My Beautiful Sister

Promises is both sister and friend to me. We've been through a lot together. We practically know each other inside and out...and we are still friends - the best of friends!

She is beautiful too - inside and out - and even when she doesn't think that about herself. While snapping photos in November I took this picture of her. I love it! She isn't thrilled with it. Says she wishes she was smiling.

Maybe I love it because I see more than just her profile. I see my friend. I see gentleness and strength. I see a woman who has gone through ups and downs in life...holding onto the hand of our Father and is able to testify to His faithfulness. I see a mother who adores her children and an aunt whose nephews consider her another 'mom'. I see the beauty that she is...God's gracious gift.

So that's what I see in this photo...and then I had to play with it. LOL

The original photo

I wanted to see what it would look like in black and white

I love this one - it brings out her highlights!

Finally I decided to try it in sepia and cropped it a bit

Truthfully...I kind of like all of them...each one depicts the beauty that Promises is.

Purple Is My Favorite Color

I know that we are nearing the end of January...very far from spring blooms. But I wanted to play around with my new gift and that trumps all. This particular bloom is near and dear to my heart. It was from the iris' that my mom had planted at our Long Island home.

This is my original shot. Again, I think it looks pretty good but I wanted to see what this new program could do.

This is a result of me playing with the color.

In this one I played with the hue/saturation and the lighting effects. It wasn't doing much for me. It's pretty but the color was being bleached out.


So I went back to the enhanced color and tried one of the artistic actions - watercolor. I don't know if you notice much of a difference so I cropped it....

Here is the watercolor - up close and personal. Can you tell I'm having fun. Now I have to take a break and get back to work!

Playing with Pictures

Okay...so I finally took one of my Christmas gifts out of its box. What can I say - priorities. There were a lot of other pressing items that needed my attention. Technically, there still are but I just needed to take a break.

I was blessed with the gift of Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Adobe Premiere Elements 8. No it isn't the coveted Adobe CS4 but budget is important and I thought this would give me plenty to play around with right now.

Here is something I started with. It's not much...but it was fun.

I think the original picture was already pretty good...

...so I didn't play around too much. Just fiddled with the contrast a bit, then the sharpness and cropped it. I kind of like it.

Then I got a little crazy with one of my other favorite blooms...my deep purple iris. Wait until you see.