Scavenger Hunt Sunday--June 5th

I know I say this almost every week, but I really love this challenge!  It stretches me sooooooo much and I get to see a lot of beautiful work.  If you don't have time to take 5 themed photos each week, you can still join in the fun by checking out everyone else's creative interpretations at Ramblings and Photos.

HOT, HOT, HOT:

I asked my husband for help with this prompt, but he REFUSED to tell me anything he found Hot, Hot, Hot...then I said, "okay, what about "Finding Form."  He just laughed.  I finally came up with  this idea and THEN my children suggested spicy food, steamy food, tea pot boiling, and the sun.  I guess it was much easier for them not having their minds in the gutter.  I believe this set would have turned out a little better if I had a tripod and a husband less concerned about his fingers and more concerned for my art.

Finding Form:

I am not sure I understand this prompt completely, but I think these photos illustrate it.  Same ladder from two different perspectives.  In the first photo it looks fairly flat and straight; you cannot really tell that it twists as it reaches towards the sky.  In the second photo you can see more of the shape of the ladder and realize that is twists and has lots of angles and shape.  It was hard to find an angle that "found the form" so while I don't think these photos are "frame me and hang me on the wall" photos, I did enjoy the exercise of looking for form and, I think, finding it.  My family suggested taking the photo from above but THAT was not an option.

Chore:

Given the wet and mild winter and spring in our area there has been a lot of growth in the vegetation around our house and not many opportunities to get outside to take care of it.  Since it has started warming up, we have been focusing our energy on the front yard.  By the time we get around to this giant weed it will be a real "Chore" to remove it.  Yes, our kitchen window is the usual 4 feet or so up, not a less terrifying 6 inches from the ground.

Beads:

This picture is from my archives because I do not have ANY beads in my house.  Ummmm, except for those tiny little beads you put onto forms and then iron to melt into carefully designed creations, but I wasn't willing to get them out with my two year old around--even for the sake of the hunt.

Front Page News:

Check out my real life blog for the complete story.

FYI--I did not use any collages.  For most of them, I decided what size of picture I wanted, created a new document, cropped the pictures to the size that would fit, ran Painted Moon rounded edges on white, moved the picture to the document, arranged and then added text.  On the newspaper page I did similar things, but no rounded edges on the pictures.  I have been using Photoshop for collages forever, only recently have I started editing pictures in it--who knew it could do so much?

Purple Iris

Today I am joining a summer photo meme called "the Crazy Days of Summer."  I've been wanting a Friday challenge and this is the first week, so it seems like the perfect one to join.  Even better the first week's theme is flowers.  I love taking pictures of flowers.  Makes me wonder if I should get a macro lens instead of a 50mm for my birthday.

Follow the button to see other people's photos!



Anyway, this is my week's entry:

I am also linking this to Bumble and Light because I am following her new weekly training "How to Take a Photograph" and today she asked for photos where we break the rules of composition and still love the photo.  I'm a little nervous to link up since it implies that I KNOW the rules to break.  However, I originally cropped this photo to the rule of thirds and didn't like it--at all.  There was too much green on one side and just not enough space around the flower on the top and bottom.  I couldn't take the photo at a wider angle because it was surrounded by dying flowers.  So I might have broken a ton of other important rules or obeyed them;  I don't know.  I do know that my favorite part of the flower is smack dab in the middle of the photo and THAT is against the rules, right?

So blah, blah, blah...hope you enjoyed my Iris.  It is my favorite flower.

Week 21 good to WOW Edit Looking Up

Thursday again!  I do not know how the week goes so fast! After last weeks easy edits, I had forgotten that the problem with more than one image is how much time it can take AND how long the post can get when you do more than one edit per picture.  Good thing we learned that whole mouse over thing last week.  Now I need a mouse over that rotates through three or 4 pictures.  Well, let's make this short and get to the pictures.


Kite:

I removed the doll, cropped to the rule of thirds a little more, and brightened with several methods.  Feel free to mouse over to see the original.  

And then because I thought this might be a good shot for vignette:

I used CoffeShops Vignette action for this one.  It would be fun to have more control over size, shape, and color.

The boys:

I did some dodging to take their faces out of the shadows and tried many things to deepen the color.  Finally I did a gradient map of blue to brown and masked off of the boys faces and hands.  I also took the tree out behind Huckleberry (I went a little clone happy today) and cropped.  I wanted the boys to be more visible after Sunflower looked at the picture and said "too far away!" but I also wanted to keep the vastness of the sky so I didn't crop as close as I would for a family photo.

Okay, here is my least favorite edit.  When I started to crop, I realized I actually just don't like the composition of this photo.  However, it is flowers, so perfect opportunity for creative edits and a good photo to experiment with vignettes.

I only have PSE so I don't think I can do a curves level vignette.  However, I played around with the other tutorial.  It is basically the way the CoffeeShop action appears to make vignettes, except I have more control.  I chose to use an oval because that seemed like it would work better with this photo.  DO NOT forget the feathering--unless you want to make a frame--it makes pretty stark edges.  Then I ran PW Hearthside at lower opacity just for fun.

Huckleberry:

Closer crop, some dodging on his face, some perfect portrait stuff, and a mini-fusion.

Last, but not least, my sunflare:

I was pretty content with my sunflare SOOC.  Then I ran mini-fusion and I loved how it made the blues so deep.  However, that isn't the color the sky really was, but neither was the SOOC.  I'm torn.  Is photography about capturing what is there or creating art?  For some I know it is about art, but I don't think of myself as an artist.  However, this time...I decided to go with art...

So I added some texture and some text.  Kim Klassen's Stained Linen--a wonderful texture.

Happy Thursday!  Be sure to hop on over to Ramblings and Photos to see everyone else's edits.