Using Textures, Layers and Blend Modes

I have never tried using textures in my photos. I just learned how to use them lately and have been doing some experiments. I am enjoying this new found way to create a new look of my photos. I did not realize it's just easy. Either you use some already existing textures or you can even make your own textures.

I discovered that the technique is just easy.  You just have to use the blend modes in the photo editing software, like Photoshop.

I have written a step by step article on using layers and blends in my hub in HubPages. The link is here if you are interested. How-to-Change-the-Mood-of-Your-Photos-Use-Layers-and-Blending-Options

I am just sharing a photo that I created by using this technique. Try it and have fun!

A Wonderful New Year

A wonderful New Year to all of you!
May the New Year bring you the best of everything!

A blessed Christmas to you!

All the best for the New Year!

Sunflower in my mind

I'm learning to love collages. I think they can express in one photo what may take several photos to show. This is just a simple collage created in Picasa.
Sunflowers are such bright and happy flowers so I thought I would share these flowers with you today. The flowers were given to me by my daughter during my birthday. She knows that my favorite color is yellow gold.

Moon Before and During the Lunar Eclipse

I took photos of the moon midnight of June 15, before the lunar eclipse started. Then I set my alarm to 3 am of June 16 and took more photos during the actual lunar eclipse.

So here are sample photos of this event.  Hope you enjoy them!

OMG! I'm the featured Photographer of the Week in Manila Bulletin!

OMG! I'm the featured Photographer of the week for Manila Bulletin's Picture Perfect section, today, May 31, 2011.
Sorry, the online version is not yet in place, so I'm just sharing a link to a photo of the pages of the newspaper's Picture Perfect section.
Here is the link to my Multiply site.

http://saanva.multiply.com/

OMG! This photo was featured at the RedBubble Homepage today!

I was so pleasantly surprised when I got a message from the Homepage of RedBubble congratulating me for the feature in the homepage. Wow! That's really super!

I learned that less than 3 in a thousand get featured in the homepage. So I was practically ecstatic when I discovered this. Imagine that, I have only been with this site for about 2 weeks only and I already got featured! How lucky can I get?

Below is the link to the RedBubble homepage. It has a slideshow of the featured works. I just don't know how long our images will be in the homepage though. So please click on the link right away before the slideshow is changed. Thank you!
http://www.redbubble.com/
Anyway, below is also another link to the page where all the images of featured artist (for today) are found.

http://www.redbubble.com/people/home/art/6942093-1-backyard-macro-and-closeups-28-march-2011