tricks

I thought I would share with you some quick, free Photoshop actions that I have in my bag of tricks for photoediting and show you what a few of them can do with one photo.

Here's my unedited photo of sunrise on our last day at the beach last week:

The first action is from Addicted to Design. This is a sample of one of the variations of their free Lomo action:

I don't remember buying an action, but I also have their Velviator action, so I guess I did. This is the highest impact of the versions that come with that set:

Now, those two actions are great and all, but, as you can see, you get some very dramatic effects with them. Usually what I am looking for in an action is one that can just tweak some contrast and color so that I have pictures quickly fixed up for digital scrapbooking. This is where The Pioneer Woman's free actions simply rule. I often use one called Boost to just fix up a photo a smidge. Another couple of the many great actions in her sets are Fresh & Colorful:

and Lovely & Ethereal:

These are especially nice because you can run a couple of them and use different opacities and get just what you want. 

If you want to learn more about Photoshop and what all it can do, try some tutorials instead. A couple of my favorites are this HDR tutorial, which gives real dramatic results and will teach you a few things in the process: 

and this Dave Hill tutorial, which is not as impressive on scenery as it is on people*:

So, those are just a few of my tricks. I'm not telling which combination of these and/or other bits of knowledge of mine were used to get the results at the very top of the post. It's not that I'm holding anything back...it's just that I'm not sure what combination of actions and other tools I used to get there at this point. That's the way it goes with these things. You need to use everything at your disposal to get just what you want. That's kind of a good life lesson, actually.

*I don't recommend this on people over 30 or less than 80, by the way...not too flattering.

using it all up

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'.-Erma Bombeck

I started this blog in March of 2011 when I was working through The Artist's Way with a group of women at my church. I have had a blog...or two or three...for several years now, but this one was inspired by my work in that book which encourages us to find our inner artist and to let her thrive.

If my friend Kelley is reading: you can stop rolling your eyes now.

Anyway, after some thought I decided I wanted a place to share my photography and my writing. I was going to break away from an earlier blog I had diligently written for years but which was of no interest to any one other than myself since all I did was drone on and on about my fitness and diet ups and downs.

Please notice, I'm not sharing the link to that snoozer of a blog anywhere here.

When looking for a name for this blog, I found the quote above by humorist Erma Bombeck. Honestly, I was surprised to find such a serious quote from the woman I had previously admired for this witty observation:

They say you can tell how exciting your life is by the hour you get into your nightclothes. 

Sometimes we have to change our pajamas because we dribbled our dinner onto them.

*rimshot*

The quote for which my blog is named truly resonates with me and the path I have been on for the last couple of years. I'm really striving to inventory the gifts God gave me and figure out how He would like me to employ every one of them. 

And, let me tell you, it's a challenge when you realize that you are such a strange collection of things. (An accountant and a photographer? Really?) I'm starting to appreciate this set of gifts, though, and can truly start to say:

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! You workmanship is marvelous--how well I know it.

-Psalm 139:14 (NLT)

  I am taking part in BlogHer's NaBloPoMo this month...30 straight days of blogging. Join me, won't you? There are prompts to get you started and everything.

Day Twelve: Art(?)

Hipstamatic: Helga Viking, Blanko
Collage made with Diptic
These are my Sips n Strokes paintings (clockwise from top left):

Aubie, who was done on a night where you could paint Aubie or Big Al. I was with a friend who painted Big Al. I did nothing more than we were told, which was basically coloring in the line drawing that had already been sketched on the canvas. My friend painted the whole stadium behind hers. I'm not one for stepping out there like that because I never know when to stop and I end up with a big mess.

Funky Circles, which was done one day with Lizzie. You can read about it and see her painting here on my scrapbook page about it. I think if they hadn't told us it was time to leave, Lizzie would still be painting on hers. She loved adding and adding and adding to it.

Funky Squares, which was my first painting at Sips n Strokes. I didn't enjoy this too much because there was too much left for me to decide...colors, fabric pieces, patterns in each square. Blah. Aubie was way more my speed.

Funky Tree, (see a theme with their painting titles, by the way?) which I did one day with Lizzie, a friend of mine and my friend's daughter. Literally. We were the only ones there. That was kind of cool. And, my friend? She didn't even paint a tree. She painted something totally different. TOTALLY different.

The best Sips n Strokes painting in our home is this one painted by my husband, who went with a group of women he was in grad school with one night at least a year before I went the first time and right as Sips n Strokes was getting started:


Hipstamatic: Helga Viking, Blanko
He claims the puff paint that one of the instructors did on the painting is what makes it look so good. I think he is underselling what a really nice job he did...painting flowers in a room full of women.

Taking something up

As I remember it, my mother was made to do every extracurricular activity there was when she was a girl and, not wanting to force things on my sister and I like she had had them forced on her, she never made us do anything.

A piano teacher lived two doors down from us and we never took lessons. Never took dance classes. Never played sports.

The only thing she made us do was learn to swim and that was probably because my sister jumped, without fear, into a hotel swimming pool when she was a toddler and scared the bejeezus out of my mom. After that, we took swimming lessons every summer.

The only thing I ever did do was take tennis lessons because it was the only thing I ever asked to do. I'm sure it was because the tennis court backed up to the swimming pool and, heck, why not take some tennis lessons while waiting on my sister's swim lesson to be finished?

I'm sure my mother asked us me if I wanted to do things. I'm certain she would have asked me about the piano lessons. But, what child says "YES!" to that when all she has seen is her friends dragging in the door of the piano teacher's house after school and hearing them complain about practicing?

Not this one.

As a result, I am now a 42 year old woman taking dance lessons at the studio where my daughter goes. Yup. I finally realized that I wished I had danced and decided to do something about it last year. I even danced, dressed up ridiculously as a rabbit, in last May's recital and will dance again this May. In just a year, I've matured from the lady who had to down a glass of wine before attending class to the one who won't curl up in the corner when some of the teenage dancers are in class with me.

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Several years ago, the local university was switching out all of their practice pianos for new ones. We ended up with one of their old pianos and I bought a basic adult piano book so I could start to learn to play. I tried it a couple of times and it was frustrating.

I want to play Clair de Lune. I swear, that is my goal. And there is nothing in that book that is even close, let me tell you.

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Today is Ash Wednesday, which always makes me think back to my upbringing in the Lutheran church and the feeling it left me with that I need to give something up for Lent. I thought about it this morning as I wrote my morning pages. I didn't really strike upon anything that seemed meaningful (chocolate? Diet Coke?) or doable (TV? being passive agressive?) to give up, so I decided what I needed to do was to take up something instead.

Maybe it's time to pick up that beginning piano book again and start the work to get to Clair de Lune. It's not like the ability to play it is just going to come to me one day. I have to work towards it.

And, really, isn't that the way it is with everything that is worth having?