Tulips

The rain last night has now washed away all the snow, and today it was back to grey skies and mud. It was a mild day, and this winter I seldom needed to wear my gloves when out walking with Xena - mind you, my lovely Barbour coat has special hand warming pockets which is easier than wearing gloves.

I decided on an indoor blip today,  here are some tulips I bought myself with a texture overlay on them. The tutor from yesterday's tutorial on creating your own colour swatches and textures sent the video recording of our session and I went through it very carefully again while doing my own example on Photoshop so I know how to do that now. 

I also sent in my two entries for next week's camera club competition on people. I had an image that would have been very suitable, of two Masai warriors taken in the late afternoon against the backdrop of Mount Kilimanjaro with the mountain poking through the clouds - the mountain is seldom seem so clearly as it is usually covered by clouds so it was an image with impact - but I could not use it as it was not perfectly sharp. I could kick myself, and I am not sure why it wasn't perfectly sharp - it sharp enough to look at in small but when it was enlarged you could see the lack of sharpness and there is one thing camera club judges hate and that is lack of sharpness! I also find my preferred choice of shallow depth of field when photographing flowers would also not be liked by judges, they seem to want front to back sharpness for all items of nature, which I don't really like, I prefer a tight focus. Still, photography is not about camera club judges and we must photograph what we want, how we want, although it is a good discipline to always get the technical basic things like focus, lack of blown highlights etc correct. 

Tonight I must finish watching White Tiger on Netflix - I read the prize winning book many years ago and this film version is very good, to be recommended.