Earth Day 2022

Hello friends!

I’ve been on a bit of a tech detox from everything but my camera, which has been amazing – it helped that the weather was been good and that I didn’t want to be inside! But now I’m back in the real world and since today is Earth Day 2022 I thought I’d share some rather nice beach photography with you.

It’s amazing how a little bright sunlight effects the way we see the world. Gone are the dark bleak days of December here is the lush sunlight of April (until it starts raining of course!)

Anyway, enjoy some beach/earth related photography and a couple of ocean related pages from my sketchbook…

A few foot prints left in the sand as the saying goes “Take only photos, Leave only footprints” But just to prove that plastic will be with us forever…here’s some Lego that I found on the beach apparently it fell off a ship in the 90’s! I like to think that the mermaids were very happy when sea themed lego fell in the sea!

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Wildflowers in the spring

Hello my friends!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately but changing my url threw up a few challenges with my site and I though that it was best to get the issues sorted before posting anything else! But it gave me a chance to tweak a few things that I’d already posted and I’ve been able to redesign my avatar!

Seeing as this is my first post since the start of meteorological spring I thought I’d share some flower photography with you.

Its amazing how autumn is my favourite season until spring and summer arrive in full force and the beautiful colours of regrowth bloom and all the bees come back…even this early in the year there are bees in the garden and quite a lot of butterflies!

So, enjoy some floral photography…

These are two of my favourite plants to grow the little white daisy type flowers are camomile and the other is actually a runner bean flowers – they both attracted so many bees last year! Runner bean flowers in particular are so delicate and watching them slowly creep over the green house frame was amazing.

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Winter Sunset {One frame}

Hello friends!

I hope life is treating you with compassion and respect! Just a short one frame post this week. changing the url threw up a few issues with my site and google has had to re-crawl everything, so I though by not posting few a couple of weeks might be helpful. 

The weather has been so up and down recently, it’s quite depressing really.

So when I found myself with a dry sunny evening I couldn’t help but get my camera out.

The sunset over the river was amazing, especially as the swans were still about. Although Autumn is my favourite season, thankfully spring is almost here and it will be summer soon, so hopefully the weather will be a little dryer and less grey.

The smoothness of the sky is contrasted so nicely against the blackness of the distant trees, I love how the colours change from light to dark, with the little duck in silhouette against the ripples of the water.

So, that’s it for this post! I really enjoy the challenge of picking just one image – but that’s part of the fun…next week I’m hoping to create a little floral photography post. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!

Fungi Patterns

Hello friends!

This week I want to share a little bit of photo editing with you! a while ago I decided to see if I could find anything magical to photograph and went out in the wilderness where I found a little patch of grassland fungi! These beautiful mushrooms were so tiny and their colours seemed so vivid against the green of the grass (especially in December!). And then I thought instead to just editing them, why not manipulate them in Affinity to try and create some interesting patterns.

So, enjoy some wild foraging symmetry…

Symmetry is apparent when both sides of a photo mirrors the each other, createing a feeling of harmony and making the image more pleasing to look at. Now there are some with a great enough talent to do this naturally when using a camera – I find it easier and more fun to put an image into my photo editing and manipulation software (I use Affinity Photo its like Adobe Photoshop.) and then repeat the image the desired amount of times, flipping and rotating were necessary.

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Swans in black and white

Hello my friends,

I hope you had a safe and joyful new year! 

Lots has been happening here – I’ve changed my url to artymissk.com (it feels so cool to be .com) and I thought that I’d kick off my first real post of the year with some photo editing. I really love black and white images – they feel timeless so I thought I’d have a go at editing the swan photos that I took last year.

I really love black and white images – they feel timeless so I thought I’d have a go at editing the swan photos that I took last year.

These pictures are beautiful in colour of course but the elegant tones of black and white really highlight the shape of the birds.

Mute Swans really are magical birds. The local ones although being totally wild, are really rather domesticated and friendly! They get incredibly close – the adults are enormous and will actually take food form your hands.

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Wild Mushrooms

In a bid to hold onto the last of this years sunshine (before winter completely sets in) I decided to see if I could find anything magical to photograph and while out in the wilderness I found a very lovely little patch of grassland fungi! These beautiful mushrooms were tiny and their colours seemed so vivid against the green of the grass. I love fungi there are so many species and colours and they grow in the most unlikely places.

So, enjoy some wild foraging photography…and a few doodles…

This is one of my favorites from the shoot. I love how simple and stock-photography-like it looks. The way the light hits the mushroom and the sunlight through the grass just feels so natural…

Now I know never to eat mushrooms I find, I don’t even like to touch them – unless I’m with someone who genuinely knows what they’re doing! Let’s be honest I just like to photograph and draw them so I thought I’d try and put together a little collection of photographs to show off the beauty of these amazing little fungi.

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Autumn Swans

I truly believe Mute Swans to be the most magical and gentle of wild birds. These beautiful birds are one of the heaviest British birds and can grow as heavy as 14kg and have a wingspan of 2.4 metres (over 7ft), it’s the largest of our British wildfowl species. I love swans they have so many myths and stories and float about all gracefully on the water.

So, enjoy some calming nature photography…

Remember when you were told not to feed the stray cats…well I started feeding the birds by the river – not bread, because that’s bad for them, I feed them Wildthings Swan and Duck Food because it floats. now they assume I have food all the time and will follow me!

I thought I’d try and put together a little collection of things to these amazing birds.

This adult and almost fully grown cygnet very nearly made a heart shape, I got so super excited when I realised that I had taken an okay picture! The adult swans are enormous but will literally stand right next to you and while they are genuinely wild birds, they seem so domesticated.

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Autumn tree

I genuinely think autumn is my favourite season the colours and textures are just so amazing. This beautiful tree is an old friend standing in the autumn sun…aren’t trees just magical, being all leafy and sucking carbon from the atmosphere. This is one of my favourites, although the colours of summer lingered a lot later than normal.

Enjoy some warm and calming autumn colours…

I thought I’d try and put together a little collection of things relating to this old tree.

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Beautiful tree {One frame}

Hello friends, just a quick photography post on this lovely sunny Friday. Isn’t this one of the most beautiful trees? Standing there all glorious under the sun!

The truck is massive and the bark is so rough, its as though the poor thing has been scratched. Its even lost several limbs which I imagine were beautiful but in the way of passersby – it’s so human to think ‘oh that 500 year old tree branch is in the way of our new footpath lets chop it off.’ If I could have any tree in which to build a house it would be this one!

A Garden of Summer Flowers

While its raining outside here’s some wonderfully happy pot marigolds. Aren’t they just so sunny!

Spending more time outside has being something I’ve always enjoyed, but this year I really put the effort in to learn gardening and be more at one with nature. So I thought I’d try a and put a collection of flower photography together. These beautiful pot marigolds are particularly vivid against the green of the grass – although I don’t like the smell to them very much.

Enjoy some warm and happy summer colours…

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