February 13

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Getting interesting images of frost is non-trivial.

There was all sorts of interesting stuff going on, on the 13th, but the best of it was right behind the wood between the panes of glass.  Then -- you need enough light, but it's best if the background behind the frost is dark.  If I could hold a black piece of paper on the other side of the frost, when the light was coming in from the side (as above), that would be ideal.  But given that this is a second-story window, that's not happening.  (Nevermind that when there is this much frost, it is really COLD outside......  Not to mention that I can't be inside to take the pic, and outside to hold black paper..........)

So -- back to the pic.  Not so interesting, eh?  Tantalizing, perhaps, as it's clear there is something good going on, if only we could make it out.....

Cropping closer to the bits that are at least partly in front of the tree, lowering the darkness of the darks, raising the brightness of the brights, and upping the contrast, we can see this part of it much more easily.

An even closer crop, and some more contrast.........  Kinda hard to believe this is part of that top image!

This "tree" was so cool.  It was very tall, and has those balls of ice down the middle.  I was only able to get part of it in front of darker areas of the background.

I took this one for the texture.  Not sure what I'll ever do with texture like this, but there must be something I could do........

This is a crop of the upper right of the above, after application of the Photoshop Elements "dark strokes" filter.

"Palette knife" applied to the whole image.

Sunrise, in Tree Town.

"Charcoal" filter.  I quite like the trees and the sun, but am not so happy with the bottom third of the image.

Fresco.  Oooh!  Surprised by what happened to the sunlight -- the way it looks like it comes right through the tree trunks and branches.  I like it!

"Graphic pen" filter. I like this one, too.  I am particularly taken with last year's tulip-tree flowers, in the upper left part of the image.  The bottom of this image much more successful than the "charcoal" one, I think.

"What if...  ?" is the lifeblood of creativity. 

It's much easier for me to try "what if?" when I know I'm not wrecking what I've already got by trying something Different.................   Hooray for digital toys and non-destructive experimentation!

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