Three

Bonnie's challenge for this week's Photo Art Friday was something that connects to the number 3/three. Not only will you see three of my photos here, but each shows three of something - deck chairs, sail boats and trees.

This picture - originally a slide, like the two others as well -was taken at the beach in Brighton, England. It was a windy, partly cloudy day, and almost no one was sitting in these chairs. However, they had something very optimistic about them the way they were patiently waiting for guests to lounge there despite the English moody weather. The texture applied here is Kim Klassen's "warmsun", blending mode linear burn at 50% and copied once with some adjustments (levels, saturation, brightness).

With these sail boats - shot at the coast of Cornwall, England - I went a little bit bolder. The picture was taken in the evening with the sun already gone, but the clouds were still pink and the mood was nice, but quite dark. The original picture is a little bit dull, so I thought some "pepper" can't hurt. I first applied Bonnie's texture "dappled dawn", blending mode exclusion at 90%; did some hue/saturation adjustments; applied Bonnie's texture "mauve magic", blending mode color dodge at 25%; some more saturation and brightness adjustments; and finally I cropped the photo a little bit more. I'm in love with the color!

Finally trees - of course! Again, we are in the Swabian mountains in Germany on a cold winter day, a very cloudy day I should add, the original photo is just dark. I cropped it down to three trees; did a levels adjustment to brighten it up a little bit; applied Bonnie's "edited acrylics" (one of my favorite textures) in blending mode pin light at 85% with some saturation adjustments. I only used a part of the texture, the upper left hand corner, and I thought how interesting it looks when you drag out the texture.

What I really like about these challenges is that I try something new - blending modes I usually ignore, or playing around with the texture first before applying it. Every time I realize how much I still have to learn, but I love, love, love it.

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