Where I Stand- February

 Where I Stand in February

2/17 Photography Where I Stand

Right Now / Look Down / Your Place in the World

Today's prompt is a repeating prompt each month. My plan is to stand in the same place and take a picture looking down at my feet. Last month, it was ice and with 20 inches of snow since the beginning of the year, it's boots and snow. I can't wait until there's green grass, flowers and sandals for this prompt! And if I am in Florida, then you will be seeing water in the picture. That will be an interesting set of pictures at the end of the year. Already in a month, I am processing the pictures differently. In the picture above, there are two layers, the first is background, the second is a copy of the background, but it also lightened to brighten the snow. I then go back into that copy and "erase" the lightened boots to make them darker.

Last night I worked on organizing my files for textures and "played" with a couple of pictures and textures.  The flower is on a stone texture and I took the texture out of the pink part of the flower. I also added the fancy border. (To see more detail in the photos, left click on the photo and it will enlarge to where you can see all of the pictures from the blog larger)

This Squam Lake photo has textures from yesterday's trip to L and S's old house in Concord. I combined lined wallpaper with a patchy cement along with removing the color. Makes it look like an old fashioned photo. I am going to be looking at a lot of that wall paper in this next three weeks as I will be working there to strip it off in three of the rooms on the first floor. It's going to be interesting since we don't know how many layers and what technique will work best. It will be good exercise!

Then my last project was done tonight with this sunset from Nova Scotia. I used a gradient adjustment to give the sky more contrast. This is a technique that I would like to work more with as I notice it is hard to get skies with good definition when there is a lot of contrast and variable light.

Last night I got my last critique from the Photoshop Elements class which was the best way for me to practice and learn. One of the recurring comments was that my horizons weren't always straight. Once I heard that, I now notice it in a few of my pictures, including the sunset below. I can straighten it, but do end up losing a little bit on the sides and need to crop the picture. I do think the before picture is more accurate color wise, but I do lie the dramatic skies in the after picture.

I have a busy week ahead of me with a "play dates" set up with A and her kids, T and photos, garage to get my car fixed and checking out the wallpaper stripping set up.  Early walk in the morning tomorrow and hopefully I will be home way before the snow starts after the garage and dropping off my computer for a hard drive and memory upgrade. Keeping my fingers crossed that we can have our first Healthy Resolutions meeting at the library tomorrow evening, we have no idea of how many will be attending.