Day 149

Here's today's official 365 shot. More birds. Another silhouette!

And here are a few more from yesterday's shoot.

This monolith is only about knee-high.

Maxine spinning. There was a picture on the wall in the background which was really distracting, so I removed it in Photoshop. It took ages!

A rose processed to within an inch of its life in Picnik

Day 146

I reckon you can always tell the shots a photographer is happiest with, because they're the ones that have been messed around with the least. And the ones that have been messed around with the most tend to be the borderline shots that almost didn't make the cut.

The best image I got all day was a shot of one of our floor lamps, but most days I wouldn't have given it a second glance, so I decided to try messing around with it in Picnik. A lot. This is one of the plus points of a 365 project: it forces you to experiment more than you might otherwise do, which helps you to develop your creativity. On the flip side, it also encourages you to spend a lot of time working on images that aren't really worth the effort!

Day 139

Day 132

I bought myself some flowers today. They not only cheer the place up on a grey, wet day, but they've also given me something to take photos of. Initial processing done in Aperture; matte and texture added in Picnik.

Day 124

No doubt at some point I'll get bored of the effects in Picnik, but at the moment I'm still enjoying experimenting with them.

This is 'Fatso' -- a wooden carving of a happy monk which Iain's Dad brought back from Burma during World War II.

Day 123

Here's our mailbox, sixties style, with an envelope texture added, courtesy of Picnik.

And here's our bottom paddock, with thousands upon thousands of spider webs glistening in the late afternoon sunlight.

Day 117

I never thought barbed wire could be pretty, but the way the light was reflecting off the barbed wire fence this afternoon caught my eye, and I lucked out when a couple of butterflies flew into the frame. It's not the most interesting shot, but I do like the quality of light. I added a few effects in Picnik: a matte, a bit of softening and a touch of 'Orton-ish'.

Day 111

It's been raining all day, so for today's photo shoot I cheated a bit, and simply stuck the camera out of the window! Here's our washing line, looking very wet!

I hadn't been snapping very long before Pookie came to see what I was doing, and jumped up onto the window sill. She's a great photographer's assistant!

As with Friday's shots, I did the initial processing in Photoshop and then added effects in Picnik. Picnik has encouraged me to try out textures for the first time. I added a water drop texture to the first shot, for an even wetter feel. I'm not sure how well it works; I think it's probably a bit over-the-top. I used a sandstone texture on the portrait of Pookie. I think this works better.

Day 109

Today I had a Picnik! My shot for the day is this close-up of our veranda deck. I processed it in Photoshop first, making all the basic adjustments such as brightness, contrast, levels, curves, vibrance and saturation, and then applying an unsharp mask. I then uploaded it into Picnik's web-based photo editor and played around with some of the effects. I forget which ones I used, but I combined about half a dozen of them.

For comparison, here's the SOOC (the image straight out of the camera):

I also played around in Picnik with a couple of my old 365 shots, which I thought needed a bit of added 'oomph'. I'm very pleased with the results I got. I've added borders to them, but that was just in the spirit of experimentation to see what they looked like; I won't keep the borders.