What’s Your Play no 60

I’m late playing along with Laura at Dolce Pics but I wanted to get it in anyway…

Here’s her before of this blue smoke.

And here’s what happened (per Mr. Monk).

I boosted the color slightly, then I inverted the photo. Image>Adjustments>Invert.

The background color was changed to white and the blue was changed to a rose color (colors across from the color wheel of each other).

But green is my favorite color so to get green smoke, I made a new layer, filled the color in with a green then selected “Color” on the layers palette. Voila, instant green smoke.

I know this is basic stuff for photographers out there but it was surely fun for me! See what others did at Laura’s place.

The Making Of A Star

One day, we’ll be buying her albums.

How cute is she?

She’s my best shot from last weekend.

Sister Act

My friend Miss Carol cannot be mistaken for anything other than kin to her two sisters.

They look so much alike that every year they dress the exact same way to Uncle Ed’s party.

And every  year that passes, they look more and more alike. It can confuse those who don’t know them well. And since I only see Miss Carol once a year, it can tend to confuse me.

I like to watch them interact because aside from being sisters, they are also friends. Which to me is the best gift of all.

I love these photos of them. Sometimes an image can be misleading but these photos show them exactly as they are.

It brings home this point to me. I only have one sister. And she cannot talk and interact with me like Miss Carol and her kin. At times, it’s hard to drive each week to see her and it can be a chore to set things aside to make the time to drive all the way to Virginia once a week. I’m reminded when I look at these photos that we cannot measure the value of sisterhood against logistics, traffic and chores.

Posted on Gayle’s Monday Memories.

Happy Love Thursday everyone.

Traffic Jam

I love that I live in a somewhat rural area even as close as I am to a major metropolitan city. There are farms and horses and barns. And there are these geese in the field that I’ve been snapping every time I pass them on the road.

Snow geese remind me that fall is around the corner. I’m looking for turning leaves when I walk the dog.

I’m not wishing for passing time, I’m just anticipating the season around the corner.

I’m On The Cover Of Glamour Magazine

Lizzie Miller’s was posted here but I removed it.
The girl wanted to know why there is a photo of a naked lady on my site.
You can still see her if you follow the link to Glamour magazine fitness blog.

Actually, it’s not me. It could be me and though I’m way too modest to do something like this, I admire this woman for putting herself out there. It is who we are and what we look like. At least what I look like.

I’m not sure I understand the “controversy” over putting a plus sized woman on the cover of the magazine. The fact that she has no clothes on doesn’t faze any0ne apparently. If she was a nude size zero, no one would have said anything about it.

And here’s the link to Glamor Magazine’s article about her. She’s beautiful n’est-c pas?

August 30, Proverbs 28:1

“The wicked man flees though no one pursues,
but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”
Proverbs 28:1

Sounds like a Chinese proverb doesn’t it?

Tuk Tuk is very brave.

Fix-It Friday On Saturday ~ Beauty

I fell in love with this little girl. It made me wish for a moment that my own little girl was a girly girly at this age, but she wasn’t and she’s great the way she is with her horse-lovin’ ways.

Anyway…

Here she is after…

I loved the dress, but truthfully, I didn’t like the wall. So many colors going on. I also felt it gave her skin a funny tint. I didn’t know how to fix the color issues so I made the whole thing black and white. I used a plugin called Very-Vintage-6-by-Jenny that I found somewhere on the internet. It put a texture and a border on the photo that I liked but there was a very awful looking orange background which I promptly cropped out.

I found the invert tool this week on Photoshop and I’ve been playing with it constantly, using it on everything!

I didn’t want texture on her arms or her face so I used the lasso tool to lasso her upper body. Then I made a layer mask and inverted the layer. It was really cool. I made sure my original layer was selected so you see this…

The exposure on her arms is uneven so I tried to even it out a little by dodging and burning it. It helped a little bit and I’m sure if I spent more time on it, it could have come out better. I then flattened the image and ran a gradient layer on top. I added a little contrast, not much and voila!

I know a true photographer would have put a gradient layer on first before the texture layer but…one day I’ll be a real photographer:)

In any case, I like it better in back and white. She’s one beautiful girly girl.

See what everyone else is doing at iHeartfaces. Very fun!

ʎɐpıɹɟ ɐɥolɐ ʎʞɐǝɹɟ oʇ ǝɯoɔlǝʍ

“¿puǝʞǝǝʍ sıɥʇ unɟ ɹoɟ ƃuıop noʎ ǝɹɐ ʇɐɥʍ”

˙sıɥʇ sı uoıʇsǝnb ʎɐpıɹɟ ɐɥolɐ ʎɯ

˙˙˙ǝɹns ɹoɟ ʎɐpıɹɟ ʎʞɐǝɹɟ s,ʇı

˙ʇxǝʇ ɹnoʎ dılɟ oʇ ʞuıl looɔ sıɥʇ ǝɯ ʇuǝs ǝʞıɯ puǝıɹɟ ʎɯ ‘ǝɹǝɥʇ ʎǝɥ

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If you can read my question above, you can answer it for Aloha Friday!

Have a great weekend y’all.

Oh, and if you want to flip your text and freak out your friends, go here.

I’m Hooked On Sadao Watanabe

Years ago, while living in Japan, I came to love an art store in the little town in Northern Japan where we lived. It was called Kanda’s BOQ. They sold original art by Japanese artists and I started collecting little pieces, one by one.

One of the artists I loved was Sadao Watanabe. Mr. Watanabe died while we were there and the price of his original art of course increased substantially. However, I was fortunate enough to have bought a few pieces before that happened.

Mr. Watanabe’s subject matter was religious in nature. However, at the time, I was not truly a “religious” person, nor I did I practice Christianity like I do now. I was what you would call, a new Christian. I just loved this color and the abstract nature of his pieces, not knowing that they are all based upon stories of the Bible.

I purchased a piece for my friend who was getting married. It was this one of Noah’s ark. Years later, after returning to the States, I visited her home in New Jersey and I saw it hanging up on her wall. I was touched to know that she cherished it that much to put it in a prominent place. She said to me that her sister-in-law knew Watanabe’s art right away. I didn’t know that he had a following outside of Japan so I was again very touched.

This one is mine by the way.

I don’t know where you can purchase Sadao Watanabe’s art now except on eBay and in various places on the internet. Of course, I would travel back to Japan and visit Kanda’s if I could. But though his art lives on with his wife and son, an original by the master is harder to find.

So I cherish these that I have in my powder room. To me, they speak not only of great art, but of my time in Japan which I always look back upon fondly.

Posted on Julia’s Hooked on Houses.

August 28, One Big Happy Family

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