“Cooling It”
We really had pretty much free reign with our photo prompt today: “Post processing can help make your images sing of winter. Let’s celebrate the blues! Experiment, play and have fun with winter today and see how “cool” you can be.” What has been catching my eye lately were these:
These icicles are stuck to and hanging from the grapevines on the back of my house. I’d been trying to figure out how to get a close up shot of them for a few days. The recent snow fall and my out-of-control rasberry bushes
prevent me from getting anywhere near my grapevines without suiting up in my husband’s snow-blowing get up. If I did that, I’d likely feel like Randy from A Christmas Story.
I ended up taking this picture from my bathroom window! We have full length screens that stay on the outside of the windows all year long, so I was concerned these shots wouldn’t turn out, but it looks to me like I ended up with just a bit of added texture in the shot. I added a tiny bit of blue hue in PSE to add to the “cool” look.
Karma's When I Feel Like It Blog 
Very cool! I don’t know a lot about photography but you’ve captured the essence of cool in this photo.
Comment by Tammy McLeod — January 15, 2011 @ 5:23 pm |
Thanks so much Tammy – and thank you for commenting!
Comment by Karma — January 16, 2011 @ 9:21 am |
Yes, it gave it a cool texture. Get it? No, we can’t avoid the icicles. Mine was taken through a window, too. But I did venture outside to feed the birds and Stella who likes bird food.
Comment by Becky Sue — January 15, 2011 @ 5:26 pm |
Cute Becky! I guess I can’t say I’m too surprised about Stella liking bird food; this is the same pooch who likes rabbit “delicacies.” I must need a better bird feeder. I think it is too difficult for the birds to get the seed. They made it work too well against squirrels!
Comment by Karma — January 16, 2011 @ 9:20 am |
Ooooh, sparkly! Pretty, the way the sun hit the icicle. I think the screen might have helped capture the sparkle. Very cool.
Comment by thedailyclick — January 15, 2011 @ 5:28 pm |
Thank you! If the screen helped get the sparkle, thank you screen! 🙂
Comment by Karma — January 16, 2011 @ 9:17 am |
Really nice sparkles of light and texture. I never thought about the screen adding texture to a photo. It worked well here.
Very cool indeed. 🙂
Comment by Robin — January 15, 2011 @ 6:15 pm |
Thank you Robin. Texture seems to be all the rage these days with photoshop. I recently watched some online videos about how to do it, but haven’t given it a try myself yet.
Comment by Karma — January 16, 2011 @ 9:17 am |
Love the sparkles, Karen. The best part of winter!
Comment by Kathy — January 15, 2011 @ 7:20 pm |
Thanks Kathy – you have such a nice, positive attitude about winter! If I had to pick favorite parts of winter I think they’d be the things that keep me inside gaining weight: baking cookies and homemade bread or curling up on the couch with a good book and some hot chocolate!
Comment by Karma — January 16, 2011 @ 9:14 am |
Love your glints of sunshine caught by the icicle.
Comment by plainmama — January 15, 2011 @ 8:41 pm |
Thanks Amy!
Comment by Karma — January 16, 2011 @ 9:10 am |
Nice interpretation, Karen!
Here’s a neat trick for turning things instantly ‘cool’. Adjust your white balance setting to incandescent, which is designed to off-set the warm tones in a room lit with incandescent bulbs. When used in natural light, it will turn things blue. Here are two examples of where I used this:
http://milkayphoto.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/its-all-about-balance/
and
http://milkayphoto.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/fancy-that/
I have found this works really well when aimed towards subjects where there is alot of white, but have found that interesting and unexpected things also happen when other colors are involved. In both of the examples, my colorspace was set to ‘Vivid’ to really punch up the saturation of color.
With all the white going on outside, I think I am inspired to try this out on the many icicles forming on our garage roof! 🙂
Comment by milkayphoto — January 15, 2011 @ 9:49 pm |
That is a neat trick! I will have to give it a shot while all this winter white surrounds us. I heard there’s a chance of more Tuesday night! 😯
Comment by Karma — January 16, 2011 @ 9:10 am |