Tea Roses?

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE FRESH FLOWERS?

Well you could dig around in your collection of fake flowers, if you have one. If you don't, I would highly suggest that you get at least a small collection.

There are many stores which carry artificial flowers and of course, there are the thrift stores. Also Hobby Lobby sometimes offers really good prices for their wide selection of flowers. Of course there are many flowers which are highly expensive - but you can use them over and over and you really don't have to go the expensive route.

The above image was taken to help me beat the winter blues and to help calm my soul. My father was exhibiting signs of a type of dementia which made it necessary that someone always was home with him. And photography was an easy outlet to help my mind escape even though I was at home as a care giver.

I had purchased some depression glass at a local antique store and since the above pieces actually did pretty well in matching in color, I decided to photograph them with some fake roses which kinda went with the color scheme.

I place everything on white material so I could easily work with the image after I got it into the computer.

After I chose the above layout and got it into the computer, I found a background I had earlier worked up and made it a layer. I then worked with the image and the layer and finally got that "I can live with this" result. I then went into Photoshop Elements 3 and used a special effect to get the above final result.


Challenge which is ongoing:

Keep in mind to be at least somewhat on the lookout for good buys on artificial flowers.

Wedding Dress and White Roses

WELL HERE IT IS - THE PROMISED IMAGE

The past couple of weeks I've posted images I did while playing around with some curtains with white roses on them, real white roses, and a white crock.

During the month of May in 2002 I did the above image and decided that was the one I liked the most.

Then because my boyfriend loved roses, I used the above image as a birthday card for him.

Then on Memorial Day we got engaged!

In the background you can see some material which is wrapped behind and beside the crock of flowers. That is a used wedding dress which was given me in the early 90's. And I used that as MY wedding dress.

I know it is fairly common for people to print out their own wedding invitations. So, I worked on the image quite a bit and printed out my own invitations. However, MY wedding invitation had my own wedding dress on it!


Challenge for today:

If you have anything which pertains to a wedding, try photographing it.

Blue, Orange and Green

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF FRUIT, FLOWERS, BOWELS, AND COLORS

As far as I know there are NO instructional books written on the placement of items in a still life image. Everything is by trial, error, experiments, and just keeping at it.

I thought the above colors would go well together.

It was the "how do I place everything together" which was hard. So I just took a whole lot of different arrangements and settled on this one. It just "felt" right.

There was no smudging done to this image. But I did soften it a little.


Challenge for today:

Try and do an image combining fruit and flowers or vegetables and flowers or a combination of them all.

City Garden

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF A FRIEND'S GARDEN!

When you are in a garden there isn't much you can do to PLAN a photo. All you can really do is try and control the lighting and try not to get anything in the image that doesn't belong there.

I have a friend who has a wonderful garden and this was just a wonderful setting!

With the daisies in the foreground and the foxglove in the background (I think) this is a delicate photo shoot.

I don't know why I did a special photo treatment with this image, but I did. By using Microsoft's PhotoDraw I did an antique look.

All in all, I am satisfied with the gentleness of the photo.


Challenge for today:

Ask your friends if they have flowers they want photographed.

Magnolia Blossoms

JUST A COUPLE OF SIMPLE BLOSSOMS!

I love magnolia blossoms. I think they are one of the prettiest tree blossoms around. But I don't have a magnolia tree and unfortunately they are one of the first blossoms to get hit hard by the freezing weather.

A friend of mine from work DID have a tree and I went over and gathered up just a few blooms.

When I got home I placed the blooms on a gold colored serving dish which really works well when I want something to have a reflection - like the above blooms.

The only changes in this image is I made the photo darker and took out my favorite smudge tool to make it more like a painting.


Challenge for today:

Find something that you can place objects on that would work well in showing reflections.

White Roses and Jewelry

PLAY AROUND WITH INEXPENSIVE JEWELRY!

I got the idea of mixing the roses and the jewelry as I was photographing the roses in the little gold colored vase (or whatever you want to call it).

And since I had the fake pearl necklace and the barrette was also made out of fake pearls.......

Well anyway, I thought the white of it all would look well with the white roses.

I actually used as the background for this picture some dark brown material which has a slight pattern on it. The material is very wide and long - probably about the same size of a twin sized bedspread.

Over a period of several days, I took many different poses of this image. Then what normally doesn't happen did. I had a hard time choosing which image to use. But I finally settled on the above photo.

After I got the image into my computer, I took a very dark background I had created and placed it as a layer on the image. I adjusted the opacity so just a slight amount of the added layer was showing.


Challenge for today:

Why not go to a thrift store and shop around for some inexpensive jewelry you could photograph.

What a Memory of Roses

WHY NOT PHOTOGRAPH YOUR PHOTOGRAPH?

A good way to make a memory a "good memory" is to photograph it.

The above image has many elements.

To start off - my husband gave me some roses.

I took many different pictures of the roses and settled on one image I liked.

I then added to the image a background that I had created and made some adjustments on the opacity of the background layer.

I then did some smudging to the image.

I then printed the image out to 11 x 14 in size. I then placed the printed out image into the frame.

The roses in the foreground were the actual roses in the "framed painting." Of course the roses were 1 or 2 days older. I can't remember how long it took me to get the picture ready to photographed in the frame.

The hardest thing about this image AFTER it was framed was getting the actual frame to be straight so I could photograph it! You can't imagine how hard it was and how many pictures I took before I settled on this one.


Challenge for today:

Keep on thinking about photographing a photograph!