#9 Playground

Still at our daughter's last month, we walked to a nearby playground where kids and adults alike took to the activities.  Tried some action shots, hence the blurred images - yes, they were on purpose.

I used Kim Klassen's 7-photo template and the Place function to create this collage of some of the images.  There are bevels on all the images but some don't show up as much as the others because of their placement in the collage.  Also added a Kim Klassen love texture to the whole thing, on Overlay blending mode and reduced in opacity to give an overall sandy feel to the entire collage.

#8 Objects

The topic "Objects" is a pretty open one and so I'm using this photo I took in our daughter's backyard in January.  It looks to be a piece of board on which breeze blocks have been laid and then spray painted, next to a stack of patio slabs (they just had a swimming pool put in last autumn).  I was attracted to the warm tones in the ground, contrasted with the white board with its patterns.

The only enhancing I did to the photo was to open it in its native RAW format and use the Recovery and Fill Light sliders to even out the highlights and shadows.  Love this ability in RAW as compared to trying to get the correct tones in a photo using the Enhance tool in PSE alone - not always too successful.  I'll continue to shoot in RAW if only for this facility!

#7 - Utilities

Yes, believe it or not, this - in Florida - is a Utility.  It's something that I'm sure the Floridians rely on in the summer months, especially if - like this one - it's particularly close to water.  What is it?  It's a rainfall measurement system; sorry but I don't have the technical term for it.

I processed the image in Topaz Adjust 5 (Medium Sketch) , used the Kim Klassen texture "revolution" as a separate layer, with a lowered layer opacity and blending mode set to Soft Light, and finally added an onOne Photo Essentials frame.

#6 Pastimes

True, dyed-in-the-wool lawn bowlers wouldn't like me calling this a Pastime.  As I'm one of them, though, I feel I can take liberties and include it here as it's one of my favourite ones.  In Canada, my hustand and I play in tournaments to win money (not very much!) but it gives us an incentive to play that much better. 

Watching a Mixed Pairs Final tournament, I was struck by this gal's great delivery and took two shots in a row, then merged them in Elements to create a nice technical demonstration of how to deliver the bowl. Thought it fit this topic to a 'T' so here it is: