Fruit or Veggies

This week Kim Klassen's prompt was Fruit or Veggies. Here's what I started with, kind of dark and boring. I wasn't impressed. Didn't think much could help this photo. 

But after following Kim's lessons and tweaking it in LightRoom, I almost couldn't believe my own eyeballs. Then I cropped it drastically and used her Preset kk_darklight. 

Psssh, turned out even better! 

I'm very happy with it. I hope these techniques work just as well on critter photos. I'm almost finished my little needle felted fox. I can hardly wait to post her. 

Coffee, Tea or Cozy!

Well, I've been fooling around in Kim Klassen's class using Lightroom and Photoshop. Not easy! Oh sorry, am I yelling? Don't mind me, feeling a little frustrated is all. 

The theme this week is, 'Cuppa, tea or coffee'. So here are four photos using different presets in LR. 

 I just installed Photoshop and Lightroom the other day and there's so much to learn. Not to mention that I also had to update my computer to Yosemite and everything's a bit different. Grrrr. 

So many of the people in that group are actual photographers, which makes things more than a little intimidating. 

Anyway, I was trying to create an artistic photo to post in class and showcase my Blackberry Bunny tea cozy at the same time. Don't think it worked. She needs a closeup. I'll do it later. Right now I think I need to go poke a fox.

The little lady needs a face.

Rattie

 Meet Rattie, my first needle felted character. I did make a rabbit head once but that's as far as I got. 

 I like him. He's pretty cute, but kind of a messy knitter even if he doesn't think so.

Tomato Soup

Experimenting with light and textures in Photoshop. 

 My husband says, "What are you doing? Taking pictures of things you're never going to make?"

 I hate it when he's right...the can opener's in the drawer.

Peaceful Snow

Today it snowed. Perfect for some peaceful artistic photos. I'll set up a cover for myself, dress warm, make a thermos full of tea and wait for some darling little chickadees to perch on the side of my snowy tea cup. 

Waiting, waiting, waiting. Freezing, freezing, gotta pee. 

Ten minutes later and all hell breaks loose. The Bluejays have stomped all over my teacup.

Adorable squirrel has wiped out my umbrella, knocked over my chair,

and thrown my tripod out of whack. 

At least there's still the porch. 

A Wrinkle in Time

I've become very interested in Kim Klassen's artwork. She creates beautiful still life textured photographs that are all soft and dreamy. 

Here's my attempt at a few textured photos of my own. 

Not a very soft and dreamy still life, I'm afraid. I seem to be drawn to the darker side of things. I think it needs more blur.

Here are two unaltered versions of a pretty place near my house. 

And how lucky, it started to snow. I was hoping it would, and voila, there it was! It was mostly slush but, whatever. 

As you can see, the place has been boarded up for some time.  My husband enjoys the haunted feel of it. I prefer a more lived in look. Maybe curtains and a dash of chimney smoke?

First, I cut and pasted the only window left on the building and stuck it on top of the boards. Then I did the same with a section of grass over the watering equipment in the front yard. After retouching it using a paintbrush in Photoshop, it didn't look half bad.  Next I overlayed the photo with a few of Kim Klassen's textures, which made the colours really vibrant. And I like that, but as I mentioned I'm trying to go all dreamy, the way Kim does. Time for a redo.

Here, I exchanged the dark textures with a pinky one. Then refitted the bottom window from three panes to four, and cropped the whole photo. So much for all that fiddling around I did getting the equipment out of the shot. Truthfully though, I think I prefer the dark one. I'm going to try printing it on some fancy photo paper. I'm hoping I'll be more impressed. 

It's supposed to snow here in the Valley tonight. I mean, really snow! Yay, where's my mitts.

Happy New Year!