CCY: Diagonal Lines

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Etol Bagam

My first picture for this week’s challenge is one I wasn’t really the one who took, since I’m actually the one pictured on it. It was still with my camera, though… The picture showed a bit more of the structure, but I like how my body lines up with the pole, so I cropped it to emphasize on this alignment.

diagonal1

My second and third pictures were taken from the airplane and shows the wing of the plane growing diagonally out of it. My focus on the original picture were the mountains, so in my first edit, I cropped enough to have the wing cutting though the entire picture, but still wanted to showcase the 2 mountains.

diagonal2

But then I guess the mountain took a bit of the diagonal focus, so I cropped even more, but must admit didn’t like that one either because it then became a picture of nothing.

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In my next picture, I like the diagonal roof and how is aligns with the sunset-y clouds.

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My next 2 pictures are from building structures with diagonal walls. The first being a straw wickiup, in California, and the other, the angled conical hot shop of the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA.

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Last but not least, my last picture comes from the upholstery of the shuttle I this week today to commute between buildings for meetings…

diagonal7

This post was written in response to Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge: Week #8 Diagonal Lines.

Versing

Posted on November 28, 2015 by Etol Bagam

This week, I’m trying to participate for the first time on the Weekly Writing Prompt, hosted by The Secret Keeper.

In this prompt we are supposed to write in any form (fiction or poetry) using the 5 provided words.

This week’s words are:

I typically write fiction in prose, as poetry is not in my comfort zone. But for this week’s words, and the story they inspired on me, I thought writing is verses would be more appropriate. So I tried…

I wrote a story that’s being told in 5 haikus. Each haiku containing one of the prompt words.

They are haikus in metrics, not so much in essence, but I guess it worked ok-ish.

Let me know what you think.

Versing

She had a cool gift.
Did something no one else could.
The gift of speaking!

Not normal speaking.
She always spoke in verse,
and never in prose.

For that same reason,
they offered her a nice job
that would make her rich.

Her work was easy.
All she had to was to speak,
entertaining guests.

With that she would earn
a coin that would allow to
buy her love a gift.

5words

My drops of tears I’ll turn to sparks of fire

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Etol Bagam

He hated Shakespeare! No one ever knew why, but he did, indeed.

Maybe it was the fact that he had to study all of those plays and sonnets at such a tender age. With the thou’s and thy’s and all those fancy old words that no one speaks anymore.

Then, when he went to drama school, that was all they wanted to play. He played Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet…

He couldn’t stand it anymore!

But after school, finding a real work was really hard. He started doing small jobs here and there while waiting for the big opportunity to act on a real play.

The invitation has finally come!

But, whadaheck… He was being called to play Queen Katherine in Henry VIII play, at the Globe.

Really? Shakespeare? And a woman character???!!!

He really needed the money, so he took the job, with tears in his eyes.

Opening night, house is full.

Then, when they got to Act II, Scene 4, he proceeded with the famous quote:

“My drops of tears I’ll turn to sparks of fire.”

And so he seems to have done. As soon as he said the verse, the theater burst into flames.

globetheater

This post was written in response to the Sunday Photo Fiction, with the photo prompt that pictures the Globe Theater in London.

According to Wikipedia, “The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare’s playing company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, on land owned by Thomas Brend and inherited by his son, Nicholas Brend and grandson Sir Matthew Brend, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed in 1642.

A modern reconstruction of the Globe, named “Shakespeare’s Globe”, opened in 1997 approximately 750 feet (230 m) from the site of the original theatre.”

And that’s the one portrayed here and where my story takes place…

Also, at Shakespeare’s time, all actors in a play were males, even the ones representing the female characters.

To check other stories inspired by the same picture, click the blue frog below:

One Four Challenge – November Week 4

Posted on November 26, 2015 by Etol Bagam

This is the fourth and last week of the One Four Challenge for November.

After last week’s post Nic suggested that I’d try GIMP. I installed it and had a quick look, but I have a confession to make. I did all my 4 edits at once at the beginning of the month and had my week 4 ready and waiting to be published already. Another confession, I wish I had more time to spend on blogging, but home, family and a full time job makes me lazy to learn new apps that have a steepish learning curve. I still want to learn GIMP, but it may take a while…

So back to my quick edits on simple apps to wrap-up the month….

This week I decided to try something different and transform my photo onto a sort of Thomas Kinkade-style ‘painting’.

It was tricky to find a way to do that using my 2 little non-fancy apps and my try and error (instead of educated attempts) to change settings around.

In the end I got what I wanted using a mix of my 2 worlds.

First, I used Photo Editor on my phone to get the painting look and feel. My first edit was to use the Oil Paint effect. Then I played around with some of the color settings, such as brightness, contrast, temperature, exposure, saturation, tint and hue. Unfortunately I didn’t take notes of my changes on these categories. But the painting style of the oil painting effect did not exactly matched Kinkade’s style, so on top of it I applied a diffuse effect by 3% only. Still not really Kinkade-ish, leaning more towards pointillism, but I liked it anyways.

The problem of editing pictures on a tiny phone is that sometimes, once I upload it to the computer, the colors (especially brightness) look a bit different. And that’s exactly what happened here.

So, once in the PC, I opened it in Fotor and decrease the brightness by 10 points and used a HK Film effect on 28% strength.

That’s how it turned out:

And now, the gallery with all my edits for this month.

Original

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

I’d love to know which one you liked the best, so feel free to vote on your favorite below:

Wordless Wednesday

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Etol Bagam

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Giggles

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Etol Bagam

They were hiking up the mountain, when a rock slide blocked the trail just behind them.

They heard the noise, run back to check.

“On no! How are we going to go back now? Do you think we could climb over?”

“I guess it would be too dangerous. The rocks may not be settled.”

“What do we do then?”

None of them wanted that, as they did not pack for overnight camping, but there was no other way than spending the night in the woods.

They wore all their jackets, created a bed of leaves and snuggled together.

As they were about to fall asleep, he hears a hustle around them, and feels something passing over their bodies. He raises startled. What was it?

Then he hears giggles.

Giggles??? Are there other people here?

“Who’s there?”

No answer.

He remembers the night goggles laying at the back of his backpack and, when he puts them on, he sees 4 playful weird creatures peeking from inside a tree trunk.

He freezes… it’s gonna be a long night….

aliens

This post was written in response to the Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers, with photo prompt by myself, and contains 175 words.

The funny thing about these challenges is that I always have the hardest times with my own pictures. I provided the picture because I thought it could inspire nice stories. In this case I actually created the picture by layering 2 pictures into one. Still…

One of the difficulties I have is to keep it short. I always tend to write a lot on the first draft for my own pictures.

Then, I’m never really satisfied, thinking other people was able to use my picture much better than myself.

Oh well. I guess it may be just a case of being harder on myself for feeling ‘responsible’ for the prompt…

(PS. the inspiration to create the picture with my monster buddies was a story written by E. A. Wicklung for some other prompt. I guess it was this one. So thanks E. A.! ;o)

To see other stories inspired by the same prompt, click the blur frog below:

The lion and me

Posted on November 24, 2015 by Etol Bagam

In this area of the land live a lion and me. I’m slightly smarter than him, he’s MUCH stronger than me.

It’s an open land and we get the visit from several other smaller or not very smart animals. We feed on them, sharing the load. They satisfy us so I don’t need to bother the lion, and he doesn’t need to bother me.

We leave in peace and respect each other on our strengths and weaknesses.

Occasionally one of our visitors gives us trouble and we wonder what if we don’t let them in anymore. But shall we close the borders, I’ll be his prey.

lionandme

This post was written in response to the 100 Word Challenge for Grown-Ups, with the prompt “… but shall we close the borders…“, and contains 106 words (100 not counting the prompt).
The picture was taken from pixabay.com, uploaded there by Sponchia.

Travel Theme: Camaraderie

Posted on November 23, 2015 by Etol Bagam

Big sister helping little sister with reading.

camaraderie

Currently that does not happen like this anymore, as little sister is much more interested in reading, which made her ‘pass’ big sister on reading skills…

This post was written in response to Travel Theme: Camaraderie

Weekly Photo Challenge: Trio

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Etol Bagam

3 mushrooms

trio_mushrooms

This post was written in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Trio

Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge – Open Topic: Light

Posted on November 21, 2015 by Etol Bagam

Natural light:

light1b

Artificial light:

light2

This post was written in response to Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge: Open Topic, for which I chose the topic: Light.

Restriction

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Etol Bagam

She was a single mother of 4. Girl#1 and Boy#1 were good, healthy kids. Girl#2 was not healthy. Boy#2 was not good.

He wasn’t bad either. But he had the bad habit of always getting in trouble.

At 17 he was dating a crazy girl. She was trouble! Of the bad kind. They had a love and hate relationship, with episodes of fighting then making up.

One night, after making up, a fight starts. She sends him away throwing her shoes on him.

9 months later, baby was born. But with a restriction order between them, grandma never got to play with grandson…

restriction

This post was written in response to Friday Fictioneers, with photo prompt by C. E. Ayr, and contains exactly 100 words.

It’s based on a true story.

To see other stories inspired by the same prompt, click the blue frog below.

One Four Challenge – November Week 3

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Etol Bagam

This is the third week of the One Four Challenge for November.

For this week’s edit, I decided to make it look as if the picture was taken at twilight. I must confess I did not do great here, because the dark shadows may give me away, but at least I got more evening colors (or lack thereof).

To get the feeling I wanted this week, I used the Fotor app on my PC and used the cyanotype effect with 50% strength, then I changed brightness to -42, contrast to 20, temperature to -16, tint to -28 and blur/sharpen to -25

That’s how it turned out:

To see my previous edit, check my week 1 and week 2 posts.

Snow Prince

Posted on November 18, 2015 by Etol Bagam

This post was written in response to the Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers, with photo prompt by Sonya, from Only 100 Words.

It was created to be read with Cookie Swirl C’s (hehehehehe) voice. Although for Cookie Swirl C my Elsa would sound more like Anna, and the other way around, but oh well….

(Yes, that’s the favorite ‘TV’ program of my kids. Yes, I’m pretty influenciable. Yes, Elsa and Anna from Frozen, indeed, just as peahens. ;o)

Peahen Elsa: “Oh My Gosh, Oh My Gosh! Is that Jack Frost????”

Peahen Anna: “Jack Frost? Where?”

Elsa: “That one over there, all white and snowy. Owwwwnnnn, so cuuute! I’m gonna talk to him!”

Anna: “Elsa, wait…”

Elsa: “Er, Hi. I was looking at you from over there. Oh my gosh! I’m so nervous! I mean… Are you Jack Frost? The winter spirit? Snow king? Oh my gosh!”

White peacock: “Who, me? No, I’m…”

Elsa: “O c’mon, don’t be shy, you can talk to me, I’m your biggest fan! No need to hide.”

White peacock: “I’m not hiding, I’m really not Jack Frost. I don’t even know who this Jack Frost is.”

Elsa: “How come you’re not. And how come you don’t know??? You’re so snowy… So cute! Oh my gosh!”

White peacock: “Er… lady, excuse me, I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m not snowy. We’re in Africa, remember? There is no snow here. I’m just leucistic, okay? Now, would you excuse me, please? I have to go.”

Elsa: “Wait… Jack…”

jackfrost

To see other stories inspired by the same picture, click the blue frog below:

Travel Theme: Faces

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Etol Bagam

Tuesday afternoon, I’m home sick with a bad cold. Took the morning to sleep and was planning to blog on the afternoon. But we have stormy weather today and lights are down. The no breakers are beeping like crazy, which does not help.

Yet, I committed to post everyday this month, so doing what I can with the resources I have (pretty much, my phone).

Those are some of the faces I see at the house when I’m the only living creature on it.

The watermark had to have a different font because my android phone does not have Gabriola font. Used Roboto Thin instead.

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Fotor_144779603035523

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This post was written in response to Travel Theme: Faces

Mrs. Bayle

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Etol Bagam

It was a small apartment building. 3 floors, 2 apartments on each.

Mrs. Bayle has been there since forever, the oldest tenant in the building.

She was the one who kept the flowers hanging at the porch. The building was not a masterpiece of architecture, all white, old, non-attractive. She kept the flowers to beautify it a bit. Also so that the lion by the door would feel more at home, with some nature around it.

Most of the other tenants liked it and appreciated Mrs. Bayle for that. Mr. Moody didn’t, claiming it took too much space from the entrance. But she never failed to keep the flowers no matter what he would say.

Mrs. Bayle was old and her body started to fail her. One morning, she didn’t wake up, and left our world to beautify her afterlife.

Without her, the flowers slowly wilted and died. Mr. Moody made sure to get rid of it as soon as he noticed they were dead.

It was a sunny day and some people say it was bird droppings, or water that was sprinkled by a passing car cleaning the windshield. But it was actually tears in the lions face. He was the one who missed Mrs. Bayle the most.

Lion

This post was written in response to the Sunday Photo Fiction of this week, and contains 207 words.

To see other stories inspired by the same prompt, click the blue frog below.

One Four Challenge – November Week 2

Posted on November 12, 2015 by Etol Bagam

This is the second week of the One Four Challenge for November.

Then, for this week’s edit, I decided to make it look more like fall (or maybe end of a hot summer), with more earthy colors.

To accomplish that, I tried several different things on both Fotor on the PC and Photo Editor on my phone.
But it was really hard to change a very green picture to earthy tones, without making the house and pavement change color drastically too…

So in the end I used the Photo Editor app on my phone and changed: brightness to 9, exposure to 28, temperature to 5692, tint to -6 and tolerance to 135, and picked a hue more towards an orangy color.

That’s how it turned out:

To see my previous edit, check week 1 post here.

Catching fire

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Etol Bagam

“Mommy, mommy, look! The tree and bushes are catching fire! Look, they’re all yellow and red and orange.”

“Oh, sweetie-pie, that’s not fire, it’s the leaves changing color for autumn.”

“Changing color?”

“Well, every year we have 4 seasons. Remember Winter? We went skiing and built a snowmen?”

“Yeah, it was cold!”

“In Winter there were barely any leaves. Then Spring brought them back. With Summer, the heat of the sun made them gold. Now, they’ll crumble and fall again for Winter.”

“So they ARE burning?”

“Yeah… when you put it like that, they are indeed burning! Just not catching fire.”

This post was written in response to 2 challenges, that had similar picture prompts this week, and contains 100 words.

100WCGU, with the photo prompt below:

And Sunday Photo Fiction, with the picture:

To see other stories inspired by this picture, click the blue frog below:

The picture that has actually inspired me for this text was the one for 100WCGU.
The initial idea I had for the Sunday Photo Fiction was different, so I may choose to write another piece for those, if I find the time this week.