Quote Challenge revisited

After a good while, I decided I'd play along the quote challenge from Beyond Layers day 39 anyway. I had already had a look at some quotes, so I went back and did some digging for photos. Seeing the results, I'm happy I did.

First Tulips

A picture of the first tulips pushing up, taken on 2 May 2013. Thought the quote was pretty apt for the image. The prompt word was "life".

Resources:
- font KG Ways To Say Goodbye by Kimberly Geswein

Sleepers

The quote challenge word was "peace". This made me think of our latest little puppies when they were little puppies, in this picture less than a month old.

Resources:
- textures from Shadowhouse October Square Texture Set 2 by Jerry Jones
- font Learning Curve Pro by Blue Vinyl Fonts

Foxy - Indian Summer

On reading the prompt word "change" I knew immediately what my quote would be: Dorothy Parker's poem Indian Summer. Ever since I first read it I've loved the poem. And I roughly knew what I wanted to do with the images, too - originally I associate the poem with our second-ever Dandie, Veera, whom we called Madame, because she was very dignified, self-assured and definitely not one to fool with. She was a businesslike, no-nonsense personality, but charming. However, since she left us years before the age of digital cameras and even the scans I have of her are not of very high quality, the dog in the photos is our present Madame, called Foxy. Totally different, with a lot more sense of humour (yes, Dandies come equipped with that), but certainly a lady who knows what she wants, who turned nine this week. In the last picture, by the way, she is not growling but actually smiling.

Resources:
- template 018 by myself
- background papers from paper pack Green Finch and Linnet Bird by myself
- font Lavanderia by James T. Edmondson

By The Frozen River

The fourth prompt was "intentions" and for this, the Douglas Adams quote was my absolute favourite. It's so true for me in so many ways. The picture shows my home town since 1987, where I definitely didn't plan to move. When I first went to study, I somehow thought I'd end up in the south, Helsinki or thereabouts. And here I am, 600 kilometres north, and have been happy here for more than a quarter of a century. Oh my. I took the picture on a walk in the centre on 1 May this year. Yes, it was pretty cold.

Jackdaws

The last prompt was "focus". I like the quote, and the photo is one of a series I managed to take on 8 June of a gang of Jackdaws, who landed on the grass and  were a bit shy of me, obviously thinking the treat on the ground might belong to me. They circled around, trying to appear nonchalant and uninterested, until one of them started the approach. Unfortunately none of the photos I took of the actual attack turned out any good but well, that's life, right?

Instagram-ish

At BL day 54 was declared Instagram day. This old fart had to dig up what that meant. Instagram seems to be this online photo-sharing thingy where you upload your phone pictures and apply some filters on them. Oh and all the pictures are square. I tried it out, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use it on the browser. Obviously it's meant to be used only by phone, so I decided it wasn't for me. Anyway, for the challenge we were to try out some instagram-ish photoshop actions on our photos, and there was a scavenger hunt as well. As you might expect, I did the hunt in my archives again, but restricted myself to using photos from last summer only.

Also, when I started playing with the actions Kim suggested we use I was not awfully impressed by the way they were made - they didn't open a new document, as many, or create the action as editable layers, as many others I've used, so I had to use the history tool to go back to the original if I wanted to try out the action. Sure gave me good practice in using the history tool! In the end I decided I wouldn't be using only the given actions but some others, too.

There were five themes for the scavenger hunt: something pretty, something blue, something borrowed, water and dreamy. For the pretty one I chose a picture I took on my birthday as we were driving back home from Helsinki. We stopped at this new lay-by service place, and they had this little thing we call maitolaituri in Finnish. Literally you could translate it as "milk jetty" - it was a place where the farmers would leave their milk churns by the roadside where they could be collected by the dairy deliverers. There are none in that use anymore, but I thought this thing, although new and non-authentic, was pretty and nostalgic and definitely worth a photo.

Something Pretty

Resources:
- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box
- framing action by Paint The Moon

My "something blue" photo is a photo taken by the river on a walk with the dogs.

Something Blue

Resources:

- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box 

- framing action by Paint The Moon

For "something borrowed" I chose a photo of our dandie Justiina, whom our friend Nunnu borrowed to cuddle with. I photographed them after the ring at the Terrier Specialty show, basking on the grass in the sunshine.

Something Borrowed

Resources:

- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box 

- framing action by Paint The Moon

The next prompt was "water". I had two I liked and couldn't decide which picture to choose, they were so different but they go well together. They also reflect well the difference between the dandies in them, the two sisters Justiina and Marleena. Justiina is approaching the water carefully and suspiciously and barely wets her nose there, whereas Marleena happily wades in the water, enjoying the refreshing coolness on a warm day. What the picture doesn't show, however, is her constant rushing in and out of the water. She has recently discovered that one can actually play in the water, but her sister still thinks water is only good for drinking.
 

Tasting the Water

Resources:

- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box 

- framing action by Paint The Moon

Wading in Water

Resources:- CoffeeShop Vintagram action by Rita @ The Coffee Shop Blog

- framing action by Paint The Moon

The last prompt was "dreamy". Here I ended up choosing two images taken in Lappajärvi during our DDT Club Show and summer camp at the beginning of August. The first photo is of a folly right on the lake shore, the other one is a shot to the lake - originally I tried to shoot the gull sitting on the navigation mark, but it turned into a shot of the type "there-is-a-gull-there-just-try-and-spot-it".

Folly on the Lake

Resources:
- action Watermelon Blues by Sarah Lynn Cornish

- framing action by Paint The Moon

Lakeshore Rushes

Resources:
- action Pretty Hazy by Sarah Lynn Cornish

- Instagram filter action by Daniel Box 

- framing action by Paint The Moon

Lots of dogs and water in these pictures. Yes, we had a nice summer.

A Tall Order

For day 50 at Beyond Layers we were asked to show where we live, and shoot landscapes in portrait format. I often do that, and originally I thought I'd pick something from the archives again.

But I didn't. For this challenge I actually didn't delve into my archives but instead took some time to go for a little walk to get some images of where I live. Not of the garden, not the doggies, but some shots on the riverside in the town centre.

As the opportunity more or less offered itself, I took it, and feel so good about it. About a month ago, I went to buy meat for the dogs from the truck the stops here every four weeks, and it was such a beautiful August evening. So instead of rushing home with the boxes of frozen meat in the boot of my car I took a few steps towards the river and took the first photos.

Riverside from Market Place

Process:
- ran action CoffeeShop 2020 by Rita @ The Coffee Shop Blog
- lowered layer opacity to 80% and masked out from the bottom
- applied texture Havana by Kim Klassen
- inverted texture colour and changed blend mode to 60% Color Dodge
- ran framing action Shadow by Chain

Then I grew even bolder - I drove a bit further along the riverside, parked the car for about ten minutes and walked to a park to take some photos towards the centre. I "wasted" perhaps a full fifteen minutes there, but it felt like a huge achievement. Which in a way it was, because I had taken a step out of my oh so well set ways.

Riverside Sunset

Process:
- straightened image in ACR
- corrected white balance in ACR
- ran action Fresh & Colourful by The Pioneer Woman
- ran framing action Shadow by Chain

Frame It

On Day 22 at Beyond Layers Kim gave us a tutorial with a few examples of how to frame our photos. This wasn't a difficult challenge, as I've been framing my photos for years. I used to create my own frame templates, so that I'd just copy a ready-made frame layer (or layers) from a photoshop document to the picture I was processing, but lately I've mostly been using actions by Jonas M. Rogne. He's got seven different sets of actions for framing, you can find them here. My favourites are the filtered framing actions. The only minor drawback with these actions is that you need to flatten your image before applying them for them to work properly, but I usually make a flattened copy of my image and discard it then after using the frame action and saving for web.

I decided to try out Kim's suggestions, however, since there were some keyboard shortcuts for photoshop I hadn't used before, and you only ever have a chance to remember them if you use them yourself. So here are three images I framed, using each of the methods in the tutorial.

Behind the Gate

This picture I took of our Dandie boy Renny on 2 September, 2010, at our home gate. Here I used the stroke framing technique, although as I used blend mode Saturation, it is very subtle. The other frame, the thin bevelled inner frame, is my own invention, and I used it a lot earlier.  

Resources:
- texture Evolve 2 by Kim Klassen

Sunset on Koli

We visited Koli National Park in Northern Karelia in the east of Finland at the end of May. The landscapes from the wooded hills down to the lakes and woodland are very much a part of Finnish national landscape. The views have been painted by numerous Finnish artists, and whenever anybody in my childhood neighbourhood in Southern Karelia had visitors from abroad or other parts of Finland, Koli National Park was at least recommended to them as a destination or else they'd be taken there (by my father and/or uncle). The sunset that evening was rather spectacular, I wish my picture would do better justice to what we saw then. Used the enlargening canvas method here, and added some layer styles.

Creeping Buttercup

A tiny fly paying a visit to a Creeping Buttercup after some rain on 24 June, 2012. For this image I used the subtle frame technique, which I think suits this image perfectly.

Resources:
- font BlairMdITC TT Medium by Jim Spiece
- font Shardee by Bright Ideas

Dear me. Seems I got carried away, again. It's definitely time to attend to the family, in other words, to feed the doggies. Better Half left for the Terrier Specialty last night with some friends, taking the kiddies to their second show ever, and as I couldn't travel with them because I was working, I am now dog-sitting the older ones. They are beginning to give me certain kind of looks, and Renny will soon start singing. Better act, before their hints turn to demands. Then it might be time to keel over -- waking up last night at two to make breakfast for Better Half and help them pack the car did leave me feeling somewhat groggy, although I managed to snatch some sleep for about three hours before driving to work.

Texture Tuesday & Musings

Haven't had time to take part in any of the Texture Tuesday challenges for quite a while. Suddenly yesterday, when I had finished the Colour Week, I remembered it was Tuesday and that there'd be another challenge up at Kim's Café. This time we were simply asked to use a certain texture, Dream It.

I ended up using three textures by Kim here. The picture was taken on 9 May this year, somewhere between Glasgow and Inverness, on a lay-by where we stopped for a photographing break.

Spring in Scotland

Resources used:
- textures Dream It, Oh My & Grey Day by Kim Klassen

Then to Beyond Layers. On Day 21, the challenge Kim gave us was to reflect on how we feel about our own art. There was talk about our expectations, of wanting to create a great piece and, when we achieve one such, of being afraid we'll never achieve something like that again. It so easily stops us from even trying. Kim encouraged us to get past this, reminded we're not supposed to make perfect art but simply make art for the fun of it.

What is preventing me from creating is not blocks like this but mostly just lack of time. Well, practically always exactly that. Soon my time to do this will be very limited, so at the moment I'm just gorging on this, creating, and thoroughly enjoying the process of doing so.

As for the love of comments, who wouldn't love words of encouragement? Receiving none can certainly make one feel a failure - I've been there with my poems, years ago, although it wasn't that I needed so much to hear what people thought, I simply needed to know that somebody had at least read what I had written.

I think it still is important, and definitely why I choose to share what I do online. If I know somebody has seen my work, if I somehow get to share it, it really is a reward in itself. Isn't attention what we're all after? Because all art is communication…

I aim to record things I see and experience, to teach my eye and to please it. I'm overjoyed if someone else understands, enjoys and appreciates what I create, but that's not my primary reason for doing it. Yes, I do jump up and down and shout Hooray! whenever I get a comment, and I see nothing wrong with it, but really, encouragement from Better Half is what I need and value most, because who'd know better where I stand and what I might be trying to convey?

Blue Skies Smiling at Me

For Beyond Layers Day 20, the fourth day of the Colour Week, I collected blue skies and other things from our trip to Salzburg at the end of July. It was a wonderful holiday, we enjoyed all of it, even the part where we first got soaking wet in a sudden thunder storm that started during an open-air concert in the Mirabell Gardens, rushed into one of the buses we usually took and then realized it was not going where we were, and when the wind blew Better Half's brand new Panama hat onto the pavement and a friendly young man managed to catch it…

I loved skimming through the pictures for some beautiful and memorable blueness, most of it the sunny kind, although there are some watery bits as well.

Helsinki-Salzburg, July 2012

...the Sea Whisper'd Me

On day 15 of Beyond Layers Kim gave us a prompt: Whisper. It was very interesting to start creating from a word-prompt only. The first thing that popped into my mind was the finishing line of Walt Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, and although I tried to find easier things that would've whispered to me, I couldn't shake the thought. That's Whitman for me, anytime. You wish you could get away from his wordiness and heaviness and all, but the words just keep rolling in my head and annoying as it is, I cannot help loving them. It's not a passionate love, but a persistent one. Very persistent.

So it had to be sea-related, but of course I knew I had no photo in the archives to convey the mood of the poem, and couldn't possibly go and shoot by the seaside, as it happens to be rather far away from here.

I decided, then, to go by the words only, not the poem. Perhaps I'll sometime get back to the poem, but I think that has to be done in photomanipulation... But here's the whispered result.

...the Sea Whisper'd Me

It's a picture taken on Baltic Sea, on 16 May this year, when we had just left Lübeck on our homeward journey. Actually, I was very happy the sea only whispered this time, instead of roaring. The North Sea between IJmuiden and Newcastle twelve days previously was rather rough, and I had my first experience of sea-sickness. Thinking about it now, it could have been much worse, but it felt like the end of the world at the time. At least I now know first-hand what sea-sickness is.

But back to the picture - used the textures here to make it even softer and at times I thought I'd lose the whole image when toning it down, but then, it's meant to be a whisper.

Resources used:
texture Optional by Jerry Jones
texture Awaken by Kim Klassen
gradient Sea Dreams 15 by ElvenSword

 And here's the recipe.

How annoyingly simple the recipe makes it look, again, and how much tweaking went into each step...

Brush Lovin'?

Day 12 at Beyond Layers was about using brushes in Photoshop. Nothing really new there, I have created some for my own use and used quite a few - I love them in photomanipulations and also for scrapbooking. I have used brushes in scrapbooking layouts and also to create my own scrapbooking papers. I have used pretty swirl stamps on cards and to print pretty envelopes, too. But I still have to figure out their possible uses for photos.

Ok, you could do what Kim has done and create word art with quotes, but I see two problems with this: first, how likely am I to use a quote in a picture? Not very. During Beyond Layers I have already done that far more than I thought I ever would. It's just not my cup of tea. Second, how likely am I to use the same quote again? The chances for that are really minimal, and even then I would most likely want to use a different font. And the whole point of stamp brushes is that they are meant to be used several times, right?

Actually I'm asking myself, what possible use could I have for these stamp brushes in processing my photos? I can see but two possibilities -- they are really great for things like a watermark, I use one on all my pictures. Another option might be to use a stamp brush to frame a photo, I could see myself doing that. After all I've tried that before when creating icons. Anything else? I really don't know.

So I obviously didn't go brush crazy, but I did the Day 12 assignment anyway and used one of the word art brushes provided. Here's the result.

Shipboard Sunset

The photo was taken on 2 May this year, somewhere on the Baltic Sea. The sunset was really beautiful, and the thin stripe in top middle is a plane.

Thank you for the resources used:
- texture Raised Effect by Jerry Jones
- texture Paper Stained Light by Kim Klassen
- word art brush from Beyond Brush Set by Kim Klassen
- framing action by Chain

Painterly Effect

Day 10 challenge at Beyond Layers was called Painterly Effect. The idea was to do more or less the opposite of what we have been doing so far (soft & subtle) and create a heavily texturized, painterly effect on a photo.

Having done photo manipulation for a few years, I found myself standing on rather firm ground here. Not as if I had nothing to learn! Kim did share some interesting new techniques with us, though, some of which I had never tried before. It's wonderfully refreshing to find new ways of achieving the same kinds of effects.

I thought it might be worthwhile picking one of my Scotland pictures for the challenge this time -- thinking about the landscapes there, painterly rather easily crosses one's mind. Here's the one, after I worked on it for a few hours.

On a Scottish Loch

For this one, I used a number of textures. I had an idea in mind, and to achieve it, I needed altogether four different textures and numerous other layers: black & white adjustment, several hue & saturation adjustment layers, levels adjustment, and the new one for me: smart filters.

Thank you for the processing tools:
- textures Old Painting 22 & Paint on Canvas II by Kerstin Frank
- textures Finale & Sienna by Kim Klassen
- a blue gradient  from Super Dooper Gradient Pack by Digital Phenom

I'm feeling quite happy with this. It was a fun exercise to do, and I am slowly catching up... ok, the others at Beyond Layers are be at day 20 today, but although I'm at times sorely tempted to jump ahead and join the fun, I'm going to do it the slow way, day by day, challenge by challenge.

Choosing Happiness

On Day 7 of Beyond Layers there was talk about happiness, and choosing to be happy, or going towards it, step by step.

Stopping to think about it, I have no need to choose happiness. Quite simply, I AM happy. True, there are these bigger and smaller glitches every now and then, but all in all, what about them? They come and go, and I'll survive them. I have weathered some storms and I am resilient enough to survive a few more. My life is good, I live with the love of my life, my Better Half is a wonderful person I love so deeply, we have a beautiful home and these occasionally infuriating but charming funny dogs, I enjoy my work, I have rewarding hobbies that have brought me many friends and even a few close ones...

Yes, I am a very happy woman.

On the lake on an August evening

Here I'm posting what in my opinion is one of the best photos I've ever taken. I shot it last August with my phone while we were -- well, fishing on the lake. I didn't catch a single fish, Better Half might have caught one, I think. It was rather late, there was next to no breeze and mostly we were just floating about in the cooling evening. I didn't feel like doing anything to the picture, I just added my watermark and the frames. I have no idea if it really is that good a picture, but for me it has the mood of that moment. Peace. Quiet. Happiness.

Time Capsules & Storyboard

The challenge for Beyond Layers Day 5 & 6 was easy: creating Time Capsules and making a storyboard, with ready-made templates.

Time capsules is a concept I love. Photography is for me in any case recording - recording everyday events, capturing moments. It's something I've learned from my father. He was a keen photographer, and of course took pictures at Christmas, in family parties and on holiday trips, when we toured Finland with my parents and sister, but that wasn't all. He also shot us kids in our everyday. I still treasure a particular series he caught of me and my cousin, aged about five, playing with a pail of water in our grandparents' garden and totally oblivious to being photographed.

When my mother passed away, we had a hard time finding "presentable" pictures of her for the funeral, although Dad had been photographing her for decades. It's customary to have this one picture of the deceased on a table, with a candle and some flowers next to it. In the picture the person is seated alone, preferably with a smile on her face, and that's it.

Well, there were loads of shots of Mum walking, working, dancing, fishing, swimming, skiing, gardening and very very seldom was she alone.  I asked my sister why we couldn't make a collage instead, showing Mum the way I remember her, active, but of course Sis wouldn't hear of it, because it's Not Done.

A few years ago I stumbled on digital scrapbooking on the Net, and realized this might be something for me. I'm not really into embellishments or quotes... what I like to do is tell stories, capture time. In 2010, I bought a small album and created a birthday present for my ever active better half, showing many of the things accomplished during the year, from one birthday to the next. I'm still quite proud of the little album.

But now to the challenge itself.  I decided to make a time capsule of the day the challenge was given, 3 May. On that day I journeyed from Rostock in Germany to Zwolle in the Netherlands on a coach tour with some students of mine. We left our ship in Rostock after 8 in the morning, and it was a 550-kilometre drive, so most of the day was spent just sitting on the coach. We arrived in Zwolle early enough in the afternoon to go for a long walk in town, though, which naturally resulted in a lot of pictures.

Early morning in Rostock. Pictures from the shipboard.
Template by Kim Klassen 

Driving across Northern Germany. Shots from the coach window.
Template by Kim Klassen.

Breaks along the Autobahn. Shots of the places we stopped at.
Template by Ginger Pixel. 

On the  road in the Netherlands, more coach window shots.
Template by Kim Klassen  

Sightseeing in Zwolle.
Template by me.

Walking in Zwolle.  More pictures of the town centre.
Template by Timounette.

Window-Shopping in Zwolle. Still more photos of the town centre.

Template by Flaneuse.

The thing I learned here was to make the outlook more uniform by adding a gradient map layer to the storyboards.

Me in Six Words

Day 3 Challenge at Beyond Layers was to write a Six-Word Memoir as published on Smith Mag site, or as I took it, to describe ourselves in six words. Six words. Well, after some scribbling I ended up with Laughing, loving, teaching, touching, doing, daring...

The photographic challenge was to add the 6-word memoir to a photo. Originally, I did just that, but somehow, with the photo I chose, the text looked out of place. There was simply too little room for it. So I thought, why not do a scrapbook layout with the photo and text? And I did, and it looks so much more like me now.

Texture Wonderful Magic by Kim Klassen
Template by N@te

The photo was taken on 28 July, 2008. It was my birthday, and we were coming home from the DDT Club Show in Imatra, and, if I remember correctly, decided more or less on the spur of the moment not to drive straight back to north but to take a day tour in South Eastern Finland. It was a wonderful sunny day, and we visited the beautiful Punkaharju ridge, the Kerimäki Church, which is the largest wooden church in the world, the Valamo Monastery in Heinävesi and the Iron Age hill fort in Sulkava. In this picture, Misaki is admiring Lake Saimaa from the hill fort (or the fisherman down on the jetty, or the boat on the lake, but anyway). It was quite a climb to the hill, especially for our low-legged doggies, as there were hundreds of steps to climb, but we really enjoyed it.

I did another take on the giraffes, too. Here they are. Not much has changed, except I lightened up the image, and I am far happier with it now.

To start with, I'm going to post a few layouts done a couple of years ago. Hopefully at some point I'll catch up.


Anyway, this photo was taken on a beautiful January day by the riverside in my home town.


Credits:- paper from Pour le plaisir des yeux by Veroscrap