texture tuesday~serendipity

after making some changes in the hue/saturation and levels of this photo, giving it the "stormy" look i wanted, i added two layers of kim's serendipity texture: one using the soft light blend at 57% and the other using the multiply blend at 100%. am i nuts taking a rare perfect sunny day on this island and turning it grey & stormy?

here it is before i made my changes

this week kim gave us a beautiful texture to work with, called serendipity. i suppose like most things, serendipity means different things to each of us. i think serendipity is when we return to our cabin on the bay for the summer. right after we get the windows thrown open for airing, get the dead spiders swept out of the tub, get the water running again, the beds made up, and can finally sit out front and relax, listening to...nothing. silence. no cars, talking, doors closing, engines running, clocks ticking. just the quiet of being far away from everything. well okay there is the drone of the no-see-ums buzzing around our bug nets...

 i've posted this photo from last summer before, but it's a fave of mine and i didn't get a chance to take any inspiring shots this past week. the halibut tails for the kicvb chocolate lover's fling and halibut tail art auction are due soon, and that's all i've been working on for days. i'm almost done. i'm pretty sure when i am finished and it is loaded in the car to deliver to the fine kicvb folks, i will be having another serendipity-ous moment...

until then, go visit all the other beautiful photography from around the world by clicking here!

texture tuesday time~

this week's challenge was to use two of kim's textures, sweet treat and silence. i used two layers of sweet treat, one on multiply at 50% and one on multiply at 100%. i also used two layers of silence, one on soft light at 100% and one on multiply at 100%.  i like the grainy, aged look it created, covering up the stains of age on memere's doily.

here's the photo au natural:

i know. it's like eating a bowl of plain shredded wheat while the person

across the table is having stuffed french toast from ihop.

give me texture.

i love texture tuesdays. i love textures. textures are like spa treatments for my less-than-professional, non-perfect, poorly-lit photos. thank you sweet kim klassen. really, if you are reading this and haven't yet checked out kim's site yet, click here for a visit. viewing her images are like a little vacation for your eyes. and click here to see what other folks are doing with kim's textures. it's a whole other vacation! and proof that spring is blooming somewhere...

meet our evening visitors~

we've always had a group of deer wandering around the woods surrounding our house. they weren't around much after our neighbors cut down all their trees (i am still bitter and they still haven't gotten the xmas fruit cake from me since.) during the winter they returned to the neighborhood and i'm loving how at home they've made themselves in our yard. they are smart enough to not visit until after gerry is asleep. i think they can pick up on the vibe that the man sees anything with fur and four legs as a potential meal.

 there are five in the "family,"  three does, who are the shy ones in the group, a beautiful buck, and this little guy~ i call him tippy. his little hoofs click on the driveway, sometimes that's how i know they're here. i think he is a yearling. he lost his spots finally, but he still has that cute baby face. and look at that belly!

tippy's not very afraid of anything, he and my pal duffy the small white dog are working on a type of friendship that involves a lot of you-chase-me then-i'll-chase-you around the back yard. duffy takes it as long as he can then comes in and guards his food dish. you never know, tippy might be able to fit in the doggy door...

look at this guy! isn't he handsome? i took all these photos out of my really dirty windows (i can't reach to wash the outsides of them on that side of the house...and our ladder is old and scary) so everything is muted by the dust. but he really is beautiful. he follows along behind tippy every night while the gals have some girl time down back.

i'll be sad when the grass greens and they move on for the summer.

time flies...texture tuesday already~

this week kim shared a beautiful texture she named "silence."

(i love silence, pure calm quiet. i have enough rattling around in my head all the time without adding extra sounds to it. lately my pet noise dislike is the rapid-fire tic-tic-ticking of my youngest son's texting. might as well be fingernails on a chalkboard....)

the day i took this photo was a wonderful calm day, no breeze, not even a seagull cry.
just a bit of splash as the slack tide slapped on the rocks.
the next day it was blowing 50 and pelting snow...

we live on a wondrous island.

i used two layers of silence, 100% soft light & 42% multiply.
 i also blurred the whole image with a gaussian blur at 27%.

visit all the other texture tuesday participants here. you will be amazed...

texture tuesday with ms. kim

i took this photo last spring at the oregon coast. i'd never seen anyone fish into rolling surf like this before.

 i watched him for about an hour. never did catch anything.
but it was a beautiful day.

i adjusted the hue/saturation levels and added two layers of kim's warmsun texture;

one at softlight, 100% and the other at multiply, 73%.
check out all the other amazing texture lovers here!