Franklin

Thirty Word Thursday challenge from http://treasures-found.blogspot.com/

The premise of 30 Words Thursdays is simple...
Take an image (preferably one you shot, or have permission to use).
Write 30 Words about it. No more. No less.
Post it each Thursday.

My wife found Franklin hiding behind a chair after Christmas.

He now sits in his chair in our living room reminding us that in today’s fast paced world; simplicity wins!

Burning Photo Challenge - San Antonio Missions

Photo Challenge #7 from JABlogspost

I'm Burning For You!  For this challenge we will be trying out the classic photography method of Burning In.  In the old days of film, this technique was used during developing to darken areas of the film selectively.  One would basically hold a tinted or opaque card with central clear area over the developing film--allowing more light to hit a specific area of the print and hence more exposure.  This resulted in a darker or "burned in" area where you want it.  Now with photo editing programs one can imitate this effect with much less trial and error.  So this week take a picture--preferably one where the contrast isn't as great as you would like it--and use this technique to add more contrast or shadow to select areas of the photo.  

I chose to use some photos from a winter trip to San Antonio where we visited some of the missions.  I took these shots with a Kodak Easyshare (not my preference but I left my Canon at home) so I didn't have the control I wanted when I took them.  All edits were done with Picasa.

This is the original and it seemed a bit washed out.

I added some basic shadow to the picture and think it creates a great contrast.

Again in this original it seemed to lack contrast.

I purposely over did it a bit on the shadow to make the cross stand out.

This original wasn't too bad but I wanted to see what adding some shadow would do.

Bringing in the shadow brought in just a bit more contrast
and I really liked thesilhouette result on the tree.

I Want Summer - Thirty Word Thursday

I long for the days where the 

grass is green and trees have leaves.  

Days where we can find new trails, 

with cool running streams and other 

gifts from God.

Reach Out and Touch It!

Photo Challenge #6 from JABlogspot
For this week's challenge I'd like to try out textures. Most photo programs come with a few built in textures to make a picture more interesting or for unusual effects. Photoshop Elements has some hidden in the artistic filters like canvas, sandstone, and burlap. These add a tactile (at least it looks like it does) element to an otherwise flat photo. I'm interested to see what type of photo will benefit from this treatment. For extra credit take your own texture picture and use that instead of the built-ins: brick wall, textured stone, rusty metal, etc.


I've been in a bit of a time crunch and so I didn't get the chance to attack this challenge the way I'd hoped to but I did find some very interesting filters in Photoshop Elements to test with my moonshot photo.

My starting point

Extrude Effect

Flair Effect

Stained Glass Effect

Swirl Effect

Sketchy Challenge

Challenge #5:  Sketchy! from JABlog Challenge

Take two or more photographs and
use photo editing software 

to change them to pencil sketches.

 Photos taken in Wilmington, NC

On this first set, I simply took the photo

and applied the sketch tool in Picasa.

On the second set,

I applied the full sketch tool on the first change

on the second I changed the fade 

to bring in just a hint of the original color.