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?

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.

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.

Texture Tuesday - The Quote eDition

Haven't  been around for a long time to participate in Kim Klassen's challenges, so now that I had a little time in my hands, I decided I'd do something about it. The Texture Tuesday challenge this week was a quote and a texture by Kim Klassen - this time I chose to be minimal and included only one texture. (!)

Seagulls on a rooftop in Inverness, Scotland.

Thank you for the texture:
- "Happy Heart" by Kim Klassen

The photo was taken on the morning of 11 May this year, from my hotel room window in Inverness, Scotland. I followed the two seagulls there for a goodish while. They seemed to enjoy the place, pattering around there and occasionally finding a tidbit as well.