This & That

Day 41 of Beyond Layers offered two challenges that I totally enjoyed doing. Again, where I started from was not at all what Kim did, and I didn't want to create dreaminess, but used her recipe to add crispness and clarity to the photo. Here Misaki is standing at the front door, staring at me wide-eyed like she often does, asking me if I really mean what I'm telling her. So herself here, that's what she's like with her large nose and big dark eyes under the topknot.

Serious?

Here's what I did to this image:
1 duplicated bg layer
2 added gradient map Pinkish by Kim Klassen, at soft light 100%
3 added a b&w gradient map at normal 30%
4 created text layer, font Shardee by Bright Ideas, applied stroke, turned fill to 19%
5 duplicated text layer, deleted stroke, turned fill back to 100%, set the text slightly off
6 flattened image & resized it for web
7 added frame: framing action Glass by Chain

The second image was an exercise in enlargening the canvas and using gradient fill. The photo is a detail of my belated birthday bouquet that I received last autumn. Since I was quite happy with the photo itself, I didn't do any processing to the actual photo, only enlarged the canvas, created and used a gradient fill and added the text. Can you tell warm orange is my favourite colour? Then I decided I'd like it better with a frame, so I made one using an action by WallStorm.

Editing steps:
1 used crop tool to make image canvas wider than original
2 created gradient fill (my own, warm orange)
3 added text layer with font La Belle Aurore by Kimberly Geswein, blending mode Vivid Light 64%
4 flattened image & resized it
5 added frame: framing action White Frame V4 from Photographer's Toolkit 2 by WallStorm

I'm very happy with both results here. Feels good to be achieving something satisfying with my pictures. And with two of my favourite photography subjects, too - dogs and flowers.

One Little Dog, Basking

Followed Kim's recipe on Day 40 at Beyond Layers. Because the original image was so different, so was the result. Hers was a dreamy image of pastel colours, a still-life with lots of white - a notebook on white table, lilacs in a white vase next to it, some blurred greenness on the background. What she wanted to achieve was to create more warmth.

What I did was almost the opposite. I started with a picture of a pansy, but it was too different for it to benefit the least of the kind of cross-processing Kim did. I trashed the image and took up a very old one: a picture of Foxy being scratched on the sofa back in 2006, when she was a young girl. Don't ask why. Perhaps because this one at least had some very faint resemblance in colour to hers? Obviously I had to adjust Kim's recipe quite a lot again anyway, but at least this time I got some results and got the dreaminess I was looking for. And in the end, what matters is whether I get what I want out of a picture I choose, not whether the picture is like Kim's. Because my pictures just aren't.

One Little Dog, Basking

Resources:
- framing action Shadow by Chain

Doesn't she look pleased? And uncannily like  her granddaughter...

Home again

Back at the computer again after a fabulous and wonderfully busy week.

On Thursday, 6th June, we left the doggies at the dog hotel and then me and M drove south to Järvenpää to attend the International Oriental Dance Festival there. M was busy, of course, first rushing off to do some dog judging training on Thursday evening and then having enrolled on altogether five courses during the weekend. For me it was a time of away-from-home-not-having-to-do-anything, in other words, holiday. We stayed at this nice peaceful hotel away from the town centre, with hares and squirrels and birds of many kinds right outside the window, and while M was on courses, I basked in the sun, listening to the birds and shooting photos and knitting. It was simply wonderful. The weather was fantastic all the time. In the evenings we went to see two Oriental Dance shows. The Friday show was something of a disappointment, and the Saturday show with 3,5 hours was simply too long, although most of the performers that day were top notch.

Schoolyard Folly

A folly or something on a schoolyard where I sat knitting in the warm sunshine. See my backpack and water bottle on the bench.

Resources used:
- texture 335 by Sirius-sdz
- framing action Simple by Chain

Then on Sunday we took the 500-odd-kilometre-drive back home, got the doggies home and I packed, since I was off again, had to be about 430 km south-west by 10 o'clock on Monday. So I got up at 3.45, drove off at 4.30 and picked my friends from the vocal ensemble up and headed southwards again, this time to a barbershop singing course.

It was another wonderful four days. We sang almost all our waking hours, when not having a meal. We worked really hard on quite a few new songs, and on our final day we gave a promenade concert of altogether nine songs. Our teachers, the barbershop quartet Carpe Diem, performed three songs in addition to ours, and it was all absolutely amazing. I just keep on hearing all the songs we sang together, they are ear-worming me one after another, and I don't mind a bit. I love it.

We drove back home on Thursday evening, singing, yes, but even more importantly, summing up our experiences from the course and planning the future.

Then on Saturday, there was another dog show to attend, this time only about 30 km from home. Me and M were working in the office, doggies travelled with us and happily snoozed in the car. It was a cool and cloudy day and we were fearing it would rain all day since that's what the weather forecasts had promised, but no. Just some drizzle early in the morning and then some in the afternoon. How lucky we were! It was only when we were driving back home that the rain began.

Now, since Sunday, I've been enjoying a flu. I'm sure I caught it from the other singers, since at least three of the tenors were ill during the course. But since I'm not working anyway at the moment, it's just a bore, nothing more. Just have to make sure I'll be ok again by the weekend, since I've promised to work in the traditional Midsummer dog show at the Arctic Circle.

At the Beyond Layers catch-up, for me it should be a week of quotes. I think I've stated before that I'm not really a quote person. At least not a great fan of inspirational quotes. Often they feel to me… either dry, flat or syrupy. Pasted-on or slightly icky. So I think I'll skip this challenge altogether.

Off stage

After a month on stage, I get back to the blog. First, there was our vocal ensemble concert & sing-along event, then in a few days, the Oriental Dance show where I was not dancing like my friends but acted as the hostess,  then a couple of weeks after that, my basic level vocal recital at the music school.

Now this is day 37 -- since the original course of Beyond Layers expired without my having time to finish it, I took on the challenge of Beyond Beyond with the access to the original BL, too. But here's a snag: MY course, BL2, was not available, so I had to take BL1. Mostly the same, but still a bit different, so I find myself going back to day 37 again. Oh well.

Anyway, here Kim gave a challenge of placing a photo inside bulky text. I had a look at this technique about a month ago, just before the concert our vocal ensemble gave this spring, so I made an "ad" of the concert for fb with the technique. I am rather pleased with the result. The picture is from our concert in 2011, and at the moment we were singing California Dreamin - which I thought was rather apt, since Kim's tutorial had California in it, too.

Vocal Ensemble Nais-Girls on stage

The original image was a video capture, awfully dark, so I processed it as follows:
- Levels adjustment preset Lighten Shadows
- Curves adjustment to cut down the yellows
- added my own texture Mute Light 01 at Screen 72%

Then I created a new document, following the tutorial, but added another layer of the same font with the words "on stage", at 66% Hard Light. That way I could display a bit more of the original picture.

Resources:
- my own textures Mute Light 01 & Mute Light 02
- font Gill Sans Ultra Bold
- font Respective by Måns Grebäck

Our Newest Dandie

On day 37 of Beyond Layers, Kim gave us a recipe to try out. No texturing this time, just some Gaussian blur, light adjustments and cross processing.

Our Newest Dandie

I tried the recipe on this lovely statuette. He is our newest Dandie. He joined us at Crufts in March, where we first admired him at the stand, and then simply had to come back and give him a new home with us.

His expression is quite priceless. "Isn't this a pretty hole and I dug it all by myself!" Must really be thankful that our present pack isn't really that keen on digging. We've had some great diggers, especially Fanny, who always dug herself a hole to lie in when in the garden. Dandies can really be a gardener's happy little helpers… whether the gardener is happy afterwards, depends.

Into the Light

Here I'm posting a couple of images I worked with for day 36 at Beyond Layers. By now the ecourse is finished, except that I got myself extra time to get through all of this. I really want to finish the course, even though there are still almost 70 challenges waiting. But the way to tackle them is, naturally, one by one.

The challenge this time was to shoot into the light. When I originally took up the challenge, it was December, and shooting into the light was rather impossible, with so little light available at any time. Anyway, I managed to get  this shot of a dried-up cow parsley with snow flakes clinging to it. Then I started to follow Kim's tutorial, but had to deviate quite a lot, since my image was so different from hers.

Into the Light

Resources:
- texture 3112 by Kim Klassen, masked with a sunburst brush by Rita @ The Coffee Shop Blog

Then I decided I needed an image that was at least somehow related to the whiteness of Kim's image and took a close-up of this white poinsettia we had received for Christmas. Here I managed to use both the tutorial and the textures provided so that they actually improved the original. I cut out the numbers from the overlay, though, since I didn't like them at all. But I'm really pleased with how this one turned out.

White Poinsettia

Resources:
- overlay 123 by Kim Klassen
- texture Softly by Kim Klassen

Is it really any wonder it takes me so much time to get through these challenges, when I have to do at least two takes on everything? But then, if that's my way to learn, so be it.

Rediscoveries

Long time no see... well, better continue from where I left ages ago. The prompt for day 35 at Beyond Layers was about shaking things up, taking a new route… The big change at this very moment is typing this blog after such a long break, in the effort of finishing the eCourse sometime during the next two months when the material is still available.

But the sort-of-new thing I've done recently has been to rediscover old skills. I've taken up needlework again, after years and years of not touching any. Far easier than working with photos: doesn't require computer, there's hardly any brain effort needed, it's just simply relaxing, something you can do when you're in the half-braindead state you get to when you finish work late in the evening.

It started during the Christmas holidays. My friend was sitting in the armchair next to me knitting, and I was feeling restless, doing nothing next to those busy hands. I think she needed a crochet hook for finishing off something, so I went rummaging in the needlework baskets and boxes, and while I found what I was looking for I also discovered a hairpin loom. I faintly remembered having crocheted three shawls in this method ages ago, one for my mother and one for each granny, and had to go and dig on the net how you actually do it. To my great delight I found instructions and started working. To start with, I made a couple of scarves of left-over yarns, and then I actually went shopping for yarn for a new project! I ended up buying this lovely multi-coloured yarn called Peippo (Finch in English). It is actually rather heavy, meant for socks mainly, but I made a huge shawl with it.

Hairpin Lace

Here I photographed the two scarves, the loom, mother's old needlework basket, the fun yarn and the beginnings of the shawl. The photos were taken on 2nd January.

Resources used:
- background papers Road to Sunset 01 & 04 by myself
- brush from Bittbox
- template by Katie Pertiet

Will post some photos of the finished shawl later on, and other stuff I manage to make. Not if. When.