Flowers and Bugs

Still playing catch up. Day 43 challenge of Beyond Layers was to view two of Kim's recipes and use Kim's texture Peony in a photo. For the first task, I chose a picture that I took of one of the last tulips to blossom this summer in our garden. They were still in bloom on 19 June when I took this photo.  Here I followed Kim's first recipe very closely, the biggest difference was that I used layer masks to keep the background suitably desaturated and not too dark or too light  or contrasty. I even used the same font Kim used for her original photo of her book spine poetry, since I found it was one with European characters and therefore worth downloading to me.

Last of the Tulips

Resources used:
- font KG Somebody That I Used To Know by Kimberly Geswein
- framing action Shadow by Chain

The next photo was taken on a warm day in our garden, when me and Better Half were doing some gardening, and suddenly noticed this pair of very spectacular looking bugs mating on the blossoms of a Meadowsweet bush. They were obviously some kind of long-horned beetles (which in Finnish seems to be, delightfully, sarvijäärä or even more hilariously, hapsenkakkiainen). Anyway, they obligingly stayed there long enough for me to rush for the camera and I even managed to get a few quite tolerable shots of them.  To process, I followed Kim's second recipe, this time with a lot more deviation from hers, though.

Mating on Meadowsweet

Resources:
- texture Framed by Kim Klassen
- framing action Double by Chain

The third challenge was to use Kim's pink texture called Peony. Since it was pink, I thought I'd dig up one of the photos I took in April of all the bouquets me and Better Half received at the end of the term. For this I had a brainwave: instead of going through all adjustments step by step I could try what the adjustments of the previous photo would do to this. So I duplicated the adjustment group of Mating on Meadowsweet, found it looked just fine, I just turned down the opacity another 10% and that was it. This made me a very happy camper indeed. So I just placed the texture there, added the frame and was pleased with the result.

Pink Bouquet

The workflow:
- duplicated adjustment group from Mating on Meadowsweet, turned down group opacity to 70%
- added texture Peony by Kim Klassen at multiply 33%
- flattened image
- added frame: framing action Double by Chain

Linking to Texture Tuesday.

One Photo in Three Ways

At Beyond Layers, the day 28 challenge was to take a photo and process it in three different ways. For the photo, I took another stroll in the garden. This time, on the 9th October, there were considerably less flowers to photograph than a month ago, but surprisingly many anyway. I rather liked the picture I shot of the Narrow-leaved Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) with all the raindrops, and so it ended as my subject for this challenge.

Hardly surprisingly, I made a scrapbooking layout of all the versions. The one in the bottom right corner is where I started from. The template is my own, I'll post the link once I get it uploaded, and both the papers are from my set Cold Spell.

Meadowsweet in Three Versions

Here are the resources and recipes. I used a couple of the techniques Kim showed us on her video, but not all of them.

Bottom left:
- Hue/Saturation layer, preset Old Style
- texture Framed by Kim Klassen at Colour Burn 18%, brushed away from blossoms with a layer mask
- texture Fall Returns by Distressed Jewell at Soft Light 46%, brushed away from blossoms with a layer mask
- levels adjustment, preset Midtones Darker, applied to previous layer
- returned a touch of colour to the blossoms by adding a burn layer at Soft Light 38%

Top left:
- action Heartland by Pioneer Woman
- added a tad of colour with a layer mask
- action Boost by Pioneer Woman, applied mostly to the blossoms
- action Soft & Faded by Pioneer Woman at 20%
- texture Abstract by Kim Klassen at Soft Light 25%

Top right:
- action B&W Beauty by Pioneer Woman
- added just a hint of colour with a layer mask
- texture Cool Grunge by Kim Klassen at Soft Light 25%
- texture Frost from Heavenly Vintage Set by Jerry Jones at Soft Light 85%
- texture Baby Blue from Heavenly Vintage Set by Jerry Jones at Colour Burn 25% on the blossoms

Originally I thought it would be rather tough to create three different versions, but actually it wasn't. What's even more surprising, I find that I'm rather pleased with all of the versions, as well as the scrapbooking layout. And yay, with this I can move week 14 of BL into the folder Done!

You First?

It seems that my backlog at Beyond Layers just keeps growing, at the moment I'm a whopping twenty-three days behind. Furthermore, the challenge for day 27 was to take some "me time" and document it with at least one photo. That made me groan - for me it just happens that these challenges are the time I've reserved only for myself, but arranging the time is not so simple.

Well, photography and singing fall into the "placing myself first" category, too, but since my photography is taking snapshots it takes next to no time, just having the camera along. And as I take singing lessons and sing in an ensemble, that time is necessarily scheduled, which means that this photo-tweaking hobby of mine and blogging get their turn only when work and other hobbies leave me enough time.

So far that time has been gloriously lacking this autumn, as work turned out to be far busier than I thought. At the moment I have nine hours more to teach a week than originally planned, which equals about eighteen hours less free time every week… We've also been busy with dog shows, both visiting some, arranging some, working in some, so it's really no wonder I've had little time for photo blogging.

But yes, I did actually manage to snatch some time for photography. It might not sound like a big deal, but since it was the first half an hour I didn't need to use for preparing lessons or doing the related office work, it actually was a big deal. On 11 September I took this stroll in the garden with the doggies and the shiny new camera, which had been in my possession for four days then. I'll share some storyboards of the new camera and the pictures of the garden here - this has taken more doing as it is far more time consuming. But I'm so happy to be doing this again.

New Camera

Here's the new toy. Better Half noticed this ad for a considerable reduction in the price of a camera, which was of the same make as our previous one, and the one before that. So, on Thursday 6th September, I hurried to the shop after work and now I'm the happy owner of a brand new beautiful camera. *beams*

Credits:
- photos by me and Better Half
- template by myself (link upcoming)
- Tone textures 3 & 10 by Jerry Jones
- textures Poetic & Luminous by Kim Klassen
- pattern from Pack 87 by Elemis
- gradient Rivendell 14 by ElvenSword
- font Bank Gothic
- font Savoye by Alan Meeks

Below I'm sharing the results of my photo walk in the garden on 11th September.

Animals in the Garden

The dogs were, of course, with me, and I got some nice shots of Renny, Justiina and the Leopard Duck, Misaki and Leia, the sixth creature is our Garden Gargoyle that Better Half found somewhere a couple of years ago. He (the Gargoyle) has been guarding our garden at various spots ever since.

Flowers in the Garden

There were surprisingly many flowers still in bloom, here some of them: in the large picture, the Panicled Hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata) we planted almost exactly three years ago - this autumn it luckily has had time to blossom. Below it, Narrowleaf Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) with a visitor. On the right, a New York Aster (Symphyotrichum novi-belgii), Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and Bistort (Persicaria bistorta).

Resources for both of the above:
- template by myself (link upcoming)
- texture And Then Some by Kim Klassen
- brush from Real Brush Strokes Set by Doodle-lee-doo
- font SF Arch Rival
- gradient by Digital Phenom

Autumn Flowers

Still more, and this time more colourful flowers: the blue Monkshood as well as the blue-and-white one (Aconitum napellus), pansies, Petunia Million Bells, Loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata), Garden Phlox (Phlox paniculata) and a strawberry bud.

Resources:
- template by Margote @ Au coin de l'objectif
- papers from Close to Ground by myself
- texture Happy Heart by Kim Klassen
- font Zirkon
- gradient by Digital Phenom

Autumn Colours

The fading and faded flowers of Marguerite Daisy (Argyranthemum frutescens) and a leaf of Thicket Shadbush (Amelanchier spicata).

Resources:

- template by Esther @ Au coin de l'objectif 

- papers from Close to Ground by myself

- texture Happy Heart by Kim Klassen

- font Zirkon

- gradient by Digital Phenom 

I wonder if it occurred to you that I might be studying the plant names in English, too? ˆ_____ˆ

Playing with Pink

Am continuing the Beyond Layers Week of Colour. The third colour was pink, and at Better Half's suggestion, I tackled it the same way as yellow, taking photos with the phone, instead of using the archives. So all the pictures were taken yesterday, 18 August. There was no shortage of pink around the house, either. Bedroom wallpaper, mugs, iPad cover, puncher, gardening shoes, bedsheets, dog toys…  Originally, I was rather uncertain about whether to call all these colours pink, but then I had a look at the Wikipedia article called Variations of pink and was satisfied. Yes, they can all be called pink.

Here are the pictures, as three scrapbook layouts. In addition to showing variations of the colour pink, this way I feel I'm also recording our everyday through some objects around the house.

Playing with Pink - Flowers

Used:
- template by myself
- texture Awaken by Kim Klassen
- gradient by Digital Phenom
- brush from Real Brush Strokes Set by Doodle-lee-doo

Playing with Pink - Mixture

Resources:
- template by myself
- textures Aurora & Sweet Tart by Kim Klassen

- gradients by Digital Phenom

- brush from Real Brush Strokes Set by Doodle-lee-doo

Playing with Pink - This & That

Credits:
- template by Scrapsvoyages
- texture Sweet Tart by Kim Klassen

- gradient by Digital Phenom
- brush from Real Brush Strokes Set by Doodle-lee-doo

Looking for Yellow

I'm continuing my week (or so) of colour for Beyond Layers.The first day was green, this one is yellow. On the 13 August, when Better Half had left for work, I was having my second or third cup of tea in the kitchen and staring at the yellow mug in front of me. I then realized there was a multitude of various shades of yellow all around me, and so, although I only have my phone to take photos with at the moment (see previous post), I was inspired to try and do this challenge by photographing yellow instead of digging it up from my archives.

And no, it really was no problem. It took me a little more than half an hour to walk around the house and the garden to get a shocking number of pictures with yellow. There were so many that in the end I was quite happy to see that quite a few of them were out of focus (note to self: keep your distance - mustn't try to get too close to the objects because the phone, without a macro function, will just blur the pics).

I thought it would be fun to collect them into storyboards to show as many as possible. In the end, I managed to squeeze the half-hour walk to three pages, one from the house, two from the garden - one with flowers, the other with… well, other things. Here they are.

A Day of Yellow - Outdoors

A Day of Yellow - Flowers

A Day of Yellow - Indoors

What I did with the photos was to process all of them in Camera Raw before placing them in the storyboard. After that I used a gradient layer (soft light) for each storyboard to even the colours a tad.

Resources used:
- templates by Miya J, myself and Margote
- gradients by Digital Phenom

What fun that was! Then off to tackle the next colour.

More Black & White

So it has taken me a month to get to the second day of week nine at Beyond Layers. Oh well. There's a good, or to be precise wonderful reason, though. Better Half was on holiday, and we've been so busy during the past few weeks that I really have to wonder how we've managed it all. I still continue being busy with various dog show activities, but decided to snatch some time to get a little step forward on the course.

On day 18, Kim gave us advice on black & white conversion, and I absolutely fell for Adobe Camera Raw. Never knew something like that was included with Photoshop, but after practising with b&w for fun, I used it on going over a batch of photos that were to be posted on a dog show site. And oh, it made cropping and editing far quicker and easier. Instead of spending all of Tuesday on the photos, it took me only about three hours to go through the lot of them.

But here's what I've created while trying out Kim's techniques. All the pictures here have been processed in ACR, since the other techniques I already tried out in the previous post.

Pines, Clouds

Vision & Blur

Beyond Layers Day 4 Challenge: Vision and Blur. It's about shooting photos with beautiful, dreamy blur.

Now, while studying the topic, I learned a new term - my camera is a point-and-shooter. Meaning, of course, that it's designed for simple operation, there's no changing the lens or anything of the kind. I also found out that it's not possible to blur the background like with a "better" camera/lens unless one is focusing on a (relatively small) object really close to the lens. Well, that's then it - if I want blur, I either focus on a small object, or produce the blur in Photoshop, and forget the advice about acquiring a better lens.

Earlier this spring, I did practical training on White Balance, and now, following Kim's suggestions, I also played around with the Exposure Value settings. Overexposing slightly is really a way to lighten up the image, but shooting outside in the garden, I also noticed that underexposing some really helped to pop out the colours of flowers from a general greenness. Hey, I'm learning!

Today I have three photos - the first one is a study in light I did in April. Shot in the afternoon in our living room, blur created by using the macro setting and by using texture, called Plaster Squared, by Kim Klassen, at soft light and using layer mask on the carnation.

Carnation
texture Plaster Squared by Kim Klassen

The second is a shot of a lovely Dandie Dinmont Terrier statuette we bought at the World Winner Dog Show 2008 in Stockholm, if I remember correctly. The statuette is really a little masterpiece, it has an exactly correct Dandie look. With this, I had to do a lot of tweaking for the lightness, but I'm very happy with the result.

The Look
texture Phoebe by Kim Klassen

The third picture is one I took yesterday morning, and here I tried out underexposing the shot. Used a touch of an action called Lovely & Ethereal by The Pioneer Woman to finish it.

Globe-flower
action Lovely & Etherial by The Pioneer Woman

But now, the sun is shining, the grass is growing and I hear the lawnmower silently calling...

Texture Tuesday - The Black & White eDition

As my life has returned to more or less normal, albeit far busier than average this week, I was absolutely certain I wouldn't make it to this week's Texture Tuesday. Luckily it seems I was wrong, although last minute really doesn't begin to describe this.

Anyway, the challenge this week at Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday was black & white. Here's my take. The picture shows a rather beautifully rusted metal crane standing in the snow in our garden. I used Kim's "Happy Heart" texture as well as a lovely painterly texture called "The Wave" by Emeraldsugar-stock.

Crane in Snow

Tonight it'll turn to summer time -- we'll be having Daylight Saving Time from tomorrow on. And yes, the Great Tits and Yellowhammers are twittering out of their heart's content. In spite of all the snow, spring is definitely here.