Small World

I learned how to make this "small world" effect lately. I did not realize it is just easy.
You only need to follow a few steps:

• open a photo in Photoshop
• crop the photo so that the width is about 1/3 longer than the height
• resize the photo to a square (remove constraints and copy the width numbers to the space for the length)
• rotate the photo 180 degrees
• click on filter >distort>polar coordinates and viola! you have your small world!
• clean up the seams by using healing brush
• you can now display your small world photo!

Yes, it's just easy!

There is a more detailed description of the process in my HubPages article.  

A blogger, Robin, just finished doing this "small world" based on the tutorial I shared in my HubPages article. She posted her work in her blog here: 
http://cherrylime2011.blogspot.com/2011/11/day-293-robin.html

Thanks very much Robin! I'm so happy for you!

Precious Moment Christmas Decor

Even if the predominant colors of Christmas are red, green and gold, it's still nice to come up with other colors especially on the Christmas tree.

I just love this little blue doll on a tree. This doll is made by Precious Moment which has a Christmas house here in our country. I just love visiting their Christmas house.

By the way, if you would like to know how the red,green and gold Christmas colors originated, please check out my article over at HubPages.
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Colors-of-Christmas-Red-Green-and-Gold

Another Rainy Day

It's another rainy day today. So what else can I think of but rain. Here's a raindrops photo for you.
As I mentioned before, raindrops and flowers are my favorite subjects for my photography.

Do check out my hub about raindrops:  http://hubpages.com/hub/RaindropsA-Few-of-my-Favorite-Things

Turn Your Photos Into Art

I just tried a program today. It's called FotoSketcher. You can use it for turning your photos into art. I really had fun playing with it. There are two great things about this program:
      1) It's easy to use, it's simply playing, and
      2) It's free! Can you believe that?
Below are some of my "art" after using the program. What do you think?

Here is the link to that program if you want to try it. http://fotosketcher.blogspot.com/

I don't have any commission for promoting this program. The owner does not even know me. I just want to let you know because I enjoyed using it.

I wrote a full blown article about Turning Your Photo Into Art in my HubPages:  Wait-Dont-Delete-that-Photo-Turn-Your-Photo-Into-Art?

Book Lover

How would you illustrate a book lover? Here is one idea. What do you think?

I love playing with paper especially when it is raining so hard outside and I cannot take any outdoor photos. I then turn to things inside the house. And since books and paper are aplenty at home, then I gravitate towards them naturally for some inspiration. I just fiddle with them and arrange them into different forms. The photo above is the result of "fiddling" around with books and paper. Tell me what you think.

Don't Delete Your Not So Good Photos, Play with them Instead

I have been trying to sort and clear my photo files since I already have thousands of photos in my computer drive. So every time I look at a photo, I have to make a decision on whether to keep or to delete them.

I always find it hard to delete photos because somehow I kind of have an attachment with them. Then I read one photographer who adviced - "Don't delete not so good photos right away. Check if you can still make something out of them"  

So I followed this advice and played around with some photos that I already marked "for deletion". Now I'm happy that I gave some photos a second chance because I came up with some interesting images after I used Photoshop filters. One of the results of this experiment is the photo above. What do you think?

Original photo before using filters

Garden Beauties

I was so lucky to chance upon these two beauties along the roadside. It's good I had my camera with me so I was able to capture this rather rare event.

I call this rare event because I hardly ever catch photo of a butterfly. Most of the time, they just fly away before I could even focus.

So from this experience I learned to always have my camera ready with me.