During the past year I have rediscovered how much I really love to read. I have taken advantage of several of the Kindle “Deal of the Day” selections, and I found an author whose work I truly love: Susanna Kearsley. I have just started “The Shadowy Horses” and the title alone made me think of this picture that I took back in February, 2006. I converted it to black and white because of the sun flare. I didn’t know back then that you could add sun flare using Photoshop. I could clone out the sun flare, but I’ve grown to like it the way it is. I took a series of pictures trying to get a representation of back lighting for my NYIP class. I didn’t use this shot even though it was my favorite because of the lens flair and the soft focus. Since the instructor didn’t think much of what I did submit I should have gone with what I liked instead. I hope I remember that in all my artistic endeavors from now on.

I found this photo in a folder on my laptop called Blog photos, so I may have posted it before, and lost it during my software upgrade. I’m trying out the NIK software plugins and this is definitely a better version of what I may or may not have posted before.  Another thing that made all the difference was remembering to set the color profile to sRGB.  I couldn’t get the pink to display correctly in the browser until I did that.  Details, details….

Our trip to Emerald Isle was marred by intense sadness, but every day at the beach is a good day.  That has always been our creed and it was no different then.

Lake Cumberland – May 2010

I have been playing around with Photoshop CS5 (I was fortunate enough to be picked as a Beta Tester) and I have to admit I am hooked like never before.  I had wanted to do this collage several months before and never could make it work the way I wanted it to.  This image took about 30-45 minutes.  Yep, I’m loving CS5.  It’s totally worth the upgrade!