‘tis the season for lights and cards

Last weekend the local community council had its annual torchlight parade along the highstreet with local pipebands and lots of local families – all kids who take part are given a chocolate selection box at the end.  According to the notice the parade finishes with carol singing but actually the band played and a few people murmured some words but there was no great joining of voice in song.  it would help if the organisers chose carols that lots of people know and had someone on the microphone to lead the singing – maybe next year.  No-one minded though – we were there for the lights (and the chocolate, and when there aren’t renovations in the theatre for mulled wine and a mince pie).  The lights are lovely – there are the usual ones on the streetlamps but I love the light wrapped trees.

I’ve added a tree image and a second button to my ‘tis the season button for my recording of the seasonal sightings and happenings.

I personalised some stocking cutout cards that I bought and attached a chocolate tree decoration inside for some of the more young at heart of my family (including my nephews in their early 20s and my Nan who is 95!).  I had to attach a small clothespeg to each so that it would stand up – js

‘tis the season for mincepies and the German Market

About 10 years ago, while I was still living in New Zealand I read somewhere that each different mincepie eaten brought a month of good luck the following year.  Since I love mincepies I adopted this habit for December and make sure that I have mincepies from 12 different sources to ensure a good year ahead.

I’ve eaten 2 types so far – the easy ones from highstreet bakers and both were very tasty with a good balance of pastry and filling.

I’m recording my seasonal journey with a button and journaling on photos – as the events happen.  As with last year, my first sign of the season was a visit to the German Market in the middle of Edinburgh – yum hot chocolate and big pretzels as well as lots of pretty gift ideas

Memories, dreams and reflections 2011–part 2

Continuing with this scavenger hunt of 2011 memories organised by Ashley on Ramblings and Photos. 

I’m enjoying finding the items in my archive at random – here photos are from May, June, August and September.  I will include at least one other travel photo as part of this project because it was so hard to choose just one.

The one of me and my friend on the beach makes me laugh – I do have some when we are facing the camera as we played with the timer function – but I think the body language says more in this one – and I know we are both laughing at having to run to the location and then walk casually.

Playing with bare trees

One of the things that I like to photograph at this time of year is bare trees silhouetted against the sky.  With the strong winds we have been having recently there are plenty of trees that have lost all of their leaves – the trick is capturing them when there is a blue sky behind!

For Photo art Friday we were encouraged to experiment again so I played with some of my bare tree photos.

Here I used the invert filter again – to turn the tree white.  Then I added Bonnie’s wicked texture on vivid light and got this spooky image that I think looks as if it is bathed in very strong moonlight

Next was a photo I took in town of the trees and monuments on top of a hill

I started by using a Pioneer Woman action to turn it to black and white so as to dramatise the silhouettes.  Then I added some textures and stumbled upon an interesting effect.  There are several layers that create the action effect and I accidently put the texture between these layers and discovered that it produces an interesting muted effect.  I will definitely play with this discovery some more.  The textures here are Bonnie’s Old Master dust and unconditional – both on colour burn.

And finally I used a tree silhouette to apply the polar coordinates distort filter which I saw applied in something I read over the summer (sorry can’t remember where).  Ever since I saw it I have been trying the effect of different photos because getting the right photo to use makes all the difference to the result.  This is amongst the best I’ve created.  It reminds me of one of the illustrations in the book The Little Prince.

I’ll be taking more photos of bare trees this month so that I can create some more dramatic photo art with them.  Are you a fan of photographing bare trees?