Bok Tower Gardens and Pinewood Estate

This weekend gave rise to yet another road trip in the name of photography. The destination was Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales Florida. Add this to your list of must sees if you are an appreciator of nature, architecture or music. The gardens encompass a full 50 acres of high ground surrounded on all sides by local, still-active orchards.

Along the paths beautiful native plants meander alongside planted blooms and exotic orchids and bamboo higher than most homes. Look over the outcropping as you climb up the hillside and you'll get an astonishing view of the countryside and the groves below that spans for miles. Situated within the gardens is Pinewood Estate, a 1930s Mediterranean-style hermitage, with all the sights and beauty of a story tale mansion. Designed as the retreat of C. Austin Buck, The estate has all the comforts imaginable for a writer or artist who enjoys his privacy. Follow the tranquil path for a way and you arrive at Window by the Pond. A small wooden enclosure where silence is a virtue. Within this edifice a giant picture window looks out across the still waters of a salt marsh where cardinals, grackles, wading birds and ospreys perch and feed not ten away. Then at the precipice you arrive at the cornerstone of the Gardens, a 205-foot art Gothic Tower with a collection of 60 bells. The structure was commissioned by Edward Bok, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and world peace advocate, and designed by architect Milton B Medary and sculptor Lee Lawrie. Completed on February 1, 1929, bell concerts still commence daily at 1:00 and 3:00PM

Bok Tower Gardens is open 365 days a year from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with last admission at 5 p.m. General admission is $12 for adults and $3 for children and admission to Pinewood Estate is $6 for adults and $5 for children. Visit the Garden's and bring your camera as you can see, photo opportunities abound. Many of the following will soon be added to the gallery and appear on exhibit shortly.

As usual, thanks for reading,
L Polyak, Wildlife Photographer and Artist

(2 C More art go to www.themindscapeartfoundry.com or www.artoflylepolyak.com)

"Givin' you the bird." (No, no. Not that way.)

My classes in Adobe Photoshop continue with lessons in clipping masks and artistic manipulation of photos. It's to my benefit that my homework offers me additional prints to add to my gallery online. The classes I'm taking at Saint Petersburg College are less lectures than real-world exercises that graphic artists would accomplish for design corporations and advertisement industries worldwide. Last Thursday, I edited a restaurant ad, using multiple images, to create a puppy dreaming of chicken curry, and utilized a few vacation photos, with clipping masks, to make a convincing Hawaiian postcard.
Later, I applied these same methods to a few images of mine. On my latest trip to Walter Fuller Park I captured a very nice image of a juvenile ibis, a common seabird in my area that has a thin, curved peak. While the image of the bird was impressive and crisp, the surrounding mud flats, murky waters and lichens combined into palate of nauseating hues. Well, I did manage to apply a clipping mask to Mister Ibis and remove him from his surroundings. and then I located a simple snapshot from Fort Desoto Beach to apply behind him. After a bit of tweaking, and multiple Photoshop layers, Mister Ibis developed a blurred shadow, some selective color fading and Gaussian blur to suggest that he was on that beach, in the sun, all the while.

Thanks for reading!

(2 C More Art go to www.artoflylepolyak.com or www.themindscapeartfoundry.com)