A Flower for . . .

. . . my 50th follower!  Thank you, Cherie!  

 [Linkup to Texture Tuesday]

I processed this vintage rose with Flypaper Textures and Kim Klassen's "Warm Sun" texture.  Thanks for the inspiration.

The Iris Show

[Linkup to Mellow Yellow Monday]

I think I mentioned in another post that I enjoy going to flower shows with my camera.  This weekend was the Monterey Bay Iris Society, the most difficult one to photograph.  

[Linkup to Today's Flowers]

The flowers are gorgeous, but the show takes place in a mall, the lighting is terrible, and the backgrounds are worse.  I took about 50 pictures, but only got these few that I could work with.  

[Linkup to The Creative Exchange]

This is what I love about textures -- they couldn't fix every one, but they made all the difference for these few.

[Linkup to Kim Klassen Cafe]

I might keep working on the top one -- I'm not too happy with the strong difference in the background color.  What do you think?

Except for the last picture, which uses lovely textures from Kim Klassen,  all textures I used are from Flypaper Textures, which I  love.  Their textures come in very rich colors, which I like, and give the effect of wonderful different materials, stone, sky, fabric of various kinds.  More and  more, I use them with the "hard light" blending mode, because I like to actually see the texture -- I guess there's not much subtlety about the ways I use them :)

I have 38 followers now!  Two more, and we'll have the giveaway.  Join me! :)

Fun with Photography

Here's a before-and-after kind of thing.  This is a tiny Tequila Sunrise rose (the plant is no more than 6" high at this point) in my garden.  The blossom is beautiful, but the background is not great, so I've used some textures on it to make the background more harmonious.  Here's the original, SOOC (straight-out-of-the-camera):

 

And here's the one with textures on it:  

I wanted to enhance green in the background, so I used the following Flypaper Textures (and blend modes):  1)  Grosgrain (hard light), 2) Verdegris Mist (soft light), and 3) Florek Ice (color burn). 

I think the result does justice to my little flower . . . 

[Visit The Daily Wyatt to enter your textured pic]

Just for Fun --

 [Thanks to Flypaper Textures]

There are many sites/blogs on the web where you can have fun with photography, and I will feature them from time to time so that you can join in the fun, too (you all do photography these days, don't you? :)  Today I introduce you to Kristy's Life-n-Reflection, a rich site where you can do all kinds of things -- enter photography challenges, learn about different kinds of processing, and get lots of tips on how to make your photographs great.  Today, among other things, you can enter the "Texture Twist."  If you like to use textures, as I do, you can enter the challenge by posting a picture on your blog and leaving a link to it on Kristy's Texture Twist page.  Whether you win or not, challenges are always fun, and they really help you grow as a photographer -- I owe much of my initial development to a couple of great challenge groups on flickr (more about those another day).  So pick up your camera, fire up PS or PSE or GIMP or whatever you use, and have fun.  That's what it's about.


Here's my entry, from a recent trip to Cabo San Lucas -- this beautiful Madonna and angels are in the church in El Triunfo, an old silver mining town between Cabo and La Paz.


And here's a link to Kristy's page:

Just Jump In . . .

Welcome to my journal! I have been an educator for most of my adult life, a teacher of teachers, a writer and teacher of writers, but in the past few years, I have become a learner again and am in the process of reinventing myself. So with some confidence, at this point I can say: I am a photographer and digital artist living on the Central Coast of California. I am inspired by nature in its many forms, by the sea and its environs, by the beautiful agricultural world that encircles us in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

Having long contemplated beginning a blog, I've decided to just jump in. I'll be finding my way for a bit, but I want to start out by linking to some of my favorite places on the web, to people and places that have played an important role in the reinvention of this one woman:

Flypaper Textures: Jill and Paul create some of the most beautiful textures on the web, and they are very generous with their "recipes" for the pictures they create.

Cambridge in Colour: An amazing community of photographers, populated with incredibly helpful, generous and often irreverent people; includes excellent tutorials for doing the various things we do with pictures.

Kim Klassen Cafe: Kim is another very generous web resident who offers free textures to fans and who has created a number of short courses on Photoshop and textures that she offers at a very reasonable cost. Thanks, Kim!

WoodSong Nature Photography: Cindy Mead is a wonderful nature photographer and artist. Her blog is lovely, as is her website. A fierce advocate for nature in all her forms, Cindy captures its beauty in her images.