Happiness is the Meaning

"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence"

- Aristotle

I didn't go to work today. The lurgi that my daughter brought from school, and gave to my son, who handed it over to me, got hold of me yesterday to the point I was far too irritable, and not able to think clearly enough. I should have known when I made coffee in the morning; sodding up the milk texturing and the pour is a good sign I'm not as crisp I ought to be. ;-)

Anyway, today I felt pretty crap when I woke, so I stayed home. That meant I saw the kids fanging around before they went off to school and crèche, and of course I grabbed my camera. 

I've chosen this photo for two main reasons: the lad's grin, and my current massive B&W kick. ;-) for this I used my "Nik" automation (Red filter 48%, green 74%, and blue 23% - or something like that :-p a touch of sharpening, and contrast pushed to +48% or so). It was a bit too light and grey, so I added a duplicate layer, set to 'multiply', with opacity about halfway. That got me what I was after, pretty much.

So what shots did I not blip today, you ask? I'm glad you asked. There were two more shots of the lad, which got basically the same treatment, just with different opacities for the multiply layer, as they weren't as light.

The one I almost blipped though, was this one of my daughter. The reason being that this is how it came out of the camera - before I added a luminance layer, with a mask involving much brushing, with the brush set to various levels of opacity, and then a gradient for the bottom of the pic. She does look a bit superimposed, but I'm still rather happy with it. In the end though, that superimposed quality did just sway me (and mrs tsuken) away from blipping this. I had to link to it though. ;-)

Large version here.

Unprocessed version here.