You can’t beat “free,” right? Ashe Designs had a free overlay offer that included a football with shattered glass around it. I thought the football in the overlay appeared too cheesy so dragged it over my image and erased the football out. Copied and sized the glass only results and added a zoom effect to one of the layers to show movement. Plain bleacher background is now jazzed up. Ta-dah!! Love free things…
Here’s the link: Ashe Design.com Freebies
Beauty in more ways than one…
Not surprisingly, the flower called Queen Anne’s Lace originated in Europe and was given its name for the lacy nature of the flower head. It was very popular during the reign of who other than……. Queen Anne.
According to legend, Queen Anne was tatting white lace. (Tatting is the all-but-lost art of making lace by hand.) The beautiful white lace she was tatting became the white lacy flowers of the wild carrot plant. She pricked her finger and one drop of blood oozed out. This became the central dark red or purple sterile floret that is present on some, but not all, Queen Anne’s Lace flowers.
Legends disagree as to which Queen Anne was tatting such lovely lace. Some say it was Anne (1574 – 1619), the first Stuart Queen Anne, who was brought over from Denmark at fourteen years of age to be a Queen to King James of Scotland. Others argue it was Anne (1665 – 1714), the daughter of William and Mary, and the last monarch in the Stuart line. Both Annes died in their forties.
Queen Anne’s Lace was brought to North America by early European settlers as a medicinal herb. Also known as Wild Carrot, this wildflower is easy to grow, and is prolific in spreading its seeds by the wind. It can be found growing wild along roadsides and in fields almost anywhere in the U.S. ~ The Gardener’s Network
“One of the most courageous things you can do is identify yourself, know who you are, what you believe in and where you want to go.”
– Sheila Murray Bethel
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
~ Sir Winston Churchill
Live simply, dream big, be grateful…
The will to succeed is important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare. ~ Bobby Knight
Foreground image was taken in the studio with accent lights on both sides of the face and one light to camera right. Background looked too dull and I wanted to “jazz it up” . Many hours of blood sweat and tears take place on and off the court so decided to try blending the subject with a background photo of the gym. Still too blah…
I tried a haze in the background, but not enough texture for me. What to do, what to do? Found some free smoke brushes and played around? Here is the link to the free brushes found at a site called ucreative.com. (Click on link) Made a transparency layer to apply the smoke to the background, erasing if necessary and another transparency layer on top of the image. Go Lancers!
A high school athlete will have accumulated countless hours on the bus to and from events by the time he or she is a senior in high school. Players share in the joy or pain that comes with a post-game bus ride that allows the them to absorb one of the key life lessons of sports: Appreciate and accept the moment…
As an athlete…
As a coach…
As a fan…
As a parent…
It goes by so fast.
While available light is easy to use, I don’t like how it blows out the sky when doing backlit portraits. This portrait setup involved strong sunlight as it lowered in the sky, football field light, and two Canon 580 EX II speedlights with Cyber-sync radio triggers. Speedlights were on both sides of the subject to outline and define his strong features at manual 1/4 and about 10 feet away from subject. Camera angle low to give the portrait a feeling of strength and size while keeping the field light in view. Canon 5D Mark 3 settings were ISO100 at 8.0 and 1/125. Post processing involved basic adjustments in Lightroom and HDR in Photoshop with a few other tweaks.
We were so fortunate to have such a beautiful evening with no wind and pleasant temps. Go Bulldogs!! Yeah, life is good…
RJMeyerArts 