It is the first week of November, and with it comes the Photo Processing Challenge called One Photo Focus, hosted by Stacy Fischer at Visual Venturing.  This challenge is an interesting one as it involves participants working on a single photo and applying their digital dark room skills.

November Image

The November image was kindly supplied by Julie Powell.  Here is the original:

My Process

I found this image difficult to work with and it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with it. I liked the rose and the vase, I did not care much for the background sheet, canvas and chair.

Working entirely in Photoshop, I masked the elements I did not want to see. This required adding a fill layer in black on top of the original image, then a layer mask to reveal only the rose and vase. I cropped and also straightened the photo so the vase was vertical rather than leaning to one side. I liked the image better, but it looked a little stark in the solid black background, so I added a texture, using one of the 2 Lil’ Owl Studio designs from their “Beautiful Bokeh” collection. This gave a creative whimsical effect in burgundies and greens to the background and softened the overall image.

Here is the result:

The One Photo Focus challenge always brings out a great variety of interpretations.  So do go and visit Stacy’s post by clicking on the badge on the left.

Thanks again, Stacy for coordinating the group – we do appreciate how much work is involved each month – and Julie for letting us play with your image.

Till next time!