A Mother's Love

Today is my daughter's 21st birthday...my, how the time has flown. From birth, she has been a precious soul and such a light in our lives. Watching her grow into the young woman she is today makes me so proud!

A Fly on the Wall

Well, maybe this fly wasn't on the wall...but he was on the sidewalk! For Photo Art Friday this week, we were to use an image with a lot of negative space. I took this photo of a really pretty fly (!) a couple weeks ago. I was standing outside with my camera and spotted him on our front walk. He had an interesting body with some bright yellow and black/white stripes. I added a couple of textures and also finished the image up in Radlab. I really enjoyed working with the negative space - it's almost like a blank canvas for all the textures. Thanks for the great prompt, Bonnie! To see more lovely photo art, click on the button below.

A Light Somewhere Nearby

I'm glad to be able to participate in Flower Art Friday again...I missed it two weeks in a row due to vacation and real life. I kept it simple this week with this image I captured in Hilton Head. There are beautiful landscaped and/or potted flowers everywhere on the island, and I loved capturing them with my camera. I liked how these simple, white flowers popped against the backdrop of deep purple. Adding a quote seemed fitting in the extra space.

Just Going Along

Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering. ~Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne

I'm sharing a few more photos from my vacation for This or That Thursday...one of our favorite places to visit at Hilton Head Island is Harbour Town on Sea Pines Plantation. There are boats, and shops, a lighthouse, and pretty red rocking chairs to sit in and relax. To see more This or That photo submissions, click on the button below and visit Deb's blog. Happy Thursday, everyone!

More Camera App Love

While I was away on vacation, I thought I'd suffer withdrawal symptoms from not having access to PSE. I knew I'd take lots of pictures, and hated the idea that I wouldn't be able to do any photo editing till I got back to Virginia. Thankfully, this forced me to use my iphone as my "editing fix" all week at the beach. I experimented every day with some of my camera apps and fell in love with them even more than I already was. My iphone saved me on the 9-hour drive home - I literally spent most of it processing all my pictures on my camera! It was awesome. Anyway, I wanted to talk about a few of my current favorite apps...there are so many!

The first app that has become my new favorite is Snapseed. It's the most expensive app I've come across - $4.99. But so many people raved about it that I bit the bullet and purchased it. I was a little intimidated at first because I wasn't sure how to use it. But I did a Google search and found a great video tutorial. Once I saw how simple it was, I was amazed at how this app can transform your camera photos from good to fantastic. It's almost like having Photoshop Elements on your phone! You can selectively brighten or darken areas of your photo. You can fix the white balance, sharpen it, straighten it, add saturation, blur out parts of your photos, etc. It also has some filters. I now use it to enhance every single photo I take. Here are a few examples:




And the video tutorial that explains how the Snapseed app works is HERE.

Next, I am really loving the Picfx and Pixlromatic apps. Picfx costs $1.99 and Pixlromatic is FREE, and I believe I talked about Picfx before (it has the heart bokeh as an optional filter). I continually experiment with both of these apps for their filters, and love the dramatic, grungy looks I can get with my photos. Here are some I've done in the last week:







And lastly, my latest find is a FREE app called Phonto. It allows you to add text to your camera photos, and it's so effortless and easy! Very user friendly. It has hundreds of fonts already, and apparently you can even upload your own fonts into the app also (I haven't done that yet, but I found a tutorial HERE). Here are a couple of examples of my Phonto photos (both of these were first edited in Snapseed):



And there you have it...Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

It's good to be back for Scavenger Hunt Sunday...for all of the prompts this week, I'm using photos from my vacation because I haven't had time to get out and capture many images since I've been back. This week's prompts were travel, silly, spots, paper, and black and white.

1. Travel. I've barely begun editing all my photos from Hilton Head, but this was one of my favorites of the marsh area we walked by to get to the ocean.


2. Silly. A lizard with a blue tail? That's silly. (I captured this at the Hilton Head Forest Park Reserve, a beautiful place to walk around with your camera. My husband and I spent a couple hours there walking the beautiful trails.)


3. Spots. These herons in the sky look like spots if you scrunch your eyes up just right.


4. Paper. Maybe this kite is made out of paper? Well, I think they used to be, anyway, in the olden days.


5. Black and white. This was the perfect reading spot inside our beach house rental...although I must confess I never cracked a book while I was there. My intentions were good!


Thanks for stopping by, and for letting me stretch it a bit with the prompts. I should be back on track next week, I hope! Have a lovely Sunday, everyone.

Photo Art Friday - Black and White

I've had such a busy week catching up and getting back to reality after vacation...I didn't have time to create my Photo Art Friday image until this morning. I wish I had more time to play round with it, but this is what I came up with. I feel like it's not quite finished. I started with an image I took of a townhouse in Occoquan, VA. I added an old floral book flyleaf pattern, some text, and a decorative border. I also used Bonnie's "Helena Inspired" texture. It's good to be back and making photo art!