Texture Tuesday & Gerbera Daisies

At $5.00 each Gerbera daisies are an expensive flower.  Just imagine a whole bouquet of gerbera daisies! But when inspiration comes at five dollars for two weeks, it's priceless. Flowers are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. To grow weary of the patterns, textures, and color is simply not a possibility in my world, so I snap photograph after photograph trying to capture that ephemeral beauty that flowers exude.   

The above photo was processed in Elements 10 with two layers of Kim Klassen's texture, Paper love. 

Macro reveals the minute details.  The perspective changes and instead of a flower I see lashes around a soulful brown eye that beguiles bees with a song of love. 

Another textured daisy softly peers up at French text created from a brush by French Kiss.  A bit of levels adjustment and red color filter joined two layers of Kim's Grunged Up 2 texture to achieve the ethereal look I wanted.

Now spent with drooping petals and a blind eye; the Gerbera daisies gave their all for me and my camera and I am grateful.  

Linking up with....
  

The White Post

Today is Texture Tuesday with Kim Klassen.  Focus on white and use at least one of her textures on the photo. Easy, peasy...except I couldn't get the look I wanted.  ACK!  What to do, but keeping trying.

A lovely set of white English ironstone was found at a second hand shop for a mere $7.00 a few years ago and what a buy that was.  I love using them for photography, displaying them, and setting the table with them.

 

I've been experimenting with actions in Elements 10.  The Coffee Shop Blog has wonderful free actions and presets along with tutorials, so I thought why not give it a whirl.  I used Kim's shine texture over the Coffee Shop action, Faded Day Dreams. After messing about with actions for a couple days, I've discovered that they're a short-cut for a quick artistic touch, but I prefer creating my own look through trial and error when I have the time.  

 There's nothing more simple than white cotton towels with a stripe of blue, unless it's old feed sacks.  The wasband's mother used printed feed sacks as absorbent dish towels. Did you know that some grain and feed sacks came in delightful prints and patterns with flowers in a multitude of colors.

I used the #2 texture from Kim Klassen's Ben's Collection on this photo, shifted the opacity to 83% after fussing with hue/saturation, levels, and adding a layer in soft light mode.   

There's those daisies again showing up in a pitcher.  I don't believe the sweet white petals encircling a yellow/green disc are daisies at all.  Single chrysanthemums are what they are, but let's keep it a secret.  Daisy sounds so much happier than mums.

A Pitcher of Daisies photo has the least processing.  Just a punch with a layer in soft light mode and a levels adjustment.  No textures and no actions.

Whatever they are, like all flowers finding the light keeps petals glowing. 
This photo has Kim's embrace and shine textures along with a bit of levels adjustments.

Thanks to Kim for her dream-child, Texture Tuesdays and sharing her creative talents with the world.  Enjoy more textured white photos by clicking on....



While you're at it you might as well satisfy your curiosity about actions and presets at....

Strange what is found among the leavings of generations that came before.  My daughter's Aunt J gave her an interesting green bottle indented about a quarter of the way up from the bottom.  A wine bottle?
                                                                              

 No....it seems M's ancestors were absinthe drinkers. Absinthe, distilled from wormwood (artemisia absinthium), anise, fennel, and a few other medicinal herbs, contained a high level of alcohol.   Popular in the 19th and early 20th century the elixir also known as la fee verte, the green fairy, was enjoyed by writers and artists such as Hemingway, Baudelaire, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as the Peugeots of Ohio.

I wonder if absinthe calmed in the same way a lovely glass of wine or a cocktail can. 

BTW...absinthe drinkers can once again enjoy the spirit. 













Have I told you lately?  I love pink flowers! 

May you find calm in the winter day whether it's in a drink, a food, or a pink Gerbera daisy!

PS...
I forgot to mention that I used a cool texture on the absinthe bottle photo. I found it on the Great Texture group in Flickr.  Now the bad part is that somehow I lost the name of the artist who provided  this freebie.  I think it was from Playing with Brushes.  There are loads of textures on Flickr, if you're searching for ways to add artistic touches to your photos. 

The bottom photo has a gaussian blur and I used soft light with 55% opacity.  I toyed with levels and hue/saturation until I got the look I wanted.