Here’s a view of flowers blooming on the balcony of our hotel room at Lake Gregory, where we stopped on the way to Arizona last week. This photo is textured with two layers of Kim Klassen’s kk_1301, one at soft light blend mode and one at color burn.
Check out some more photos using textures by Kim Klassen by visiting her site at kimklassencafe.com
We were challenged in this lesson to go outside and shoot some photos with blurry backgrounds. This type of photo is what got me to purchase a DSLR in the first place. I had tried and tried to do this with my little Canon Powershot- but to no avail. After I had my DSLR a couple months, I bought a 35mm 1.8 lens, and then EVERYTHING had a blurry background! It is still my favorite way to shoot.
Here are a couple shots from my backyard yesterday afternoon. The lavender photo has Kim Klassen’s sybil texture added.
for Texture Tuesday
edited with 1 layer kk_1301 and 2 layers kk_sybil
Kim Klassen started a new link-up a while ago called Friday Finds. I hadn’t planned to participate, but I found fresh lavender last night at Trader Joe’s- does it count if you find it on Thursday?
I used a matte edit- not my usual style, but I think I like it here.
Here’s another photo of the gerbera daisies, taken at the same time as Saturday’s shot- and with a different edit (desaturated, split toned with purple shadows).
We were challenged to edit a photo three different ways- experimenting with the tone curve, split toning, presets, whatever. I had just bought some gerbera daisies last night, so the choice of the subject was easy.
The first photo is my basic clean edit shot with a little cloning/healing in Lightroom 5 (love the updated tool!). You can see my walls are yellow.
The second is desaturated quite a bit- I really like the tones in this.
The third I took into Topaz Simplify- to give it a bit of a painted look.
And the last I edited with Kim’s kk_anne and kk_1301 textures.
I did several other versions as well, but these are probably my favorites.
Somebody stop me!
Kim presented a mixed bag of Lightroom and Photoshop tips, as well as some iPhoneography tricks.
Here is my grandmother’s sewing basket (decluttered!) and with some of her mother’s buttons in the foreground- and her darning egg. I desaturated the image and then added the kk_desert texture, which did a great job of masking the scratches on my old dining room table by adding new ones from the texture.
I don’t usually do much with my iPhone photos. I use the camera when I don’t have my regular camera, and I do edit them in Snapseed and PicTapGo- but then they tend to stay on my phone or go straight to Facebook. I decided that I would use an iPhone image for this blog post, so took a shot of flowers by my doctor’s office. I loved the tip Kim gave us about adding a black and white filter in PicTapGo and then fading the adjustment to just slightly desaturate the image. However, I went with a punchier edit, because it was the bright colors that attracted me to the flowers in the first place. I cropped in Snapseed and played with the Bright adjustment in the Drama filter- but ended up just leaving that alone. In PicTapGo, I warmed up the image a bit, added some “crispity-ness”, and then went full strength with color burn. And here we are!
O M G- this is so much fun!
I remember trying this when I was first learning Photoshop- and then totally forgot about it until I started seeing some orbs on Flickr recently. The link for directions was thankfully provided- I have no idea where I found them originally. Bill Barber has them on his blog http://www.billbarberphoto.com/tutorials/how-to-make-an-orb/– thank you, Bill. This time I made the really simple process into a Photoshop action so I can do it again. I warn you, it is very addictive!
Bill suggests flowers with lots of stems and leaves as good subjects- and I found the same to be true. The first photo above is a macro of a rose from my Mother’s Day bouquet. The second is the bouquet itself with some leaves and stems and some negative space. I like it better. I have no idea how Photoshop chooses the color for the background to the orb!
BTW, I discovered that the filter will not work unless your image is 8-bit. My latest Lightroom external editor settings were set to open images in 16- bit in Photoshop. I have no understanding of what any of this means. I read or watch tutorials and reset my Lightroom/Photoshop settings constantly. So right now- it’s 8-bit again- whatever. . .
We are having a bit of touch-ups and repair done on our house in preparation for selling. One item that needed painting was the wrought iron railing on the porch and steps leading to the front door. After the railing was painted, the front porch plants (and front porch pig. . .) were returned in a new arrangement by the painter. Here’s a quick snap and edit done after dinner last night. I textured the photo with Kim Klassen’s breakfree texture, and it will be this week’s nod to Texture Tuesday (but on Wednesday…).
The Mother’s Day flowers are still going strong! Here are some shots in black and white (some split-toning in the first).
Note to my photo friends:
Life has been very busy lately, and I haven’t had the time or energy to visit blogs and comment as much as usual. We are in the process of getting our house ready to put on the market in June, after my daughter’s family visits. I am spending my days cleaning out closets, cabinets, and drawers, while my husband works and organizes the needed repairs. To complicate matters, I’ve been having vertigo for several weeks- so I’m not driving, reading, or spending much time on the computer (yay- more time to clean out closets!). I really appreciate you all for visiting my site and leaving such nice comments- please know that I will be back to my usual routines soon!
A beautiful Mother’s Day bouquet sent by my beautiful daughter and her beautiful family!
Spring is definitely happening in Benicia, despite a brief rainstorm. I’ve been a bit under the weather lately and haven’t done much photography except around my yard. Thank goodness for flowers, always around waiting to be photographed!
This week’s Texture theme is POP! For me, no color pops more than RED, so here we go. . .
Textured with two layers of Kim Klassen’s cool grunge.
melinda anderson photography 