Reflections

Reflections in the car and a starling ever hopeful of finding crumbs! Beautiful Indian summer here, an added bonus after the gales of the last month.

In my garden

Trying out a new lens! Didn't see the cobweb until I saw it on the screen- the wind has made short work of it!

Autumn?

I was surprised to find some autumn leaves on the ground - it's still summer! - although it has been cold this week with almost continual rain.
We have all been dismayed and shocked at the violent scenes of disorder and looting we've seen on tv - a lot of prayer has gone up for calm and peace and will continue to do so.

Still small

I'm still fascinated by the beauty of small details which are easily overlooked. Might be here a while!

Real flowers!

Old and new flowers

Two different uses of flowers - the first a macro image of a clematis with one of my textures, the second a small textile piece using dried, pressed hydrangeas, together with embellished cocoon strippings, stitches and beads added. But where has all the warm weather gone! Even the newly-planted sunflowers have taken a battering in the wind - and they are all part of a competition!

Paint box

We've watched in horror as the disaster unfolded in Japan and are holding the nation in our prayers. It puts problems into perspective and makes us realise we have a lot to be thankful for.

I've had the paints out this week to make some textures to use with photos - the last image is one of a Christmas decoration with one of my textures added. I'm playing about with some more. Hope you are all having a good weekend.

Change of colours

Enough of the snowy colours! Something to brighten up the day! This is a poinsettia plant which I bought the previous Christmas with some bright red leaves but they didn't appear this time. Anybody know how to get the red leaves back? A gardener I am not!

Into the new

Took a photo of the last lot of snow and combined it with part of a rusty pipe (had to get some rust in there!) and made a warmed up image of the snow - can pretend it's a bit warmer!


Here's the "recipe" -
background image
Rusty pipe darken 71
copy of background darken 100

Thanks to everyone for the new year's good wishes! Hope you all are feeling full of inspiration and anticipation of good things to come.

Happy New Year!

A very Happy New Year to all family and friends everywhere! Hope you will have a healthy and happy 2011!

What's next?

Hope you all had a great Christmas and are enjoying the holidays!

A new tool for the (digital) toolbox

I've always found replacing a sky very difficult until we were shown a good "trick" at our camera club - have a try - if I can do it, anyone can!

http://www.pxleyes.com/tutorial/photoshop/1272/How-To-Mask-A-Tree-In-3-Minutes.html

Framed!

I'm having a go with Photoshop Elements for the first time - like it a lot but Paint Shop Pro is better for some things. Jury's still out!