Fully Adjusted Amaryllis

Day 50: After a busy morning, I wasn't ready to tackle a sewing project, so I started scouting around for my daily "blog shot" for 365 Caws. Most everything in the house has been photographed, you understand, so this isn't always the easiest task on a rainy day. Finally, my eye lighted on the Amaryllis I'd potted up last week. Now I had to admit that an Amaryllis which was not actively blooming wasn't exactly the most inspiring subject for a photograph and since I was looking for a fairly relaxing way to spend the rest of the day, I started poking around in PaintShopPro. One thing led to another and to another, and by the time I was done with the poor thing, even Gregor Mendel couldn't have decoded its photographic DNA sequences. I was originally going to call this "Fifteen Weird Things You Can Do With An Amaryllis," but I'm sure there were more than fifteen and I can only remember half a dozen. To enumerate what I recall: an in-camera sepiatone was converted to a halftone and then a brown-tinted texture was laid over the top of that. That layer was then tonemapped. A color version of the plant alone was cut out and trimmed, then layered onto the monochrome textured base at 35% opacity. A drop-shadow was added to the plant layer before merging, and then the whole thing got a light adjustment to contrast.

Some days, you just need to hang up all the worky-businessy stuff and just PLAY, savvy? Shot the whole afternoon in the head, but gee, it was fun!