Tom Donald

this is chloe, a handsome black labrador in the pretty collar that denotes domestication. She is sitting in some nice fluffy grass on a country hillside. As pretty as a picture, she is in this case a pretty picture. Woof! The main photographic element here is compostion. I love my wee fold out screen that means I can put my camera at ground level without having to go there with it.

Oooooohh dogs in Scotland land of windy mud wee mammals and dogpeople walking about for a chat and a biscuit
Healthy you know?

This week’s Just for Skeets and Giggles is out! Have a great weekend. statuskuo.substack.com/p/just-for-s...

Even then I could handle the negatives

A mixed media artwork featuring three hand sculpted Larger Pacific Striped Octopus attached to a vintage tea cup. Larger Pacific Striped Octopus are dark brown with white. Their iconic pattern is instantly recognizable. A white mantle with dark stripes that move across the eyes and down to a dark brown arm web and arms, which are covered in white spots.

🥰 Larger Pacific Striped Octopus 🐙 Hand sculpted from clay and lovingly painted 🎨

#ArtAdventCalendar #ArtYear #Art #ArtGallery #Sculpture #Octopus #MarineLife #CoralReef #ArtSale #BSNM #Invertebrates 🦑🐡

A man wearing a shirt with "opinion haver" written on it smiles as he shows a woman a portrait of him. The portrait is extremely pixelated and distorted, and looks very old and ugly. The man explains, "And so I sold my soul for this NFT, and now it ages instead of me!" The woman, horrified, exclaims "Holy shit, you must be ancient!" The man chuckles and replies "What? No, this is just how NFTs look."

#ArtAdventCalendar Day 5. When I originally drew this, the NFT bubble popped not long after. May reposting it bring the AI bubble the same fate.

a tree lifts barky branches like elegant fingers into blue leaves it's knightswood park baby, and I've shuffled the channels and revolved the colours and so on to make dick the druid's imaginary plantscape: cornflower colours at woodland scale

ok ok ok the leaves aren't blue.
reality's inadequacies.
texture texture, it's photography of a better woody world
#AbstractLenspressionism
#ArtAdventCalendar day6

ah the running dogs ears aflapping after a stick, fun loving pets in the park. Green channel, often the sharpest with my ?Sony? sensor. That's Ellie with the stick she's the fastest lab in the pack and loves to play with Chloe, seen here charging up on the inside

It's kind of you to comment and I'm so glad you're onto the vibe of this picture. If I can extract a pretty thing from the dirty old world and fix it into a frame I'll do it. Click, click.

Colour sweeps over the picture, tiger stripes in blues and gold. We may see that the colours obscure the underlying shape; a burned out car but the abstraction is the meaning of the picture

Choosing a picture for day5 of #ArtAdventCalendar has been strangely difficult... I actually put a picture up earlier, then deleted it because I wanted something a bit more... FLAMBOYANT!

Then I found what I needed in November, it's a burned out car: Out of the strong came forth sweetness right?

sunshine on the blue sea breaks luminous greens that crash to boiling foamy whites

last week in california I saw the pacific ocean do this
#colour #photography

dark room enlarger me 1976

bleep!

A pedestrian crossing, buildings in Mediterranean city style, this could be any sunlit old city. There are broad bands of bright balcony above and in front, and shady places. Peeping in at the edge A TREE. The style is high contrast! black and white and soft pastel colours. the vibe is stillness in the sun. If you start off with a nice composition then you can boil it down to its elements. I so love a threshold layer for this with a darken blend mode and another one for brightness, then histogram adjustment for the band of colours in between. The aim of these adjustments? To make a pretty picture actually. I think this is closer to the direct visual effect of the original scene, than an unedited photograph would be.

So @plantteaching.bsky.social travels the world... sometimes I tag along.
This time Belgium. Ghent! I loved it.

plenty of raw material.. I like to make the world look GOOD in my photography because it is, if you look carefully.

This picture's all about SUNSHINE
for #ArtAdventCalendar day4

HEY YOU. STOP DOOMSCROLLING.

Right click or press and hold this > #ArtAdventCalendar and choose "See #ArtAdventCalendar posts"

It's a portal to a beautiful place that has nothing but art made by real humans.

DO IT.

IC-1805 -The Soul Nebula. HOO process
40 mins from 10th November 2025.
ZS61, ASI 585MC, L-eXtreme filter.

#astronomy #astrophotography

Thank you, I really appreciate that 🤓

the shapes of machinery, the colour of parrots, abstract, visually evasive, fills but is contained in the frame. It's a bit indescribable actually. I used my usual technique for this, spitting images into RGB and HSL channels and remixing, then colour editing for a bit of harmony. With dull metals in shades of brown I find that the saturation channel can often be usefully remixed as the hue channel of a new image. Or sometimes hue makes an interesting lightness. And these components can be mixed in layers using various blend modes... After working on this for twenty years I've almost got a grasp of how to do it.

This year I went to Berlin; didn't like it.

But there were some nice engines in the technischen museum; here are two of them in my picture called "An Artist's Tribute to Professor Branestawm". #RoleModel

This is my #ArtAdventCalendar day 3 pic. I was trying for "cheerful" with this edit.

What government Motability plans mean for disabled people - Bylines Scotland Planned restrictions on the Motability scheme will cost some people their jobs and see others trapped at home

"Many disabled people need adaptations made to cars before they can use them – anything from adjusting the controls to work around limb impairments, to removing the driving seat so that a wheelchair can fit into that space. They need to pay for these themselves."
#Motability
#Disability
#WelfareCuts

I love this so much.

A large (maybe 3 feet wide by 5 feet tall) sign on the end of a row of bookshelves that tells the “address” of books that have sensitive content.

Sometimes I think it’s going to be the librarians who will save us all.

Interactive AIDS Quilt The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 48,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an interactive experience People around the world can experie...

“The National AIDS Memorial, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, presents all 50,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an interactive experience so people around the world can experience the beauty of the Quilt and witness the love and stories stitched into each panel.”

Abstract landscape painting: Blue green mothership storm with heavy rain at bottom with a green field in foreground.

Let's get #ArtAdventCalendar rolling!

It's December 1 somewhere right now.

Saskatchewan Supercell 32x40in 81x102cm
Oil on Canvas
2019

#Art #Painting

These boat strikes will be nothing compared to the war crimes they will commit after they initiate regime change to seize Venezuelan oil companies.

ancient buildings and ironwork in an abstract colourful style. We are looking through a gateway towards pretty houses at zany angles man! The image has more in common with early 20th century modernist art than photography as generally perpetrated in the 21st century. It is harmonious in intent and looks groovy when I printed it.

Old Lisbon in Portugal was the highlight of my photographic year, what a city! I love to come home knowing I have a thousand exposures of interesting scenes to work on.. here's two of them on day two of #ArtAdventCalendar #photography

I was up a hill looking over an undulating landscape of wooded valleys and hills, a suburban scene with the Orinda Intermediate School in a series of sheds in the middle ground. There are many single story ranch style houses in this scene, but most of them are hidden by the pretty trees in their gardens. This very american suburb was built in the nineteen sixties and onwards and most of the trees are a lot younger

there we are! Three adjustment layers, firstly a brightness/contrast layer which adjusted the contrast up and the brightness way down to make the minimal structures in the brightest part of the image available, then a general increase of contrast, then another gradient fill on an strongly plus blue plus a bit of green white balance layer

before, taken with my lovely Panasonic Lumix camera. I'd generally underexpose this kind of scene to get some content in the brightest areas, expecting to adjust the finished picture in my edit

we're just back from california... here's a quick edit of a misty scene. I'm afraid this kind of hobbit-land prettification editing is just the kind of thing that AI does so convincingly, but in this case it was me honest! I've put some notes in the ALT text about how I did it #photography #ca #usa

Two photos mixed together. This one is a microscope and a room in one of Leiden's beautiful museums. The picture is all about colour, and shapes that don't necessarily make much visual sense... But to me, it's a window into a better and more harmonious world, where colour is king, and reality is something we can't quite grasp.

It's time for #ArtAdventCalendar to start up again!
Here's my first picture, imagine opening a little door...
This on is one of my mixes, two photos from the Science Museum in Leiden. I mix using layers with a "difference" blend mode. So both pictures contribute equally, then I edit for colour.

BBC runnong a 'Disclosure programme in Scotland about migrant hotels.

Isn’t it funny, how we haven’t had a Disclosure programme, about radioactive leaks in the Clyde. That surely affects more folk, than a few BritNat ignorant pricks, shouting at hotels.

Creepy.

Blue sky above a shorn hillside with Tom in a t shirt enjoying the lovely weather.

Mary and Tom smiling in front of a vibrant red-leaved tree.

Mary, Tom, Pat, and Pete standing before a dry cliffside where water sometimes flows.

Mary and Tom smiling in front of a damp rock face

We had a wonderful few days visiting my parents in California where it is still autumn and beautiful, but apparently the dog is missing us ❣️ so we are heading home tomorrow.
My mum's macular degeneration is getting serious, so our visits are particularly special to her 🥺.

How to be a good friend to an Autistic person | Psyche Guides Autistic and non-autistic people see the social world differently. But openness and empathy can foster a valuable bond

Excellent article, perfect reading to prepare for family and social gatherings.
psyche.co/guides/how-t...

Plants need champions! People who can tell engaging stories about plants. People who understand plants and explain how plants function People who can explain that plants are critical for human survival. Books shown from David Attenborough, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Jonathan Drori, Richard Powers, Danny Chamovitz, Ferris Jabr, Malcolm Wilkins, Charlotte McConaghy, Andy Weir, Beronda Montgomery, and Amanda Rasmussen.

It's gift-giving season!
Why not give the gift of plant knowledge?
Here are some excellent, accessible books to engage & excite.
Fantastic offerings from @berondam.bsky.social (& a new one out in Jan)
@jondrori.co.uk (& a new kids book)
@razda5.bsky.social 💚
@ferrisjabr.bsky.social 👍
Novels too!

MOURN THE DEAD, FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE THIS IS WHY WE'RE SO FUCKING ANGRY

Today is Trans Day Of Remembrance

#TransLivesMatter #TDoR #TDoR2025 #TransDayOfRemembrance #TransAwarenessWeek #SayTheirNames

*** Trigger warning for the following thread: Violence against trans people (especially TWOC) * * *