Random Photo Catch-up Post 2-- DONE!

I'VE FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH MY EDITING! Kind of. At least for this challenge, anyway... -bites lip-
Okay, on to the randomness.

219/365; Aug 18, 2011; Playing with an angel statuette

220/365; Aug 19, 2011; Barely edited flower in a neighbor's yard

221/365; Aug 20, 2011; Gotta love restaurant signs.

222/365; Aug 21, 2011; Bee and wildflowers on a photo walk

232/365; Aug 31, 2011; Otherwise unedited HDR-style tomatoes given to us by a friend

233/365; Sept 1, 2011; Duck? Vintage duck? Taken from the car

234/365; Sept 2, 2011; "The Mile-High Club"

235/365; Sept 3, 2011; Weed in my dog's yard

236/365; Sept 4, 2011; "Think she can see me?"

237/365; Sept 5, 2011; Um... random neighbor's lawn ornament.

238/365; Sept 6; Really interesting texture on a bridge

239/365; Sept 7; Must have had a texture complex those days... Another *ahem* interesting texture

240/365; Sept 8; A wall that must have looked pretty cool to me at the time.

241/365; Sept 9; The view from my seat every night

242/365; Sept 10; I love my friends already. Even If I only met them within the past month. LOL

243/365; Sept 11; Speaking of people I love, these are my favorite people in the world!!! My grandparents. <3

244/365; Sept 12; Creepy little toy that my dog hates. (Small because it freaks me out.)

245/365; Sept 13; Speaking of my dog (LOL! Coincidence, I promise), this is her waiting for Gma to get home. So tyoot.

246/365; Sept 14 TODAY! YAY!; Awesomely distressed foam head in my bedroom.

Okay, hopefully I'll keep up with the editing a little better from now on. But I doubt it, so don't hold your breath... LOL

Template Tutorial: Part 2

Last time, I taught you  how to make a very simplistic, basic template using shapes and clipping masks. Now, it's time to spice it up!


Find a texture that you really like and place it over the background layer. I chose this texture by DyingBeautyStock because it seems universal enough for my needs.

If you want to change the color of the texture, you can use whatever method you want. Personally, I'm going to use the non-destructive method of adding a Solid Color fill layer over the texture in whatever color I want and setting its blending mode to Hue. That way I can change the color again any time I want in the future.

Add a layer mask to the rectangle layer. (Layer -> Layer Mask -> Reveal All) Use an interesting brush-- in my case, a grunge brush-- that is black and set to 100% Opacity to brush away the side in whatever fashion you please. Diagonally tends to be most interesting. Vary the opacity and the brush itself to make a fun, unique edge. Don't lose too much, though! You don't want to lost your background photo. If it helps, you can hide the overlapping layers so that you can see more of what you're doing.

Experiment with this method on the other three shapes too, but take care to remember not to mask too much away. Keep your black brush's opacity low.

Just for fun, I'm going to add a thin rectangle across the bottom to add sort of a ribbon effect.

The rest is up to you! Embellish where you want, adding borders or text or even other little shapes to make the template your own. I personally recommend changing the layer styles so that the photos and the background texture will match better. In my case, I changed the blend mode of the main shapes to Hard Light and then added a border called a Stroke to everything, including the ribbon.

I also changed the ribbon's blend mode to Darken and darkened the edges of the whole thing by creating a new layer, using a soft black brush to paint over the edges, and then changing the blend mode until I was satisfied. Here is my finished product minus text.

Remember that text follows the same basic rules as photos: play with the blending options and don't be afraid to experiment with Strokes!!! You can get some very interesting results.

Connection

Today, I made a very strange mental connection between the texture photo I snapped and a panned photo I took for my old digital photography class. The two were nothing alike, but once I tweaked their colors, the connection became a little clearer. Still, it's rather strange. Don't you think?

The Texture

Ye Olde Pan

Oddly enough, I just checked dailyshoot.com to find that today's challenge was to take a photo that emphasizes the horizon. Ha!

Spent the day editing photos rather than taking them yet again. I'd share, but I'm wiped. You'll see the best of them when I finish up this particular shoot! Goodnight. :)

Boxed In

A texture for you folks! Have fun. ;)

Down in the... Ditches?

Today was a great day followed by an awful night. I am very excited that I got a box full of photography supplies   I bought last week. RC paper galore!!! And my grandmother got the car fixed, so no more annoying hum all the way to Photography class. Yay!

However, on my way to class, there was something gigantic on the expressway that none of us saw until the car was about to run over it. It not only gave us a flat tire, but also bent our rims. Needless to say, I didn't make it to class seeing as we had no spare and help didn't come for an hour.

Then, to make matters worse, we couldn't get up the steep hill to our home with that donut tire they gave us, so my frustrated grandfather backed off the hill too fast and went right into a ditch. Not just any ditch, though. No, this was a ditch filled with knee-deep water, a streetlight in front of us, and a fire hydrant within four feet of our tail end. The towtruck drivers took almost 2 hours to get there, and then they managed to hit that hydrant with our car. The poor poor car.

I almost forgot to take my photo of the day because I was so frustrated. I did manage to get a semi-interesting texture photo, though. I combined it with an in-camera image overlay from yesterday's set to get this. Hopefully you'll get some use out of it.

Time to go cuddle up in bed with my teddy and my feather pillow (yes, I still cuddle with both of those. It's been a rough night. Leave me alone!). Goodnight, loves!


OH, by the way, I finally found out what model my Nikon SLR is. It's an FM. Good to know! lol

Makeup

Hey guys! I didn't forget you yesterday. It was my birthday, so I had kind of a busy day, and then by the time I got to take my picture, I was way too tired to edit it. Heck, I was too tired to really try taking a decent photo as it were. I experimented with a few things, but nothing was working out. It would be awesome from where I stood, but missing something in the frame. This is the best I could do.

On the plus side, I finally realized how to make my photos save with the colors they are in Photoshop. I've been so frustrated since I first started shooting in RAW because my photos are missing a lot of the vibrancy they have in my Photoshop.

In other news, I have a new acoustic electric guitar!!! It's a beauty, and its body is slimmer than the average acoustic, which is great for me because I have such short arms and such a large bust. Playing is much more comfortable now! :D Maybe I'll photograph that tonight. ;)

Recess Over

Alright, guys, I'm so sorry for being this late. I was playing! It was a cruddy day for reasons I'll explain later, and Sandra decided to let me play with some of her old photos of my beautiful best friend Khalila. It really cheered me up (thanks, Sandra!). This is a bit of what came out of it.

After regular processing, I used the same filters as my harlequin photos to give these pictures a completely different feel just for kicks.

Speaking of the harlequin photos, they show up in yesterday's shot!

Taken with the Minolta x-700

One of the first things you'll probably notice about the photo is that it's extremely contrasty. That brings me to the reason that the day was less than pleasant for me: my two rolls of 36-exposure film were damaged nearly past the point of salvation.

First, the lab ran out of fixer, then it ran out of fixer remover-- neither of which would have happened had the employee with the keys to the stock room bothered to show up for work today--, so we had to improvise when it came to chemistry.

Next, the timer in my darkroom went haywire midway through developing. Naturally, there were no more timers. Again, I had to improvise.

Then, when my film was finally done washing, I noticed that some of it was extremely gray, and other parts were almost completely clear. Come to find out there was a CRACK in my film canister. The film was getting exposed to light throughout the entire developing process.

I'm sad to say that these were not even close to the only problems I had in the darkroom today. However, I tried to make due, and now I am sure I'll be able to salvage most of my film on Thursday with any luck.

Definitely need some luck. LOL

This morning's quick attempt at filling the frame before class.

Hard-Lit Harlequin

I've felt very blue today. It's been a tough one, especially with all the pain I've been in, but photography has gotten me through the day. If I wasn't taking a hot bath, I was taking photos or reading about photography. There's a silver lining for every dark cloud, right? :-)

Makeup: Black eye pencil.  Textures: Wrinkled paper and warm concrete from OnOne PhotoTools software.

Stone Cold

That's pretty much me today. Even my photographs were coming out cold and lifeless, so I gave up. These are the best I could muster today. Back to that statue at my school.

Maybe tomorrow?

On a lighter note, today marks the end of my first month of my daily photo challenge. :D

Mundane? Nah.

Okay, so yesterday Blogger hated me. No matter what I did, it would NOT let me even attempt to make a new post. I posted the photo on my Facebook, but now I'm posting it here. Today's photo will have its own post later. :)

The challenge was to make an interesting photo of something mundane and ordinary. Well, I was in school. Nothing's more mundane than that! However, there was a gorgeous piece of wall art that reminded me of a dinosaur, so I decided to take a few photos of that on my way out the door. Here's my shot.

I cooled the tones because... that was just the mood I was in last night, I guess. The piece itself actually looks like rusted metal. Perhaps I'll be able to provide a better photo next week.

Vitamin C (something I desperately need)

I am getting sicker by the day instead of better, and school starts tomorrow. Lame, but at least I'm still in a decent mood! That, and class doesn't even start until 7:30 at night. WOO!

Anyway, today's challenge was, ironically, texture. And since I'm still in the mood for that but really not feeling up to getting up, I thought I'd photograph one of the oranges I've been munching on today using my new close-up and macro filters.

Have a great night! :D

Happy New Year!!!

Alright, so I did not post my photo yesterday. I DID take it, however. This is my girl Renee being silly in her sexy mustache. Enjoy. ;)

As for today, I technically took these before I went to bed [this morning], but considering I went to bed after 2... here they are!

First, I wanted to try out some textures. The texture itself really is just my wall. I did not manipulate anything but the color aside from the usual contrast and vignette adjustments. Originally, these were a horrible orange.

Also, I'll throw in one more photo for good measure. Hope your day was as great as mine! :D