My father was an avid photographer.  I have boxes and boxes of slides and reel upon reel of movies stored in the closet.  When he retired from dentistry, he took photography classes at Butte College, and it is from this period that I have the photographs that I most treasure.  They are black and whites of my children when they were about the age my grandchildren are now.  He took the photos, developed the film, and matted the prints himself.

Most of his photos are landscapes however. He was a big fan of Ansel Adams, of course- I wish I had paid more attention when he talked about him! I recently re-discovered his old Nikon and a couple lenses in a closet.  I don’t think I will be getting into film photography, but it would be nice to get his camera cleaned and operational again.

I created this layout for my Beyond Beyond class. I combined two of the three assignments into one.  I actually did all three- but wasn’t happy with my results, so this is a quick re-do. The challenges were 1) to find an inspirational quote and, using a specified technique, make it look like it was printed on a chalkboard , 2) use matte processing, and 3) create a layout. The chalkboard technique was interesting, but complicated- and when I decided to create a layout using my quote, I decided I needed a different quote.  Instead of going through the process again, I used a chalk font I already had for this layout.  I have experimented with matte processing before and enjoyed using Kim’s technique.  And (confession time), I created this layout in Lightroom (easier for me than Photoshop).

Our challenge this week was to start with a photo taken by Kim- and edit it our own way. I pretty much dreaded this one- not fun for me, because it brings up some nagging little fears of being compared to others.  I accidentally saw a couple edits on Flickr today while I was looking at my phone- oh no- they were really good!  I knew then that I had to start when I got home and not allow myself to look at any more.  Later, I will go back and learn from what others have done.

Here is Kim’s original photo- unedited except for white balance.

I went several different ways with my edit- a vibrant punchy way, a soft dreamy way, and, finally, a black and white with purple added to the shadows, which is my favorite.

I cropped and straightened, adjusted exposure and contrast, added a bit of clarity and grain- and then converted to black and white, adding a slight purple hue to the shadows.  In Photoshop, I did not add a texture, but used one of Kim’s new brush overlays (really like them!) on two layers, multiply and soft light blend modes.

So there you have it!