August 4: Sunlight glowed from behind this leaf. Photocopy delineated the delicate veins that the sunlight revealed.

Another raw, rainy, dreary day in Hartford. Lights and colors reflected off the wet pavement at a traffic light. Watercolor intensifies the lights, colors and reflections while darkening the rest of the scene and making it all look wetter--and actually, more like what I saw through the windshield.

August 3: Heavy rains (they do seem to follow us anywhere we camp) turned the small river that flows by the campground into a wide, fast, powerful current. Film Grain ehlped bring out the swilrs and waves.

August 2: We had to go back up to NY State to collect the truck and the camper. We took advantage of the situation to take an extra day and camp at the KOA in Herkimer, one of our favorite campgrounds. In the evening as we sat by the fire, a mist rose up, gradually obscuring the trees. Using the Fog effect was a natural which showed the progression of the mist in a way my little point and shot could not capture.

Noting beats being adored by a grandchild! This is my older granddude, Aidan, having lunch with us today. Aidan doesn't pose often, so I just snapped what I could. Generally, I would have cropped this to focus just on his face; but there was somethig about the primary colors in the glasses and the juice carton that just seemed to belong in the photo--maybe the context, and the way they just happened to be arranged to sort of steer the eye to his smile. Dark Strokes combined with Diffuse Glow lights up his face while defining his features.

August 1: We had an unusually rainy summer. As discouraging as that was, it did look lovely on leaves. I wanted a filter that would delineate the veins on the leaves. Poster Edges did the job.

Some days it's hard to find a shot; others, they just keep coming at you. We were at Stew Leonard's, a local grocery store that specializes in fresh produce. Their big American flag had gotten wrapped around the pole, and two guys in a bucket truck were trying to untangle it. I was taking pictures of this process when I heard the honking of a flight of Canada geese behind me. I swung around just in time to snap this. Bas Relief adds a 3D effect.

July 31: At our town's Farmers' Market during the summer, two gifted young men entertain the shoppers with folk music. I was pretty far away from the pennywhistle player when I shot this; when I cropped it, it was just too soft and pixilated. Throughout this enitre challenge, I've never found a photo that worked with the Stamp filter, and now I've had two in a day. This time, I applied Diffuse Glow over it.

We have a small pear tree in our backyardl occasionally, it actually produces pears, and this was one of those years. I've seen a technique in rubber stamping magazines where they stamp an image, then color it with a soft wash of watercolor. I tried to imitate this using (naturally) Stamp as well as Old Photo.

July 29: Wednesdays in the summer mean picnic dinners at the carillon concerts at Trinity College in Hartford. There's a fountain in the cloister where a few pennies had been tossed. I used the Wave filter to create a sense of movement in the water.

It was unexpectedly hard to get a good picture of the little Zen garden I have on my desk. I couldn't make the colors, light and details work out well. Using a diluted application of Pencil Sketch solved the problem.

Behold the Bird! It occupied center stage, but was accompanied by so many wonderful side dishes that we even just a taste of each filled our plates. we are so fortunate to have family, friends and food. Grain plus Old Photo gives it a bit of a nostalgic touch.

We live in a lovely tiny old house. It's about 100 years old; it's about 1000 square feet. We've been here for nearly 30 years, and we raised our three children here. This wall, just to one's left as one enters the back door, tells a lot about us. John and I are Irish American. The sign spells out the original Irish version of our last name, Coughlin. We bought it on our honeymoon in Ireland to give to his parents. When these two wonderful people passed on in their old age, the sign came back to us. Our three children were adopted as infants from Korea. The lucky bamboo in the sconce represents our luck in having these children and how we are now also rooted in Korea as well as Ireland. Our son made the key-keyhook in Boy Scouts when he was little. Eventually, he became an Eagle Scout, and (at 22) he now owns a business. It holds, along with our keys, the SpongeBob keychain that has our neighbor's keys--we take care of them, and they take care of us, so we have each others' keys. I made the basket at an adult ed class many years ago. It holds the the envelopes for Sunday donations to St. Dominic's, our church, which is very important to us. So much in a few feet of wall space! I used Sun Faded Photo just to warm it up a bit.

I stopped by Paper Goods Pond on my way home this evening. As the light drained from the sky, the lights from the houses started to glitter on the surface of the lake. Just for fun, I tried out Night Vision, then played around with blending modes, and added a bit of a sepia tint. The final image looks a bit like a faded fabric print.

This is the view from one of the windows (not that I have a window!) of my office building. It's dismal enough in the summer sunlight. On a raw drizzling day in late November, it's a bleak as one can get. The notice that hapened be be flashing on the electronic billboard was NOT encouraging. Angles Strokes is not a filter I've used often, if at all; but it does add to the atmosphere of dreary drizzle.

Today, wetook our grandson, Aidan, to the Peabody Museum in New Haven. Here, he and a black rat snake contemplate each other. I like it in black and white; to me, the lack of color puts the focus on the faces of the boy and the snake as they each gaze into alien eyes.

As we were leaving Mass this evening, I turned to see a crescent moon riding over the church. The pastor was turning off the lights, but the stained glass windows were still glowing. I had only my point-and-shoot with me--no tripod--and John was urging me to huttry as we had guests coming for dinner. The resulting photo is grainy, but I liked the light and color. Using Posterize and Glowing Edges distills it down to those two elements.

It rained heavily last night, but as I was having breakfast, the sun was breaking through the clouds. By the time I left for work, clean white clouds were floating an a crisp blue sky. They were both reflected in a puddle in our driveway. I like the way Cut Out isolated the leaf. I "cheated" on this one. Ordinarily, I only apply the filter or effect to the whole photo and let it be. This time, I re-cropped. because some of the side elements that established place--like the bit of evergreen at the lower left that one would find at the edge of a puddle--were simply distracting once I'd applied the filter.

A few blocks away from our home is an old factory building that is being transformed into condos. There's a whole lot of promise here. The building is sound and borders on a small river that had been dammed to supply power to the factory--creating Paper Goods Pond, which now belongs to the town. Today, they were pouring cement. Using Pencil Sketch with Accented Edges cleans up the photo to draw the eye to the cement truck and the lines of the building.

July 28: Finally home again, albeit sans truck and camper--the one at the Dodge place in Oneonta, the other parked on my mother's front lawn. I found time to go to Bible Babes, stopping at the orchard on my way back. The apples were ripening nicely. Oddly enough, filters just didn't "stick" to this photo. I think it's the smoothness of the surface of the apples: nothing much changed with any of the color filters. So I went for a variation of selective color to make the fruit stand out.

July 27: We were at the Dodge dealership in Oneonta early Monday morning, where we got the unwelcome news that Bob had blown a head gasket. This meant that A) we were about to fork over a whole boatload of money and B) we were going to have to find an alternative way to get home, since it would take several days to repair. We then waited for several hours to get a rent-a-car. The dealership was a bleak place on a bleak strip of highway. About the only bright or pretty things in sight were a few urns of these yellow flowers situated at the entrances. I like the way Cut Out makes them almost abstract.

July 26: Having babied Bob the truck to my mother's place in upstate NY, we couldn't take the risk of trying to get back to our home in central Connecticut until it had been checked, so we were stuck for the weekend, fretting about what was wrong with Bob and what were we going to do the fact that we were both expected back at our jobs on Monday. People tend not to look happily upon extending a three week vacation. Photography was some distraction. This is a closeup of the wood on her ancient barn. Bas Relief really brings out the grain.

July 25: At this point, vacation was essentially over. We were just trying to limp the truck to my Mom's place near Cooperstown NY, where we were to collect our daugher, who'd been staying there. (She's 17, hates camping and loves being spoiled by her grandma, so this worked out well.) We had to take frequent breaks to let the truck cool off. This farm scene was across the highway from one of the rest stops. There was something about it that seemed timeless, so the sepia Photo Filter worked well with it.

I was looking for another shot that didn't work out, but I ended up under this sweep of highway. I think it's an impressive feat--strong enough to stand up to the constant traffic of a major highway through the East Coast metropolis, but still with an elegant design. Accented Edges plus Diffuse Glow brings out the lines and as something I can only describe as an awareness of the stone.

There aren't many flowers blooming here in New England in November, but these waxy little blooms are still alive in an urn outside the doors to our church. There was a stiff wind when I was trying to get a shot of them after Bible Babes, so it was tough to get a nice crisp focus. a funky combination of Flourescent Chalk, Posterize and Cutout allowed just the colors and shapes to dominate.