Ice-Cream, Snow & Flowers

This is me all over. Here I'm trying to catch up with the Beyond Layers course, and yet I find myself watching the video Kim presented and trying the techniques not once, no, but three times. Really, am I so hopeless at making a quick work of something? But then, I'm supposed to be learning from this, and as we all know, repetitio mater studiorum est! Furthermore, I did what Kim suggested and tweaked her recipe for each image, discarding some layers and modifying others.

So, here are my takes for the day 34 challenge A Few Tips & Tricks to Try. The challenge included the use of the texture Chase and the use of a recipe Kim presented to us on video.

The first picture was taken on 9 May, 2010 at Keukenhof, Amsterdam. The flower is incredible, a tulip called Ice-Cream, with a good reason.

Tulip Ice-Cream

Resources used:
- texture Chase by Kim Klassen

I did the processing on this a month ago, and followed the recipe too faithfully - and it was my dissatisfaction with this that actually lead me to try another take. But I was clever and instead of tweaking the same image over again I let it be and took another photo to process.

The second photo was shot far more recently, on 5 December, 2012, and the Bohemian Knotweed (Fallopia x bohemica) in the picture is located right outside the fence of our yard. About the plant itself -- for the longest time we've been wondering whether the Knotweed in question is actually a Giant Knotweed (jättitatar in Finnish) or a Japanese Knotweed (japanintatar). Yesterday I googled the case once more and found out that it might actually be a cross between the two! In English, Bohemian Knotweed sounds quite nice and sensible, but the Finnish name, hörtsätatar, makes me giggle. It sounds funny and means nothing at all, suggesting something sort of tousled or dishevelled… well, I guess that suits the plant.

Laden with Snow

Here I went through the recipe but tweaked each layer, and finally ended up NOT using the texture that was part of the challenge. So, although this time I was happy with the result, I had to try again with an image where I'd be happy using Kim's texture.

Orange Gerbera

This is another photo of the session with my belated birthday bouquet. Followed the recipe, not cloning anything in or out, but started with high pass, then used the Gaussian blur but only a touch in the corners, lightened the image with levels adjustment, then darkened the blurred areas with just a tad of black to white gradient, used two colour fill layers, screen and multiply, but only around 10% each, and finally added Kim's texture Chase at 73% colour burn, but masked it out of the Gerbera. The change from the original is rather subtle, but pleases me.

Back to the real world -- doggies demand to get out. Better go and see if the birds still have something to eat. In the morning there were seeds enough at all the feeding posts, and since I had to chop firewood and carry it inside, I didn't take the trouble of adding any. Now off to take care of both the winged and the four-legged.

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!

A Week of Colour

Beyond Layers, Week 9. This is a week of colour (for me, that is, most of the group already did this eight weeks ago). The challenge is to focus on photographing a certain colour every day for a week, or actually, five days. *AAARGH* if you'll excuse my expressing myself like this.

The big aaaargh here is that I lost my camera in Salzburg. Should I say, it went missing in action. I could even claim that an Allosaurus ate it. Don't really know what happened, really. I still have the camera, but it just won't work. We were in the Haus der Natur, the natural history museum, and as usual, I was snapping here and there, and then suddenly, after I had taken a picture of Better Half scratching the chin of a Tyrannosaurus skull and another one of the Allosaurus there, something happened. When I tried to switch the camera on again, the lens just came half-way out and got stuck. After that, it hasn't been working. After spending time in the suitcase on our two flights back from Salzburg, the lens had retracted again, but when I (hoping against hope) tried to switch it on again, it beeped of malfunction and that was it.

Then Better Half thought of the old camera that has just been sitting on the shelf for a few years, but it turns out something's wrong with it, too. Seems it has been gathering dust for too long to be operational anymore - I can see nothing on the display, and when I try to take a photo anyway, it's mostly black. So no solution there either. All I have now is my phone to take photos with, and I'm feeling seriously deprived.

So, I'll settle to digging into my archives for the photos instead of photographing especially for the purpose. Some people in the group had followed the example of Xanthe and created storyboards, I think I'll follow suit.

Green - Summer 2012

For this storyboard I decided to pick different kinds of green things (read: not to have plants all over the place) and restrict myself to things photographed this summer. The pictures were taken in Dunfermline, Lübeck, Salzburg, Vienna and, exotically, inside our car.

Resources used:
- template 09 by Isa
- scotch tape from Bruissements Lointains by Au coin de l'objectif
- splash mask from Doux Bruissements by Au coin de l'objectif
- font Blokletters Viltstift by LeFly Fonts
- font Chalkduster

As an afterthought I decided to post another green picture as well, just because I like the particular photo. And yes, it is a plant. I took it on 13 July of a Lady's Mantle growing in our garden. I love their tiny, gentle, light green flowers. Not a lot of processing this time, just adjusted the levels a tad, added the text and made the frame.

Lady's Mantle

Resources used:
- font Windsong by Bright Ideas
- font Bank Gothic Light

And now off to tackle the rest of the to-do things for today.

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