Summertime...

I'm not a country music fan but Kenny Chesneys

Summertime was stuck in my head today. Played around

with icolorama brushes again then opened the 

image in Oggl to add a vintage camera lens and 

film effect. Added some texture with DistressedFX and

finally the lyrics with Word Swag.

I know….it's not a Ford….but it's the only shot

I had of a truck.

Yoo-Hoo!

Snips 'n Snails

I took a photo of my youngest grandson and skewed

it in Elasticam…opened it in Photoshop…selected

just his head and converted it to a PNG. I layered

the head on an old book texture…added the stars and

boat using a stamp brush. I reopened this in my

Reflection app and added the water…playing 

around with the color and opacity until it felt right.

Finally I opened it one last time in DistressedFX

and added a couple of textures and adjusted them

to get the colors I wanted. I really like the effects

I can get with the Elasticam app…I've always 

loved wonky things!

That Beard….

I don't know what drew me first to this picture…the beard

or the eyes. I got it from the Swedish National Heritage Board

on Flickr. It was a black and white image.

I opened it first in Photoshop…converted it to an HDR image

and burned the eye area to make them even stronger. Next I 

opened it in Focal Lab and created the blur effect. After that

I opened it in Hipstamatic and applied a lens and film combination

that gave it the grain and color. Finally I opened it in Distressedfx

and converted it into an HDR photo again to get the strong visual.

Kind of a scary looking fellow…..

The Beauty of a Seed Pod

"Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it."

                                                         ~ confucius

I don't know of too many folks that like having a

Sweetgum tree shed these seed pods in their yards.

They do have a beauty if you really look closely.

This piece started with an older photo that I took

several years ago.

As you can see it had some limbs and shadows

in the background. I opened it in Photoshop

and played around with the layers settings until I

got the background a vivid white with just a blurred

shadow of the limbs. Then I took the clone tool and 

cloned the white over the limbs creating a solid white

background. I thought about extracting the pod and

making it into a PNG but didn't really want to spend

thirty minutes getting all those details so I decided to

work with the white background. Next I sent this to 

my iPad and opened it in my DistressedFX app and 

played around with the different textures and opacities

until I got the look I wanted. The warm earth tones

of these textures really make the seed pod pop.

I saw a snap on lens for my iPhone with a fish eye…

wide angle…and two macro lens that I'd LOVE to

have if I had $67.00 to spend. Oh well…

maybe someday...

The Bee Keeper

I'm not sure where I saw this article about the bees

attending their keepers funeral but I always thought 

it was such a beautiful story. Playing around with

iPhoneography this sunny Saturday morn.