Category Archives: art

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Creating Art with Musk Thistle: Van Gogh Inspired Filters

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Or rather, the same photo done in more ways than one…

Musk Thistle (Carduus nutans) is an invasive plant native to Europe, Central  Asia, and North Africa. In the photo above we see on the left a flower getting ready to bloom, and behind it a bloom already ggone to seed. The yellow in the background are either Coreopsis or Brown Eyed Susans, or both, out of the depth of field.

 

The second version was created using a “psychedelic” set of filters.

The third attempts to recreate Vincent Van Gogh’s general style – again, using software filters.

The third variation (and fourth version of the same photo), also uses a Van Gogh approach, this time using a filter that attempts to imitate his Starry Night painting.

And finally, a “normal” shot accentuating the height of the stem as seen from below. If these photos have pricked your interest about Carduus nutans, you can click on the preceding link to check out the Wikipedia page for more information.

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You learn something new every day…

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… or die trying. (Don’t know if that’s an actual quote, or if I just made it up.)

Actually, looks like I’m the author that specific quotation.

 Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Knowledge is when you learn something new every day. Wisdom is when you let something go every day.” (at least that’s what Google search told me – kind of a “Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so” moment. Do I believe Google, or do I do further research to locate when and where he wrote or “said” the phrase, or do I I trust my source, and just let it go?

Letting things go, which I have a difficult time doing, is something I’ve had to learn, sometime as a new thing to learn, on a daily basis. One technique learned is to let go of an old book whenever a new book is brought into the house. Or so I claim. This has been difficult for a person who had at least 22 linear feet of of bookshelves, and only brought eight feet with him to Oklahoma.

And so it goes….

The following picture is a manipulated photo of sinus discharge, of which I have experienced more over the last week than I would wish on anyone during their lifetime.

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Shoes: Vincent’s, Bob’s, and Carl’s

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I once had the pleasure (or punishment) of reading from Jacques Derrida’s “A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, ” a collection of essays and lectures translated from the original French  while doing volunteer work with Vocal Eyes, a group at the University of Florida in. Gainesville Florida, which read various textbooks which were not available through Books on Tape, Recordings for the Blind, or other sources, in order to provide assistance to others who may have had impairments or disabilities, such as partial or full blindness, years of promotion through a coach’s pressure on academics instead of insisting they be taught to read at their grade level (for the sake of the young person and not for the sake of the coach’s desire to have a winning team – and if you think this is a run on sentence, you should definitely try reading this book, which can be found on the internet archive (but only available for vision impaired people), or can be found at various used bookstores for under $12.00. 

The purpose of mentioning this somewhat dense and difficult to read book (although I must admit, by the time I had reached his discussion of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting of a pair of shoes, I had gotten into the rhythm of the lecture and had started reading with feeling, emotion, and meaning, which hopefully helped whoever was having to listen to this book as an assignment).

Nope, the reason for this lengthy prologue was to introduce a couple of photos, one from the book Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, and the other, a photo of my own hiking boots, which had reminded me of the essay about. the boots, so I manipulated my photo to imitate (sort of) Van Gogh’s pair of shoes. Whose shoes Vincent had painted, I do not know. I actually had some shoelaces showing in the original picture of my shoes, but they were cut off during the cropping.

Vincent Van Gogh: Pair of Shoes / Bob Kamper: Hiking Boots

Vincent Van Gogh: Pair of Shoes / Bob Kamper: Hiking Boots

Kinda anti-climactic, no?

Oh well, I can always end the post with a song and a question:

Who wrote “Blue Suede Shoes?”

and a reprise:

Carl Perkins with Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Dave Edmunds, and many more…