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

I love taking photographs, but I have come to realize I dislike editing photographs.  Cropping and adjusting levels trying to make them perfect.  I just don't find that part fun.  If the straight out of the camera shot isn't good enough (and they seldom are even for very seasoned photographers) I just don't play with it. 

So in an effort to change this I set myself a one week challenge.  Just one week nothing too ambitious, of picking a photo out of my archives, editing it and posting the before and after shots here on my blog.  My thinking is perhaps if I could see a weeks worth of posts with the edited photos it will inspire me to keep editing my photos. 

So here are today's before and after shots.

I love taking photos of flowers with my macro lens.  I never know what I will end up with as the lens doesn't always want to focus on what I want to focus on.  This one turned out okay in that respect but to me the original is a little dark and dull.  I wanted to soften the effect and lighten the overall effect. 

I started by cropping the photo a little, I did a slight levels adjustment and then added three layers of texture using different blending modes in Photoshop Elements.  I am a lot happier with the after shot however looking at it now I see that I would like to go back in and bring out a bit more of the green from the middle of the flowers, and really that's the goal of this little challenge.  To allow myself to see what I am missing by not editing. 

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%.

The challenge for this weeks Texture Tuesday over at the Kim Klassen Cafe is to do a picture with the theme "it's the little things".  There are so many little things in life to enjoy it was hard to pick one for this challenge but I went with something pretty typical for me...flowers.

I love the lilacs that line our back fence and every spring they are so beautiful.  I thought they would be a good match for Kim's Inspired Magic texture.

For this effect I added one layer of inspired magic and adjusted the blending mode to Screen at 71% opacity, I then added an adjustment layer and using the eraser at 36% opacity and removed some of the texture from the flowers right in the middle of the photo.  I then added a second layer of inspired magic, adjusted the blend mode to soft light at 70% and again added the adjustment layer and removed some of the texture from the middle.  I really like the way it turned out. 

Here is my submission for today's texture Tuesday challenge over at Kim Klassens's Cafe.

The challenge was to use Kim's Dream texture, which I did on the above photo, I then changed the blending mode to Color Burn and adjusted the opacity to 47%.

Here is my choice for this week's Texture Tuesday over at Kim Klassen's cafe.  I didn't actually do a lot to this photo.  I simply added Kim's Golden texture as per this weeks rules and in Elements I changed the blending mode to linear burn and adjusted the opacity to 86%.  It may be almost too strong but lately I have been drawn to adding heavier textures to my photos to make them look dramatic and not really realistic, I like how it almost makes the photo look like a painting. 

This week's challenge over at Kim Klassen's Cafe is to include one of her textures in a photo using a person. Well I still have a number of photos left to edit from my niece's graduation so I thought one of them would be perfect for this challenge. So here is the photo I chose.

This is my entry for this week's edition of Texture Tuesday over at Kim Klassen's Cafe.

Not everyone will like the edit I did on this photo as it is very heavily edited.  I have been playing around with trying to create digital art and I happened to create this effect by accident.  This photo was taken in the conservatory of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. 

This is my pick for todays "Texture Tuesday" link up over at Kim Klassen's blog.  This is one of the photos I recently took in Las Vegas at the conservatory inside the Bellagio hotel.  I love taking flower shots so this area of the hotel was like heaven to me.  

To edit this photo I used Photoshop Elements 9.  First I added a levels adjustment layer.  Then a added a layer using Kim's "Simple Things" texture and set the blending mode to soft light at 78%.  I then added a layer using Kim's "Trust" texture and set the blending mode to screen at 16%.

Below is the original photo for reference.

For this week's Texture Tuesday Kim Klassen challenged us to use any of her textures on a photo with a vintage theme. 

I have a thing for antique jewellery and I have developed a bit of collection.  They are necessarily very valuable pieces but I think they are beautiful.  I love to wear the pieces and think about the people that might have worn them before and what their lives where like and why they received the jewellery in the first place.

So here is my photo for this Tuesday:

To edit this photo I used Photoshop Elements 9.  I first used the spot healing tool to remove dust specs that showed up on the mirrored surface and I cropped the photo slightly.  I then used Kim's texture Paper Stained Grunge and set the blending mode to Multiply to darken up the photo and give the whole thing an aged appearance.

I selected these photos for Texture Tuesday over at Kim Klassen's Cafe.  I wanted to get down to this lovely orchard before the apple blossoms were gone.  They are technically closed but as I was kind of skulking around the edge the owner came up to me.  I thought he might be about to tell me I was trespassing and to take a hike but he didn't, he actually gave me permission to go where ever I wanted and pointed out some interesting potential shots.  He even asked me to send him a few of the photos.

I have some lovely blossom shots which I will post later this week but for texture purposed I thought the tractors and the old junk made better subjects.  I used paper strained grunge and simple things textures for most of these photos with various blending modes.  I was trying to make the photos look a little aged just like the tractors. 

I am again linking up to the Texture Tuesday party over at Kim Klassen's cafe.  Her challenge this week was to use any of her textures with a photo of a coffee or tea cup.  I'm not very good at this type of challenge.  Something in me resists taking pictures that I set up. I have seen so many great photos by so many people but it is a challenge for me, it usually just feels forced, plus I have terrible lighting at home for taking photos. 

I had actually given up trying to get a photo for this challenge but yesterday morning I sat my mug of tea down next to my art journal and was about to start drawing when I thought "hey, this might be my coffee cup photo opportunity".  So what we have below is exactly that.  I think one of the great things about photography is how is trains your eyes to start recognizing beauty in simple every things.

For this photo I used two textures in Photoshop Elements 9, first I used luminous and set the blending mode to soft light at 85%.  Secondly I used paper stained music and set the blending mode to multiply at 60%.  Not my best photo ever but at least I got to play. 

Again I am participating in Kim Klassen's texture Tuesday.  Kim's textures are amazing, they do such wonderful things for your photos.  If you are looking for photo inspiration you should check out her site.  She does some amazing stuff and has some great courses.  

I used the same two textures for each of the photos below and I love how they create different effects.  Using Photoshop Elements I added Paper Stained Grunge set to multiply and Mad Love set to soft light, the only difference was I used varying degrees of opacity for the different photos but the textures and the blending modes were the same for each.  Please let me know what you think of the effects. 

Today over at Kim Klassen's Cafe she is having a Texture Tuesday.  The idea is to post your favorite photo using one of Kim's textures.  I encourage anyone who loves adding texture to their photos to go over and check her site out.  She has some amazing textures.  Here is the before and after photo I have chosen.  I loved the initial photo but I think the texture adds some darkness to it that really appeals to me, it adds almost a tropical feel to the photo.  For this photo I used Kim's simple things texture in two layers with the first layer on linear burn and the second on soft light. 

 

While going through some of my old San Fransisco shots last week for my blog post I came across a bunch of photos of Alcatraz that I took from the tour boat.  Again they weren't very clear shots due to the distance and limitation of my camera but I thought they had potential so I added some texture to the photos to make them a little more interesting.  Do you think it worked?

These are photos from an afternoon drive I took a week ago.  The lighting was perfect, there was a lot of blue sky but the sun was covered by a thin cloud layer making it a lot easier to get good lighting in my photos. 

I have edited all of these photos by adding texture and a couple other effects using Photoshop and Picnik.  I know the first shot has a little too much texture but I kind of like the way it turned out anyway.  I particularly like the last shot, for some reason I am drawn to shots taken on railways, maybe it is the linear lines I'm not sure but for some reason they seem to grab me.  This is actually the railway that services one of the local lumber mills.