only six words.

Day 3 of Beyond Layers II with Kim Klassen. Todays idea was to use only 6 words to describe one aspect of yourself.

I tried to get out of my comfort zone and do something a little different for me. 

In the first image above I used 3 ornaments that sit on my wifes dresser and shot the image using a white board background. I applied two of Kim's textures, Poetic and Charmed, and a cloud texture of my own.

The second image below is a bit more me as my second name is "procrastination" according to my wonderful wife....... and she is right...... most of the time. Here I used one single texture of Kim's, "wonderful magic - scripted", using a screen mode.

The third image using the idea of expressing how I feel was one of whistling kite on a plain blue sky. I used Kim's texture" Oh My' on two layers, one as overlay and one as multiply mode. I desaturated both layers so that the blue of the original sky comes through.

I wanted to express the idea of freedom and aiming high in terms of expression and artistic/photographic outcomes. Wouldn't it be great to fly high literally?? "Fly high on winds of a whistling kite" did not really fit the bill so I used a little posting license here.

Just Enough

Awaken

An image of a lilly taken at the local Botanic Gardens here in Adelaide. I thought the image was quite appropriate for the name of Kim's texture and in line with the theme of simpliciity and "just enough". 

Just One Rose

A couple of images from week 1 of Beyond Layers with Kim Klassen. Above are the textures I have used: "Awaken" & "Evolve" from Kim and an old book cover by "playing with brushes" at Flickr.

Image #1 - Awaken.

I cropped and lightened the original in photoshop/lightroom - paying particular attention to the "glow" of the yellows and the delicate shade of mauve/purple in the petals.

Once happy with the original I applied the "Awaken" texture from Kim using an overlay blending mode @ 56% opacity - no need to mask any of this I think.

Image #2 - Just One Rose

This is a little more complicated to get the effect that I was pleased with - keeping in mind that I wanted a different feel than the first image.

This image of a single rose had some nice pinks and yellows and a nice dark background to set the flower off.

I applied the two of Kim's textures using a blending mode of soft light @ 80% opacity to both layers. I masked these layers so the texture was applied only to the background. I choose Kims' texture "Evolve" because of it's nice texture, light centre and good vignette to the outer part of the image. 

I then applied the layer with the "old book" using a multiply blending mode at 85% - no masking.

On yet another layer I duplicated the image and converted it to B&W left it at normal blending mode but at 23% and masked out the rose leaving the muted effect on the background only.

A little long winded but that is what we do when we are in a creative mood. :)

Cheers

Andy