Of Calendar Making, Photoshop Playing, and Just Plain Fun...

For the last ten years or so, I've been making family photo calendars for my parents and my in-laws.  Last year was the first year that they didn't get done and I had decided that I wouldn't continue making them since the kids are getting older now and aren't as "cute" but my mom really, really wanted me to make her a calendar so I've been scrambling, trying to find enough pictures of the kids and get everything done before January is over.  :)

In my tried and true tradition of making things much harder than they need to be, I decided that I would try making some of my own backgrounds using Photoshop.  After all, I have a book I bought years ago that I thought I really ought to use.  :)  It's called Digital Designs for Scrapbooking  by Renee Pearson.  

After a whole day of dinking around, I finally got realistic and found some editable backgrounds to go along with the ones that I had made.  After a few color changes to make some variety, I had enough to get started adding photos.  I digitally cross-processed most of the photos to make them more interesting looking (well, at least I hope they're more interesting).

I really like the way they turned out.  These are a few of my favorites.

  

I'm definitely looking forward to playing around some more with making background pages and other things like tags and stuff that I can use for scrapbooking or mixed media art projects.  

Digital Xpro fun

I had a ton of fun playing around in Photoshop tonight.  I wanted to post some Christmas photos on Facebook but I didn't really like how a lot of them looked so I decided to try some digital collage and cross processing to see if I could make them more interesting.  Here are a few of my favorites.

I think they really look very vintage and analog, don't you?  The picture of the tree branch was cross processed and then layered with a transparent background to give it extra texture and interest.  I even learned how to create an interesting border around the photos, although I'd like to find a frame that simulates the border you'd get when you do a polaroid transfer.  It looks a lot messier and grungier, which is what I like.  :)

What Do You Get When You Combine Goodwill Silverware, a DSLR, a Lightbox, and Photoshop? Magic...

I was looking at a home dec magazine the other day and fell in love with some black and white photos of silverware and I thought... hmmm... I have a light box now, I should see if I can take some shots like that.  So this afternoon, I got my light box and clamp lights out of the garage and set everything up on the dining room table and started clicking away. 

I had to do some tweaking in Photoshop to get the really high key look I wanted--I'm not sure I could do it all in camera or not.  I'll have to do some more reading and experimenting to see if I can get the look a little closer in camera than what I managed today.   I still have so much to learn...
  

 I can't belive how good this stuff looks in the photos compared to real life.  Ah the magic of product photography.  :)

Gotta say that shooting these photos was a lot of fun.  I can't wait to find some more cool silverware and utensils at the thrift store.  I might even print some of these and frame them.  :)

Friday Night Fun

What does it say about me that my idea of Friday night fun is sitting in front of the computer, messing around with my photos?  Sad, Melis, just sad.  :)

I've been looking for a few months now for a book to help me create digital artwork.  I'm interested in digital collage and in making art quilts from my photos.  Well, today I scored!  I went to Joann Fabrics to get some fabric dye and of course, since I had a 50% off coupon, I looked through the books.  I found a book called Artistic Photo Quilts:  Create Stunning Quilts With Your Camera, Computer & Cloth.  It has a lot of the information I've been looking for and so I've been playing around all night with some of my photos that I thought would make good graphic images.  I put together a rough collaged quilt in Photoshop but I can't upload the file to my blog, Which is really sad because I really like what I've come up with so far.  Oh, well,  I'll just have to be content to share some of the individual photos that I played with.  Hope you like them!

Playing With My New Camera

I've been having fun this last week, playing with my new Canon 50d dSLR camera. It's got a lot more functions than my old Minolta so I'm still fumbling around trying to learn what it's capable of.  It takes beautiful pictures.  I've been trying to take it with me whenever I leave the house but the weather's been kind of crummy so I haven't gotten many good shots yet.  I did play around last night in Photoshop, trying to get better color out of the photos I took on Wednesday in Kingston and Hansville.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Beautiful old fence in Kingston

Blackberry blossom in the rain

Heuchera plant at Point No Point Lighthouse

Rusty bolt and washer underneath stucco on the lighthouse

Barbed wire fence at the lighthouse

Photo Play

My newest obsession is film photography.  My oldest son Alex got an old Minolta film camera last summer and the first time he let me take a picture with it, I fell in love.  I'd never taken a photo with an SLR before and when I focused the lens there was a literal zing in my heart.  Since then, I've gotten my own old Minolta SRT 101 and have been reading and trying to learn about photography and taking pictures when I get the chance.  I don't think I've taken any awesome shots yet but I've been having a blast. 

For Christmas Alex got me a book on photo filters that includes a section on using Photoshop so tonight I decided to play around and see what I could come up with.

This is the original shot I took when we went to the mountains to get our Christmas tree.

Minolta SRT 101; 28mm lens; Lomography Fine Color 100 film

The first thing I did was see what it would look like as a black and white photo.  I like it this way because you see so much more texture in the tree bark and the soil.

 Then I decided I'd try to turn it into a black and white infrared photo.  It totally transforms the picture into something dreamy and almost otherworldly. I think I like this version the best. 

I'm  hoping that soon I'll get around to setting up a flickr account and then I can post more of the stuff I've shot, ya know, just in case anyone might want to look at it.  :)