographer), creates these challenges along with the help of another uniquely talented artist, Donna. These challenges help us, as artist-participants, focus for a period of time on a particular theme, which encourages new creativity. We all get to see how colleagues interpret the theme, creating a win-win activity for all involved.

The current challenge is “7 Day Kitchen Macro Images” and has about 30 guinea pigs, er – participants, creating close-up images of things in/around a kitchen. I started off with my morning kitchen routine of making a pot of tea for my wife and a cup of coffee for me. My only change in routine was to have my camera in hand affixed with a macro (close-up) lens. My first image was of the fire used to heat the teapot full of water.

Blue Flams heating the Tea Pot — An Expressionism view of blue gas flames heating a pot of water to make tea.

Yesterday, day #1 of the Challenge, I heated the water for a pot of tea – so today (day #2) I added in the tea bag. The teabag was easier to photograph than the gas flame because I didn’t have to put the camera right on the stove near the burners.

Tea Bag as a Charcoal Sketch — A traditional tea bag hanging by its string and presented as a simulated charcoal sketch.

I was able to hang the tea bag by its string and photograph it with a shallow depth of field to blur out the background, which is actually a brown wicker-back chair near a window. A tea bag, by itself, is rather plain so I edited this into a simulated charcoal sketch presentation.

Link: Blue Flames Heating Up the Teapot Expressionism

Link: Tea Bag Rendered in Charcoal

Tomorrow I will need to photograph a cup of coffee as it is being brewed. 🙂

Visit my FAA gallery at Bill Swartwout Photography.

July 30, 2015September 14, 2020

Fabricated Unlikelihood Of A Sunflower In Love

Heart-Shaped Sunflower Manipulation

The other day I went out shortly after sunrise to catch two small fields of sunflowers with my camera. I did mange a couple of nice shots and one “interesting” image that I grabbed from an oblique angle. It might have been fine by itself but I imagined a reflected image creating something more. So I fired up Photoshop Elements and flipped the right side over the left and voila – had a heart-shaped sunflower. Had it been red instead of yellow I might have had the makings of a Valentine’s Card. While I don’t mind taking a different view I don’t want to mess with Mother Nature too much (like making a yellow flower into a red flower). 🙂

While it is somewhat heart-shaped it also has some other possibilities. I posted the image over at Fine Art America and asked for suggestions. Wow! I was both surprised and impressed with the variety of images seen within this sunflower. Some were rather remarkable and insightful – and gave me a new perspective on what I had created.

To read all about it (and to see a larger version of this image in more detail) click on over to my online gallery at US Pictures dot com. Either click the photo above or click: http://www.BillSwartwoutPhotography.com.

BTW, the title for this post was gleaned from a suggestion by RG Kernodle Art.

BTW #2 – Camera used was an Olympus E-M10 (mft) with a 40-150mm m.Zuiko Lens.

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