Double Exposure Experiment

I love the dreamy look of some of the photos I see lately that use in camera double exposure .   I know my camera is not able to do this but still there MUST be a way to get this look with layers.  Here is a little experiment I did using an image of some asparagus pods.    I chose it because it had a nice soft effect already, not to much clutter in the background.

I used my macro lens when I took this shot.  Just an outside shot, nothing special for exposure or settings, just trying to get points of interest with the stems and berries. 

I started in Elements 10 with two images of the asparagus and one image I set to a size .25 larger than the other.  This was the bottom image.   The normal size image I layered on top and reduced opacity down to about 68%.  An interesting thing happened with I did this.  I got the dreamy background but the for front pods held their clarity!   In fact it sorta enhanced them so they appear a bit more dimensional.  

The only other thing I did to this was to adjust some light after it was done using levels and the bottom layer I had a watercolor filter applied.   I love this little test and if it would quit storming I would go outside and take more flower photos and play with this again.

Lets Stay Connected ~ Greeting Card Swap

Its said that birds of a feather flock together.  I believe its true, at least in the case of us photographers and our art, props and imagination.  At a spree cast event today that Kim gave for all us Start To Finish 2 folk, I awkwardly declared I would start a photo greeting card swap.    I think its nice to have exciting mail come to your mail box, from the world over, from friends you met through classes and events.   Think of it as keeping the spark alive that began in Start to Finish 2 and for me Beyond Layers also.  

So without knowing about  Groupies of Kim Klassen over on Face book we will take my idea for the card swaps  and incorporate it there.  They are already doing something similar so no use being repetitious. I didn't know they had this group going so was totally thrilled to find them.  This is a private group and you will have to go there and request to join us.   Thanks for all the response to the idea of a greeting card swap.
~ cheers

The Illustrated Pears

 Hello again.  I still have some pear photos I am playing with.  By the way not only were they expensive but delicious and made marvelous models for my props.  I love how pears have  different textures on the skins.  I like enhancing the texture of them and by accident I applied a brush to the background and it fell over one of the pears, and it was like magic!  I really liked how the brush created a brand on the pear, like it was some special exotic fruit.   I thought of all the fun tissue papers used to display fruit in and this again reminded me of some of the very pretty printed tissue.

This is the snoring boring photo of before.  The bit of yellow behind the 3rd pear is a bit of Yellow Tissue!

My paper texture was from a scrap book and the rest of the art are applied brushes and light adjustments.   I hope you like before and after!
Keep eating pears!

A diptic or a dip...

Oh my this was the most frustrating thing ever! 
In my class Start to Finish we walked through diptic's in light room.  It looks so simple.

Well it was not, and not only was it not it took me 2 days to generate this story board and I must say, I am not sure how I did it.

Frustrations took me to another tutorial on exporting light room print layouts.   I finally got this saved as a .jpg in a folder on my hard drive.  Then I opened up Elements and did some light painting and signed it.  Yep I signed it even though its far from what I wished for but its a first! 

After two days of fooling with this, I am shy to try again but determined. Anyway I tried to import this image back into LR to work on it a bit more and by some gremlin's joy, I got my whole texture folder!  More deleting, more searching for the image - took a break to make breakfast - back to search for the image.  Finally....here it is.   It might not be a spark of creativity for you but if you are struggling with the diptic learning curve, you are not alone.   No textures used, just light.   Cheers till next time.

I Miss You...

White, round and minimalist, started out this way , ended up not so much.  In my class Be Still 52 one challenge was to work very simple, white, round and see where it took you.   I have such a hard time with working in whites.  I seem to just march to my own drummer.   Well, the white part was easy, the white daisy's, the white shells with just a hit of colorm tge white linen and the white cheese cloth.  So far so good, I laid these out in  a path type effect and shot above, from the side, in front and all aspects of angles.  This is the one I chose. 

This smaller image is just one of the try's before I got something happy.  I did like the yellow behind the flowers but in the end didn't use it...but I might still work on that!

The props are so much fun to use, collect and play with.  Some are so simple.  OH that is what its all about KISS....keep it simple silly!   I keep forgetting.

SO as you can see in the finished I Miss You I went past simple once again.  I added some moody graduated layers, played with my dof and added some elements and brushes.   I like it.  I hope you do too.

I need to get some photos done of this, adhere them to some post card's and get them in the mail and surprise some friends.

I think its time to start a yahoo photo postcard/greeting card trading group.  I have belonged to the atc community trading for quite awhile and the fabric postcard group trading with people all over the world.  Wouldn't be wonderful to do this with our lovely photo art!  Are you in?  

Let me know as this is part of the "spark" I have gotten from my classes this month.
Cheers........