Coquina

Linking up with Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday.  This week’s theme:  Color.

Tiny rainbows:  Donax variabilis, aka Coquina

Coquina (d. variabilis) are abundant on the beaches in Southwest Florida.  Although they are everywhere, I am always taken with the variety of colors and patterns in these little shells.  The bivalves are edible (these were just the shells of the little creatures), but I’ve heard that they are not very tasty!  They’re so tiny, I would never have the patience to shuck enough to make even a small appetizer.

This image was layered with one layer of Kim’s texture kk_0603 with Blend mode of Multiply at 15% opacity, masked off of the shells.  There was already plenty of texture in the wood (love that grain!), but the texture helped the tone a bit along the edges.

 

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote …

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

First Signs of Spring

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
(That slepen al the nyght with open eye)
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

~ Geofrey Chaucer

Linking up with Texture Tuesday.   A few layers of Kim Klassen’s texture kk_3303_2 and one of kk_cherish (which mostly was masked out of the final image).    As always, I appreciate your feedback on this image.

Texture Tuesday: Pop Goes the Color!

Linking up again with Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday link party.  Today’s theme was any photo with a pop of color.   On this grey winter day, I immediately thought of flowers.   I took this photograph last month while in Florida.  While the photo is striking on its own without any texture, I couldn’t resist using it for this week’s Texture Tuesday submission. Not with that POP of gorgeous yellow!

Lyrical Orchid

My post-processing “recipe”:

Did slight adjustment to color balance in ACR.  Brought into Elements; cropped photo  and did a few adjustments to “shine” a little more light on the bloom.   Added two of Kim’s textures with blending mode of Soft Light — Awaken and PlasterSquared2.   Masked the center of the flower to remove those textures.   I added two textures to create  the frame — PlasterSquared2 and Sunkissed.  Placed these behind the photograph so that only the parts “framing” the original image were visible.   Merged all layers and then added Kim’s texture Sonnet_2 over the entire image.  I copied the textured layer, changed   blending mode to Multiply and then removed the portion of the texture over the image.  I thought I was done, but I wasn’t satisfied with the yellow color, so I brought the image into Snapseed and using a control point over the center of the bloom, I increased the saturation.

What I like about this image:

I like the close crop on the flower.   Close-ups of flowers always reveal something intriguing.   Since I cropped the original image closely, I introduced a little bit of noise in enlarging the image.  The textures added, though, minimize this distraction.   I also like that “Awaken” has a few musical notes in the corners of the texture.  This blends well with “Sonnet” and together the effect was my inspiration for my title:  Lyrical Orchid.

Mangrove Morning

I love shooting sunsets.  I’m never quite satisfied with the images I make, so I keep trying.  Since every sunset is different, there is always a reason to keep trying to capture that perfect image.

Sunrise, though, is a different story. Why?  Because the sun gets up much earlier than I do!  Still, on my last day of vacation, I decided to stumble out of bed, grab some coffee and my tripod and head towards the southeastern side of the island.   I thought I could get a cool shot from the west side of a bridge, looking over the bay towards the mainland.   When I got to the bridge though, it was clear that I should have checked my coordinates and where the sun would be rising.   I knew that the island was not positioned towards true north, but I didn’t expect the sun to be off towards what I generally think of as west.

I headed further down the intercoastal road.  In about a mile, the road curved left and I realized that the sun was once again “back” where I thought it should be — quickly rising in the east over the estuary.   I had just enough time to set up before it poked its early bird bright yellow self over the mangroves.

Early Morning Mangrove

Linking up again for Kim Klassen’s Texture Tuesday.  Today’s theme:   use at least one layer of Kim’s texture Minus43.   She named this texture for the temperature the day she created it.   Based on the name, it doesn’t seem right to use on a photograph taken a warm sunny day where the mercury “dipped” into the 80’s.  But, it was perfect for this image.

I started by combing two identical shots, taken at different shutter speeds, in Elements using the PSE feature for combining based on exposure.   After a little additional reworking (like removing a pesky, ugly hi-rise building on the other side of the water), I applied Minus 43 with a blending mode of Hard Light, Opacity 50%.   I copied this layer, again at 50% & removed it over the mangroves.  I didn’t think that looked quite right, so I changed the first layer to Multiply, 40% & combined both layers.  I copied it — again! — Multiply 15% and combined all layers.   I added a pink tint (Hard Light, 20%), then added Kim’s texture 1301 as an Overlay at 25%.   I removed most of both these layers, keeping only a portion over the sky, then merged.   I copied the merged layer (Mulitply, 25%) and removed most of it leaving a somewhat rectangular darkened area framing the photo.  Added my signature and Voilá!

I thought that this was an interesting image without the texturing, but I also had fun adding it, giving the image a softer look.  The sky reminds me of a watercolor done with a slightly dirty brush.   The texture also added a bit of green — which was good, but I lost some of the pink colors, so I added the pink tint.   The combined exposures also made the water a little too blue.  It looked like swimming pool water!  So, adding the textures and the pink helped to bring the water back to a more natural looking shade.  Although it took me a lot of playing around with various settings and masks, I like the end result.