#Poetry "Hidden Within"

If my heart were opened and one would look inside,
There would then be seen all I guard and hide.
Everywhere would be, indelibly inscribed;
Indicative of a presence, neither forced nor bribed.
All the world would envy what a person does possess,
For it's what's desired by most without success.
But although the flame of, is burning very bright,
It must remain obscure and out of others' sight.
For if it were to venture outside the guarded lair,
It could be destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
There are others many, who would gladly undermine
Its sanctity and beauty, its purity so divine.
But its greatest threat lies within the soul it claims,
Pride with fear and doubt, among defying names.
And so, the battle must go on, the protection kept in place,
Until and if the day should come, the receiver doth embrace.

~ Artsieladie, aka Sharon Donnelly ©2012-01-17 07:11:47

#Poetry

Because I refuse to conform and be a "sheeple", I've been cast out. Oh well, I never wanted to be "ordinary" or "normal" or "boring" anyway. "Extra-ordinary", ab(ove)normal is more to my liking. ALL the greats and extraordinaires throughout history were ab(ove)normal. So to be part of a societal clique? Rule me out! Expect me to go along with the program, a program? ROFLMAO! No thanks! To all those who choose to conform, be normal, be ordinary, be a sheeple, be miserable... whatever floats your boat! Settle for the lesser, be what society expects. But me? I'd rather be that which society rejects!

http://www.rebellesociety.com/2012/11/27/normal-or-abnormal-the-choice-is-yours/

I do "photo 'enhancement' editing". This photo was taken by a friend, Rich Patt. It's of his dog, Buddie.



I removed the background and VERY carefully around Buddie and so I would save the "fur" outline as much as possible. Preserving the "fur" outline is very important and I will explain why a bit farther in this writing.
But it's not a process that you can rush through IF you want to preserve the furry outline. It's very time consuming and it requires a lot of patience, which many digital artists aren't all that willing to put into some-
thing like this. They think if something takes them a couple of hours, this is a lot of time. Well, a couple/few hours is nothing compared to the amount of time I've put into a piece of work. I have pieces of work that
have taken me days, weeks, even months to complete.

After erasing the background around Buddie, I then had to "replace" some of the "fur ends" in his outline.

Then I removed the "jpg-ness" in Buddie's image, which is basically smoothing out the pixels, because JPGs are harsh. JPGs also blend adjacent pixels. PNGs preserve an image as is almost if not entirely 100%. This
is another process that takes a considerable amount of time.

Since I didn't want to leave the chain collar on Buddie, I removed it. This process again, took a lot of time. Then I worked with contrast, and other image tools until I was happy with Buddie's appearance. Then I
added framing, texts, his name and in the first version, a plain black background. In the second version, I added a different background photo. It is in the second version especially where it's so important for the
"furry outline" to be preserved. Saving the furry outline makes all the difference between whether Buddie would look like he was part of the background image or look like he was "pasted in". The latter being what
you don't want.

Version #1:


Version #2:


The photo I used for the new background in version #2 is a photo my daughter took at the college campus. Here's the original:


...And what made this all so worthwhile doing was when Rich received it and he was so happy with it. The act of doing something just for the sheer intent to do something special for someone, to make them happy,
is worth EVERYTHING. On the other hand, when you do something special for someone to make them happy and they tell you they didn't appreciate it all that much, well, THIS is heartless and cruel I think because
such shatters your heart into a billion pieces. Only one person has ever been this cruel and he knows who he is. But... there is never anything possibly wrong in giving. If the receiver is ungrateful and hurtful, the
wrong lies with the receiver, NOT the giver. ..And as much as this same person would like to destroy me and my integrity, the truth is in fact, he is destroying his own. I gave to him in many ways and from my heart.
All he has ever done in return is take and steal from me, use and abuse me. So who exactly is he destroying?

#Poetry #Quotes #PoeticQuotes

#Poetry

Elfpack's "start page" (Mainstuff) has gone down in its Google Pagerank. It was at 2 but now it is down to 1. :(