#31 Activities

I'm early this week as my sister needs me in the city.  Her husband is extremely ill and I don't know how long I'll be away with her so this may be my last post for a while.

Earlier this month, our crescent held its first street party and I took photos of the activities (mostly sitting, chatting and eating) that went on and put together this collage for our monthly community newspaper.    The close up in the middle is my hubby, btw.

Oh yes - the original image for last week's "Characters" theme was the one of the bunny shown here.  I didn't change any of the colours so it's pretty amazing how many different ones came through when I 'abstracted' it.

#30 - Characters

My PET friends will recognize this image as one I posted in the Retouching Gallery this week.  Excuse my redundancy but I'm going to repeat what I said about it there and add a few extra comments.

I joined the Photographic Society of America earlier this year and have been entering images in their Salons, both Colour and Creative.  When I see what wins or gets accepted in the Creative section, I realize that mine pale by comparison, sooooo...

Decided to go a bit crazy creative this week.  The original image was of a baby rabbit that came to our street party a few weeks ago and the eyes are one of his, duplicated many times.  The idea for the distorting of it came from a PET Be Creative tutorial on making abstract art from photos.

Once I had done the eyes, it all seemed to come together and the theme "Characters" came to mind as I couldn't decide what to give the eyes for bodies.  "How about Chinese characters?" I thought - and voila!  Played around some more and added the stars for interest, highlight stars in their eyes and finally to fill the bare right-hand corner, a burn effect with a paper damage brush.

I'll be really interested to hear what everyone thinks of this one...  Be truthful!

#29 Summer

At the height of a heat wave, I thought it appropriate to use this image for the theme "Summer".  While having lunch in a nearby town with a friend, we noticed a beautiful white two-storey house next to the restaurant.  Its garden was decked out with scads of pink petunias, there was a pink garland and flowers on the archway over the driveway leading to a carriage house, also bedecked with pink flowers.  This bike and its pink-flowered basket was in the front yard.  When we asked at the restaurant what the house was - a B&B, guest house, recent wedding? - we were told that the lady owner decorates her house and gardens to reflect each season and that was her summer display.  After we trespassed onto her drive to take photos, the owner came out to say that she thought we were going to water her flowers for her!  We apologised for having taken the liberty of being on her property but she seemed unfazed by our interest.  As the restaurant we ate at is attached to a Best Western (motel), I'm sure she's used to the attention her decorations get.  I must remember to go back in the fall to see what she's done!

Behind the bike was a white bench which took a bit of getting rid of but I'm pleased with the finished image.

Just playing around...

Followed a tutorial from the Photoshop Elements Techniques site for making a background "stamp" using brushes.  The tut had lots of different brushes so I just used what I have and came up with this...

#28 Colours

...or for my American friends "Colors"...!

Kim Klassen's Beyond Layers class this week featured a colour storyboard which gave me the inspiration for this image.  It was taken in our backyard - don't know the name of the flower but it was a Spring bloomer.  I adjusted the Hue/Saturation, added one of Kim's textures - Simple Things - and masked out some of the flowers to show where the colour swatches at the bottom had come from.

Earlier in the year, we had the assignment of posting an image featuring one particular colour each day - blue, green, pink, red and yellow - then on Saturday we were to post a "rainbow" one.  This is what I came up with for that - full of colour too so thought I would share it with you folks, if you haven't already seen it on my Beyond Layers page.

#27 Remember

This was a hard one for me.  Continuing last week's story, I thought I would post a photo of my sister's hula troupe from last week's recital.  They called me into the dressing room to take their picture before they went onstage - lots of jitters going on, I can tell you.  This is the best shot I got (with a little group shot photomerging...) and I put them all onto a beach on the island of Oahu that Diane (my sister - that's her, second from left with her son's girlfriend behind her) and I visited on our sentimental journey last year.

It was a difficult one because there were so many categories this shot would have fit:  Activities, Colours, Duty, Love, Maturity, Treasure, Vacation - but decided the one that fit the best was Remember as our dancing the hula again has brought back so many happy memories of our younger years in Hawaii.