Here are the tulips again!
This week’s theme for Texture Tuesday over at Kim’s Cafe is ORANGE. I just used a layer of one texture- Kim’s Serious Magic.
Day 215- On the way to Target
On the way to Target today, I stopped by the Vallejo library and waterfront area to take photos. It was about one o’clock in the afternoon- horrible light! I was intrigued by a torpedo on display in front of the library. I don’t know the history, so it is a mystery to me. I used sepia processing and added a texture to compensate for the harsh lighting.
f/5, 1/400, ISO 250, 52mm
BTW, although I am staying away from flowers today, you may notice that I shot the end of the torpedo that is rather flower-shaped.
Day 200- Desaturated
It is Texture Tuesday again! I knew I wanted to do flowers again- but our flowers are fading fast, and I didn’t have the time or inclination to go out looking today. I ended up shooting our much photographed Gerbera Daisy and desaturating it in Aperture. I was going for a faded yellow tone, but ended up desaturating it more in Photoshop, because I didn’t like the green background. Eventually I went for a sepia processing before I added my textures. The assignment today was to use Kim’s aurora texture (the one with the script), and I also added golden and february magic edges.
Day 193- Almost All the Answers
When we were first married, we regularly perused garage sales and secondhand stores for furniture, vintage items, and children’s books (which I collected before we even had children). One of my early purchases was a Mother’s Encyclopedia from the 1940s; I liked how it looked in my kitchen with my recipe box, and I thought it funny that there would be an encyclopedia just for mothers. Unfortunately, the last volume was missing, so there was no chance I would ever learn everything a mother needed to know!
Today, my daughter and I had a long phone discussion about discipline techniques for her three year old son. It seems like yesterday that I was working on improving HER behavior! Well, she turned out great and is a fantastic parent, but parenting is as challenging as ever.
When my children were small, I read books by Dr. Brazelton and Rudolph Dreikurs instead of the Mother’s Encyclopedia, but the little set of books has remained in my kitchen all these years. Today, I photographed them and used some of the techniques I have been learning in Kim Klassen’s Photoshop Essentials class to edit the photo (including the textures canvasback magic, not too shabby, and frame it). I experimented with using curves on just part of the image, decreasing saturation on a selection, and, of course, textures and layer masks.
Day 186- Three
Texture Tuesday again- and the assignment was three. Two flowers plus one reflected flower equal three. I used 3 layers of texture- 2 of Kim Klassen’s silence and one of golden.
FYI, one of the silence layers I used color burn as the blend mode; I meant to use multiply, but accidentally hit the selection right underneath. The blueish tints around the edges came from that effect. I liked it, so I kept it!
Day 184- Hard Pressed
After blithely stating yesterday that, if you have a macro lens, you never run out of subjects to photograph- I ran out of subjects to photograph. I went so far as photographing my laundry (we decided it is finally time to take off the flannel sheets!)- but, noooooo. . .
So here is something that used to be involved in laundry- ironing laundry that is!
f/1.8, 1/100, ISO 1250, 35 mm, textured
Fortunately, I never had to use this- I think it came from an antique store years ago. I don’t even like ironing with a steam iron.
Day 182- Photoshopping
I felt like playing with Photoshop today, so took a few flower photos this morning to have something to play with. Here’s one I took of an agapanthus blossom.
I tried to write the word “bloom” on a path, but the letters kept bumping into each other. I don’t know if it is the shaky path I am drawing for the letters to sit on- or if there is an easy way to move each letter around after I type it. I experimented with font size and character spacing, but still couldn’t get it to look right.
The texture I used was Kim Klassen’s silence.
Day 173- Bubbles
We are having the complete experience of what it’s like to live in a national park during tourist season. At lunchtime, the house was surrounded on two sides by elk and tourists snapping photos, so we found a little patch of grass on the side where Miles could play with bubbles. The baby elk was nowhere to be seen- until Miles and Papa went to the playground later and found him stashed under the slide.
I wasn’t too happy with my photos- and am blaming it on the midday sun. However, I remembered this week’s Texture Tuesday challenge was to use texture on a photo with people. I converted the photo to a sepia toned image and then added Kim’s bent edges texture. I also painted in some of the blown-out areas on a duplicate background layer.
And I like the vintage look of the texturized photo better than my original.
Day 164- By the Gate
Today I had my camera with me when my husband and I parked to go out to lunch, so I was happily able to capture the flowers spilling over the fence of someone’s beautiful garden. I was in the mood for textures today- so added three of Kim Klassen’s- bent edges, dustyrose, and greyday vintage.
Day 137- A Night at the Opera
No, I’m not going to the opera- but I photographed my great-grandmother’s opera-going gear for this week’s vintage theme for Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday. I know the opera glasses are hers (they have her initials) and I’m pretty certain about the fan. I am not sure about the money holder in the foreground. It has spots for coins, as well as a money clip inside. The initial on the case is B (for Bean, I believe)- and it could have belonged to her husband, Charles H. Bean- or even his father.
I used two layers of Kim’s luminous texture for this image.
Day 128- Macro Mother’s Day
Happy Mother’s Day!
Day 123- Tea Party
My grandmother had a collection of unmatched teacups of various patterns- mostly Shelley English bone china. Setting the table with some cups from my grandmother’s collection was fun this morning- and I photographed them for Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday challenge. The textures I used were love and sweet treat.
f/2, 1/400, ISO 500, 35mm
Day 118- Texture Tuesday on Thursday
My father was a dentist in the Navy during World War II. When I was a little girl, he gave me a box of shells from the island of Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. I don’t know much about his tour of duty, other than he was on the Ajax and that he not only was a dentist, but acted as a medic as well, assisting surgeons in operations aboard ship.
I used textures from Kim Klassen to enhance this image- specifically serendipity and paperstainedmusic- and am participating in this week’s Texture Tuesday (on Thursday).
Texture Tuesday
One of my poppy photos seemed suited for processing with textures, so I am participating in this week’s Texture Tuesday on Kim Klassen’s site.
I used Kim’s sweet treat and silence textures for this image.
Day 104- Love and Silence
The house is silent today- an empty nest. I thought of photographing the emptiness, but that made me too sad.
When I started this project, I considered that it would be a good way to document some of the family heirlooms, so that my children would remember what they were and which family member had owned them. So here is a photo of my mother’s mother’s Wedgewood. It may even have been my great-grandmother’s- I am not sure. Anyway, it belonged to my grandmother and my mother- and now it is ours. I’ve always thought it was beautiful, even though one piece is cracked.
I used two of Kim Klassen’s textures in post-processing: love and silence.
melinda anderson photography 