Tree Face

For Nicole's Friday Face Off I don't have a painted or drawn face today. Instead I want to share an experiment that I did a while ago. For this, I used an old photo of my then 10-year old daughter.

I also used a photo of a tree that I took on the Schwäbische Alb in Germany sometime in the 90s.

For my experiment I had to crop the photo of my daughter and I also cropped and edited the tree in Lightroom.

Then I opened Photoshop and layered both photos on top of each other, edited again and got this. I used the same technique as I did when I was layering photos with textures. The tree photo served as the "texture".

I didn't stop here. Once I start to edit and play around with several techniques I usually try more than just one way. In Lightroom I used a preset to achieve a much darker mood of the tree.

Don't you think the tree looks very different? I opened it in Photoshop (there is a lot of to and fro between Lightroom and Photoshop) and brought the photo of my daughter in which served as the "texture" now. I made it much smaller in the merging process so that she is peeking from behind the tree - sort of.

I liked it so much that I imported it on my cell phone as my background screen.

I did a lot more editing with the tree that resulted in different moods, not all of them good. But this is a "face" post, so I stop here and wish you a lovely weekend.

The First Peonies

When I went to Trader Joe's this week I found these amazing peonies.

I love peonies. They were my mother's favorite flowers and I certainly carry this love for these beauties as well. Isn't this color dazzling? Some are coral pink and some are a slightly darker pink. They're simply incredible.

I played around in Lightroom a bit - same photo, but with Kim's preset "kk_oldendays".

My Friday Find for this week!

Dark Mood

This year I've signed up for Kim Klassen's Be Still 52 and of course, I'm already a few weeks behind. But no worries - I love how Kim always tells us to do this class on our own pace, that it is more important to quiet down the noise and get still than to hasten and get all the shots in we want. That's my style!

In one of the lessons she introduced a new preset for Lightroom called kk_darkmood. She had a short video how to tweak the photo while using this preset. I liked what I saw and tried it myself on a few of my images.

What can I say? I love it. I'm pretty sure this is going to be one of my favorite presets. When I work with textures, I have my go-to textures, and I guess this will be a go-to preset.

This is my Friday Find for this week - I know it will stay with me.

All the images are processed with kk_darkmood.

Still Life with Poppy Seed Pods

Using "hazyhazy" preset and "kk_teatime" texture in multiply at 65%

I am currently taking Kim Klassen's Start to Finish class - on the one hand I learn more about Lightroom which I am getting quite addicted to, and on the other hand this class is about still life. I hadn't done any still life photography before, not really, and I've found that I like it.

One of the assignments was to create and photograph a still life with a paper bag. Many thoughts wandered through my head - filling a paper bag with grapes or tomatoes or any kind of fruit. But that didn't cut it for me. One day I remembered all the poppy seed pods I saved from my garden - and with that I suddenly knew what I wanted to do.

The "moody" one; preset "gentle", texture "kk_wednesday" in soft light at 68%

To my surprise I thoroughly enjoyed creating this still life. I easily spent a couple of hours with setting up, changing and photographing it. I tried different moods by using not only white but also blue and black backgrounds. I also changed my angle, got close ups and some shots of the entire setting with the intention to crop it later. It was fun, and I felt very contend and excited after I was finished.

When I processed the photos in Lightroom, I used some of Kim's presets and transferred some of the photos to Photoshop to layer them with a texture and add some texts, both of which are not possible in LR. Seriously, I felt like a kid in a candy store with all these new possibilities.

The black one; texture "kk_monday" in soft light at 100%

There is a ton I still have to learn, but it is a lot of fun at the same time. I already see some progress in my work.

Here's a shot from above:

preset "touchofvintage"

I am linking up to Kim's Friday Finds - this has quickly become one of my favorites.

Early Autumn Blooms

My garden, though still beautiful, is approaching fall and winter mode. There are less blossoms there although some flowers still put on quite a show - the pineapple sage whose bright red flowers always transport me in a good mood. Or the cosmos - like the one in the photo above. These flowers came up from seeds that I scattered randomly without any concern where they fell down or where the wind would carry them. These pink ones settled at the rounded corner where they mingle with the Mexican sage - purple, white, magenta and pink! It's a true feast of bright colors. The cosmos are very tall and one afternoon when the sun was already in the west and slowly descending to the horizon I noticed how wonderful this flower glowed against the background of the trees across the street. I couldn't resist and ran inside to grab my camera to capture this special moment. It was the light that did the trick of course.

I layered the photo with Kim's texture "artjoytexture" in blending mode soft light at 100%; then I imported it to Lightroom and played with it. I'm usually not a huge fan of really bright and bold colors to an extreme, but I made an exception here. I'm still a beginner with the new Lightroom. I used Lightroom 2 quite a bit when I had scanned my slides and organized them there. But now I have Lightroom 5 and there is a lot more going on. I hope I'll get the hang of it!

I'm linking to Kim's Texture Tuesday today.

Melancholy

Just a short post today for Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday.

I used to call this image "wooden snake" after I had discovered this branch with the icicle many years ago close to my home in Germany. Now with all the textures that are available, I can finally play with it. And since we are having a cold spell here (yes, even California can get pretty cold - after all, I'm not living in Palm Springs) I though a photo with a nice icicle was appropriate.

I layered the photo (an original slide that I scanned and then kept in Lightroom) with Kim's texture "kk_coolgrunge" and blended it in soft light at 100%. Then I added the text - that's it, that's all!