Thursday, February 3, 2011

Is it Spring yet??

While it seems like everyone else in this country got barreled with more snow (eeek!) we got a refreshing burst of Spring yesterday.  Thank goodness.  I'm not sure if my soul can handle any more hard core Winter weather.  That's seriously one of the main reasons why I moved back to my home state of North Carolina from New York..the Winters were soooo cold, dreary, grey and depressing (for me at least). 

 Baby girl and I went to one of our favorite places to enjoy the warm weather..Reynolda Gardens.  I don't know why I thought that blooms would be bursting and bare limbs would be covered with lush green just because we were having 1 beautiful sunny day...uh, yea, it's still Winter, even if it was 65 degrees out.  But, lucky for us, Reynolda Gardens has a lovely greenhouse with flowers blooming year-round, so we were able to get our fix anyway.

SOOC

Edited
I looooove taking pictures of flowers. Love Love Love.
  It makes me absolutely hysterical with happiness. 
 I wish I could have captured the smell inside the greenhouse..it was
 aaaahhhhh-maaaaaaaa-ziiiiiiiing

I did a simple edit:
In CS5, I bumped up the contrast (+71) and the saturation (+25).  I added a texture layer (bokeh) that I found HEREwith the blending mode set to "soft light."  Then I erased the texture from the flower that's front and (sort of) center.  I added the text, then brought the image into Picnik, where I added the border.

By the way, I found that neat-o text on this awesome blog that I follow.  She has a ton of free fonts that you can download..and she even gives you a tutorial on how to download and use them in whatever program you use.  Her blog is super fun..and I'm not plugging her blog 'cause I know her or anything ('cause I don't)..I just think it's awesome (is it ok that I just used the work "awesome" twice in one paragraph??) and full of lots of fun stuff and useful info for photogs & crafters alike.   

Photobucket


10 comments:

Mommy2Four said...

This is just beautiful! Sooooooo doesn't look like anything around my part of the country though! Can you say BLIZZARD? lol

SarahinSC said...

Beautiful edit! Makes me want spring to hurry up!

Unknown said...

Love the soft focus!

R and J Studios said...

soft and sweet edit - beautiful colors!

Angel Rogers said...

Very pretty bokeh and colors. I like how the composition is not dead center and the flowers open up to the viewer.

Ashley Sisk said...

LOVE your edit - beautiful job.

Unknown said...

This is so beautiful!

Anonymous said...

OOoo thank you for the first sign of spring !!! it's nice to see when here in NY outside is snow snow snow. :) Beautiful photograph :)
-JBenz

Pixel Perfect said...

WOW! What a beautiful before photo and you really brought out the colors. Beautiful!

Jenilee said...

I love it! oh, and the idea of a greenhouse in winter would be wonderful! we are getting another 4 inches today in ohio. yikes! I am ready for spring!