A New Day, A Different Way The creative and photographic endeavours of a woman trying to add color and beauty to her world.

Here is my submission for this week's Texture Tuesday challenge over at Kim Klassen's Cafe.  The challenge was to use any texture with a photo showing your interpretation of orange.  Yes, I do realize a flower is not an overly creative use of an orange prompt but my love of flowers and flower photos won out.  So here it is...

It doesn't actually look like there is a lot of texture added to this photo but there is.  First I added a layer of Kim's Pumpkin Grunge to the photo and set the blending mode to Hue.  This brought out the color of the flower but gave a nice sepia hue to the rest of the photo, I then removed about half of the texture from the greenery on the left to bring back in some of it's color.  Then to blend it all I added another layer of Pumpkin Grunge and set the blending mode to soft light at about 22%.

Back in July I participated in the Liberate Your Art postcard swap organized by Kat over at The Kat Eye View of the World.  It was a little nerve wracking for me, I wanted to do my best and I was hoping others wouldn't be disappointed by what they received from me.  But overall it was a really great experience and now I have six lovely postcards from people all over the world.

Here are a couple pictures.  

Not everyone who sent a card put their contact information on them but here is a list of the ones that did.

Carolyn Summers, http://www.cbsumm.blogspot.com
Maureen Nicols, http://www.cottage960.com
Kat Sloma, http://www.kateyeview.com/
Patty Waite, http://www.nomadicnotebook-patty.blogspot.com/

Last weekend we were in Vancouver to visit family.  The weather was gorgeous and Vancouver is such a beautiful city in the sun.  We decided to head to Stanley Park for a walk around the sea wall and some flower photography.  Unfortunately my memory card ended up full and I didn't get nearly the photos I wanted but here are a bunch of photos that show just how beautiful this area is.

A couple weekends ago I followed my friend to the barn to take some photos of her horses.  I thought they might make an interesting although challenging subject and that it would be good photography practice for me.  Horses are hard to photograph because they are big and long, at least that is my take on them anyway.  So my idea was not to try too hard to get the whole horse but instead try to get some interesting shots of parts of them.  I took over 180 shots in total, here are a few that I have had time to edit.  I as sure I will do another post with more later.

When we were at the car show recently there were a couple of rat rods.  My husband was bugging me as I was busy snapping away photos of them with their peeling paint and rough finishes because I am ignoring all the shiny pretty cars for these grungy ones.  But the grungy ones appealed to me in a way the shiny cars never would.  Not that I necessarily want to own one but I think they are a lot more interesting to photograph.  So here are a few photos which I processed with Nelly Nero photoshop actions to give them an even more vintage look.

Here are the remaining shots that I want to share from last Saturday's trip to the Summerland Ornamental Gardens.  I think these shots are even better than the first set I published.

My husband and I both like to go to car shows.  He likes to look at the cars and I like to photograph them.  Although I think he wishes that I took more pictures of the entire vehicle.  What I don't like about car shows is all of the people who inevitably end up in the shot so I tend to take pictures of only parts of the vehicles, the parts I think look interesting on their own.  So below are some examples of the shots I typically take at a car show.

I found this little guy inside a flower I was taking a photo of.  I didn't even notice him at first because he was so white.  I have never seen anything like him before and while I am really not a fan of spiders at all I had to get in as close as possible to take a shot.  I don't technically think he is albino but I have never seen a white spider before.

Here are some more shots from the Summerland Ornamental Gardens.  I have so many beautiful shots and I want to show them all so I thought I would do half now and half in a few days so I don't give everyone flower overload.