Vintage Roses ~ Floral Friday!

"Fair Is The Rose..."

Friday once again, and that means flowers here at the blog. I've had a week free of any work, which means you seen some photos manipulated, played with or just were wonky enough on their own straight out of camera. Just because it was fun to do so!

Today's image is brought to you by the letter R... wait... sorry, mild flashbacks of Sesame Street, ahem. Today's image provoked me to edit with something aged in mind once again. Sepia shots of old rose gardens with some hand tinting came to mind for this one. Taken in the right light, roses have this lovely crisp texture to them so I was dying to try finding something to compliment that in editing. I found it when I used a duplicate layer to add a sepia conversion and used curves on the same layer to pop the mid tones and highlights. I dropped the opacity on that duplicate till I liked how much color showed through for effect. Another layer was applied with a textured old canvas effect, and I used the eraser tool to soften and remove some of it especially around the roses. Layers were flattened, and a bit of high pass sharpen applied at the hard setting which suited the overall look.

I think I may have to print this one as a canvas... makes me think of some of the old postcards that my grandmother collected way back in the day. And I think I may do a series for cards, which will finally be going up on the website for ordering within the week.

Thanks for the Friday ramble... get out there and capture your vision folks!

Fiddler's Delight ~ Mono Monday

"Fiddlers Lullaby"

This is a bit unusual for me, but today's Mono post is a little more rich in tones than most... but still monochromatic so no worries. This is another shot from the series I took while learning more about using my flash off camera. Back when I had free time. But I digress.

Sepia effects aren't my all time favorite type of monochromatic conversion, but sometimes the subject dictates how you edit. And whether it's not my favorite use of converting to mono or not, the warm tones of the sepia really bring life to this image more than any B&W conversion would. Simply put, it suits. What I love about sepia is that it starts with such a flat effect, but put her through curves in editing, add some clarify filter at 4%, and finish it with Nik's Skylight Filter which makes highlights sing, and hues and tones brighten even just at 25% on the slider... and you have the perfect portrait of the ol' girl. At least that's my humble opinion.

Sepia certainly has it's uses... when I first started out in photography the trend was toward overusing it on everything, much like the HDR trend of today but I'll not get started on that rant... yet. But your digital darkroom allows sepia to really make a statement these days. Oh, and P.S.... if your camera lets you switch to sepia while taking the picture, avoid this and do it later in processing. Then you have all the control instead of your camera making choices for you. But again, I digress.

Sepia. Not my ultimate favorite way to edit, but beautiful none the less given the right subject.

Thanks for the ramble folks! And hey, only 2 more days to vote for this blog at Circle of Moms (the big pink button is over at the side, please click to vote!) and then we'll see where we land when the dust settles! Thanks to all of you who have been voting so faithfully... you're the best cheerleaders a gal could have!