One of the things that Sean got in his Christmas stocking from his Memaw was this sort of glow stick gone wild. It’s three glow sticks on a battery-powered stick that spins like a fan when you push the button.

So the two of us, being the odd, offbeat, creative types that we are, decided to see what would happen if we went into a dark room and took some pictures.

We got some very interesting images.  Here are a few of them.

Life is short.  Take a lot of pictures.

As I mentioned in a previous post, last Sunday our church held its Chritmas gathering and one of the big draws was a visit from Santa and the Mrs.

As you can see below, they had a lovely winter vignette set up with a sleigh and trees and gifts and all that festive good stuff. They also had a real photographer.  But that didn’t stop me from standing off to the side and capturing the cruddy photo you see below.

But!  As always, my trusty Photoshop came to the rescue!

Basically this photo stinks. I’m too far away, the lighting is awful. There is a hideous shadow and the flash reveals the folds and wrinkles in the night sky, not to mention part of the lobby.  And? It’s blurry.

I do however like the way Mr. and Mrs. Claus are looking at Sean and I like Sean’s expression, so I cropped it close. Cropping is the number one way to make a cruddy photo into one you want to keep.

After I cropped it close, I still didn’t like the background, so I used my Topaz Remask filter and cut it out.  Topaz Remask is awesome and makes masking and cutting out the background super easy.  If you like to mess with your pictures at all in Photoshop, I  also recommend Topaz Adjust for some very cool effects with just a click or two.

Anyway, after I cut out the blue background, I played with some patterns.  I liked this red one a lot, which was a free download from somewhere, and I replaced the crinkly blue sky with this red damask.

Then I put another layer of the red damask on top of the picture, only this time I enlarged the scale of the pattern.

Next, I used the eraser tool to reveal Sean and Santa and Mrs. Claus.  In art school they call that a subtractive technique. But you can just call it erasing.

When using the eraser tool, I used a large soft-edged circle brush at about 50% transparency which left the edges partially transparent and I like that effect.

Here is another version of the same technique only this time, I used a green background with retro stars and then on top of that I used a plaid pattern.

Have a merry weekend y’all! Go out and take some pictures!

Even if everything around you is falling apart.

This massive tree is growing skyward,  seemingly unaware that half of its root system is exposed. The path that runs alongside this tree is a good six feet below the base of the tree, so as I walked along the path, I was looking up into its tangle of roots. And yet it grows. It reminded me that if we are rooted deeply enough, we can flourish and grow in less than ideal circumstances.

I love this East Texas country cat hiding in the tall grass. She follows the ancient blueprint hidden in her bones that calls her to do what all cats everywhere have always done — hide, slink, hunt.

The polaroid effect was a Photoshop action. Here a click, there a click, everywhere a click, click. Done.

Here’s the original photo. You can see that you can change the mood of a photo just by how you choose to crop.

The image of the dog has been used in paintings throughout history to represent fidelity.  In the middle ages, before marriage licenses, couples would commission a marriage portrait and the painter usually tucked the image of a little dog somewhere in the composition.

When we went canoeing last weekend, we met this sweet old dog and his friend at the general store in Gilbert, Arkansas, population 33.  Not sure if that includes the dogs.

This is the original photo before I started clicking stuff in Photoshop.