standing at the crossroads, sun is sinking down
I’ve been just sick enough this week so I don’t do much more than consume tea and orange juice and stay glued to my soft chair, knees covered with a blanket. I read, or surf the internet, or cut up magazines. Every now and then I’ll get up and tidy the room a little bit, or drag out my camera and shoot a few pics. Yesterday was warm and sunny, and I took the camera outside, but sunset brought another cold front into town, so I today Ihave little incentive to get out of my chair. At least my brain has mostly recovered. It has nothing to do but think of projects it wants me to work on.
Skeletal Mess over at Flickr has created some wonderful textures for photos, and he’s made them available for folks to use. I really like the one called “Frankenstein”; it’s the texture applied to the above photo, and to the “cocoaine” collage from yesterday. I’ve been trying to see my photos in new ways, and the textures are a big help.
This photo of a railroad crossing in Melissa, Texas went through a major physical transformation. The sun was shining brightly and the sky was a pretty blue, but you’d never know it from this photo. I converted the photo to grayscale and applied the texture in a layer in “multiply” mode, then reduced the opacity slightly. I like the eerie feeling I get from it.
On the “cocoaine” collage I also used the texture on a layer in “multiply” mode, but cut back the opacity quite a bit more. I also deleted the texture from some of the darker areas of the bottle caps with the eraser tool set on soft brush mode so the shadow details wouldn’t be obscured.