SOOC Saturday ~ Snowdrops...

I took this just this morning. I love how these flowers seem like the perfect bridge between the winter and the spring and are almost always the first gently flower that comes up ~ often when there is still snow on the ground! :D

Of course I did edit it too ... http://bit.ly/dslqRj !!

Don't forget to get your fill of life today over on Melody's SOOC Sat/Sun! :D

You Capture - Shapes

I wasn't well on Thursday (or Friday really), but here's my late entry ~ it's called Rocky Road :D

FIX-IT-FRIDAY - NO.45 - "Blue Sky Lilo"

How chuffed was I to see my own photo up on Fix-It-Friday this week :D ~ but just because it's my photo up this week doesn't mean I can't join in ~ does it!!

Of course I have edited this before ~ back then ~ but I'm learning everyday, so I wanted to see how I could improve it today :D

Here's today's edit, which I must confess I sprung off one of my earlier ones, to save me recloning her arms (which I remember was a challenge at the time) ~ they were so sore last summer :(

So here's the original;

Here's an original edit;

And here's todays :D

And with a framing effect & some filtering ;

Thankyou to everyone who took the time to have a go at my photo today ~ I've loved SO MANY of the edits ~ you are all wonderful :D

To see what everyone did hop on over to iheartfaces and check her out! :D

WordPlay Wednesday #7 ~ABOVE-AMIDST

WORDS FOR THIS WEEK WERE:

THURSDAY - ABOVE

FRIDAY - BELOW

SATURDAY - BESIDE

SUNDAY - BEHIND

MONDAY - BETWEEN

TUESDAY - AFRONT

WEDNESDAY - AMIDST

I hope you had fun doing this this week ~ I'm looking forward to seeing what you all captured and how you interpreted the words :D

ABOVE

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BELOW

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BESIDE

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BEHIND

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BETWEEN

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AFRONT/INFRONT

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AMIDST

A glimpse of her tomorrows maybe ?

Time to link up and join in!

(For more details of how see HERE.)

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WORDS FOR THIS WEEK ~ SPOT THE THEME (but interpret how you choose)!

THURSDAY - GROW

FRIDAY - SIGNS

SATURDAY - LIFE

SUNDAY - BUD

MONDAY - RESTORE

TUESDAY - ALIVE

WEDNESDAY - SPRING

See you next week ~ I am especially looking forward to seeing what you come up with this week :D!!

I ♥ Faces - Week 8 - “Hands On!"

This weeks competition at I ♥ Faces is all about 'hands' (well there's a thing!!).

I love this shot I got of beautiful teenage girls' hands in conversation, and my little man joining in!

BEST SHOT - IN SEARCH OF SPRING!

I went in search of SPRING ~ there are some SIGNS! :D

above the SUNRISE, below the BLIZZARD ~ same day!

Minnie and TP had their Ultimate Girly Party last night :D

Stitch was in his element!

and the open-fire-toasted, chocolate dipped marshmallows were a BIG HIT with everyone!

SLEEP ~ what's that?!!

With 8 sugar-high 7-10year old girls in one room - I don't think so!! :D

Fix-It Friday #44 - Sweet Girl!

Original.

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Fix one

Doing my best to remember now...

• duplicated the background layer
• Used 'golden sections' to crop
• On copy layer I then adjusted in levels and curves, bringing up the darks a lot to lighten it a good deal (an over-arch curve)
• duplicated this layer and made it a screen layer with decreased the opacity.
• Added a colour layer of mid-beige, made it grain merge
• Copied beige layer and made the copy layer soft light.
• Selected around Emma and copied her then pasted her into a new transparency layer.
• High-pass sharpened this Emma layer, erased the sharpening from her face
• Copied the Emma layer
• Made a layer mask on this layer and painted around her eyes with a flesh tone (using droplet tool), then decreased the opacity to blend
• Merged her down.
• Framed using 'add a frame' script.

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Fix two

I worked straight of fix one, but added a duplicate layer, which I desaturated and lower the opacity of to bring out just a touch of colour.

I used a script for the edge effect.

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Fix Three

Working of fix two, I added to colour layer; a blue one set to soft light mode and a pinkish one set to screen. Both layers had decreased opacity to just give a slight cross process effect.

'Add a frame' script for border.

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Just quickly today, but I shall try to post up the steps later. I have a birthday party this afternoon for my girls :D.

This was all done in Gimp (no Lightroom, no PSE & NO ACTIONS!) I wanted to try to do it myself and stretch myself a little. I'm really pleased with these, but I just wish they didn't look so pixelated :(

Check back later for the step-by-step (well as much of it as I can remember anyway!).

And in the meantime check out everyone else's fixes over at FIX-IT-FRIDAY.

POST-SCRIPT ~ I've now put the photos on Flickr and linked them in that way. Hopefully they look less pixelated :D

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This one is an extra little fiddle around with Fix one (in PSE7) adding two actions with tweeks ~ 'CoffeeShop Perfect Portrait' & 'Johnna's memories of Sunshine'

I really wanted to have a go with the new CoffeeShop Sunkiss action, but I can't get PSE to see it :( I thought this photo would lend itself well to it.

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OK ~ so this evening I discovered the link to the RAW file (thanks Kelly), so I thought I'd have a quick see what I could do in Camera Raw. This is straight off from there ~ I can see the potential for this now, but I'm too tired to play anymore, and I think that's enough fixes for one day!!;

Increased the exposure, the brightness, the contrast and the recovery.

Sharpened.

Set to 'cloudy'

Set to 'camera faithful'

Cropped to a 5x7

"C'est tout!"

You Capture - KISSES

It's typical isn't it ~ the one thing I have absolutely NO shots of to use for iheartfaces last week, is the one thing Beth chooses to use for You Capture this week! For some unexplainable reason I do not have any kissy photos ~ except this ONE and even here there is no 'actual' contact captured! This was taken WAY back 0n 31st July 2005! This baby is about to turn 5 in June ~ he was about six weeks old in this shot! We are not a particularly kissy family ~ cuddles are plentiful and I kiss my children A LOT, but as I am the picture taker... The children, however, do not kiss each other or other children much at all. I shall keep my eye out for the moments, but I fear they are few and far between :(

Beth has a beautiful kiss captured on her blog this week ~ check it out! AND while you are there with YOU CAPTURE a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! :D

WordPlay Wednesday #6 ~ TOGETHER-TOMORROW

WORDS FOR THIS WEEK WERE:

THURSDAY - TOGETHER

FRIDAY - HEART

SATURDAY - RED

SUNDAY - LOVE (of course!)

MONDAY - GIFT

TUESDAY - FRIEND

WEDNESDAY - TOMORROW

I hope you had fun doing this again this week ~ I'm looking forward to seeing what you all captured and how you interpreted the words :D

TOGETHER

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HEART

This boy stole my heart ~ he still has it!!

But can you spot the heart shape in the picture?

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RED

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LOVE

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GIFT

The children & the flowers :D

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FRIEND

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TOMORROW

A glimpse of her tomorrows maybe ?

Time to link up and join in!

(For more details of how see HERE.)

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WORDS FOR THIS WEEK ~ SPOT THE THEME!

THURSDAY - ABOVE

FRIDAY - BELOW

SATURDAY - BESIDE

SUNDAY - BEHIND

MONDAY - BETWEEN

TUESDAY - AFRONT

WEDNESDAY - AMIDST

See you next week ~ I am especially looking forward to seeing what you come up with this week :D!!

I ♥ Faces - Week 7 - “I Wanna Dance!”

Not a very recent photo, and if I'd know we were going to have a dance week I'd have saved this picture, and second choice would have been THIS picture, but alas no faces :( ~ I do love the one above though, just look at their faces! ~ They were trying to learn a difficult step and having lots of fun with it :D

To see all the other dancers this week hop on over to iheartfaces :D

Yeah!!! I didn't get Top 10, but I was an 'Angie & Amy' favourite this week ~ that's good enough for me!! :D

SOOC Saturday ~ Wild Thing...

...You make my heart sing!

If you saw my 'best shot - essence' this week (in which are a couple of extra SOOC shots) you will have seen the edit of this picture's twin, but here's the SOOC, which I actually really like too! It says something of where my wild thing is at just now ~ somewhere between the boy in the tree and the man on the street!

and one more just because I love sunsets :D