Lauri Miller Year Word - Open - Wk01

Selecting a word for this year turned out to be more challenging than anticipated! Lots of ideas, finally felt good about choosing “Open”. I selected a close-up of this open orchid blossom to reflect my word choice. The plant has bloomed twice for me now in the past year and is scented too! I thought this aptly represented my desire to be open to new experiences, open to traveling to new places, open to learning new skills, and most of all….open to having my husband retired! I am excited about that because it will give us the opportunities for me to be open to new things! It is scary too, but I keep telling myself, now I’ll have an extra pair of hands when going on a photo shoot! Basic LR adjustments and some PS clone tool use. A small crop finished the edits.

Lauri Miller-Cracked - Wk03

I had a few ideas for this week’s challenge, but low on ways to execute them. Then a trip to the grocery store with a stop in the floral selections had me thinking this was a fun way to depict cracked. I liked how the tulip had a ragged edge that added to a rough “cracked” image. After a bit of a crop, I applied a subtle texture image at a low opacity and adjusted lights and darks as we typically do. I hope you enjoy my “Cracked Open” photo!

Lauri Miller- Step/Repeat - Wk04

This exercise sent me on a lot of tangents in PS! What fun! I had an empty frame someone had given me taking up space in the garage and it immediately came to mind to try something with it for this week’s challenge. It sure took me a long time to figure out how to manipulate everything to get something interesting. I posed my husband outside on our deck with the frame on a cold, cold morning. I had him stand on a bench to eliminate distractions from the photo. This helped immensely when I lifted him and the frame out of the background. More practice required! Thank you, Ricky, for the tutorial video. I watched it multiple times. And thank you, Ruth, for the PC user translation!

Lauri Miller- Eyes - Wk05

Meet Sandy. She’s 14 and acts 2. She came to our house last summer after her Mom, my MIL, couldn’t stay in her own home any longer. She’s a sweetheart but loves to chase the kitty cats, much to their consternation. I thought the additional “I”s were a fun way to play on this week’s challenge. For this photo I used several textures to give the background the rustic look. I played around with the text for an inordinate amount of time. Once again it feels like I learned a lot about PS. I hope I remember it! Haha.

Lauri Miller- Starts with G - Wk06

Geranium Leaves. This plant has a small, delicate, red blossum, much smaller than typical geraniums, that almost became the subject for this week, but I kept coming back to the green leaves. This plant gets a sunny indoor window in the winter time so has a few of the multi-colored leaves where the sun is the strongest. I look forward to getting this plant back outside in the spring! I used a Lensbaby velvet 85 lens and several textures (soft light/low opacity/masking).

Lauri Miller- ROYGBIV - Wk09

A magical forest path leading through winter into spring…… In my imagination, this image looked better than the reality I’m able to achieve with my current PS skills. That said, I learned a lot this week and for that, I’m grateful to be in this critique group. I created a brush to make the stars, a new technique to me. I used an old photo I had taken for the daffodils, but the snow was fresh this week. It’s all gone now, and I have a window open! Springtime (almost) in the Rockies!

Lauri Miller - Resilient

Think Spring! How resilient are the early bloomers in areas with cold winters! These are the vibrant early leaves of some iris at the end of my sidewalk. We’ve had all kinds of weather this week including freezing rain and snow. This morning we finally had sun, so I went out to see what was happening with the plants. They were covered with frost, but they are determined to herald the arrival of spring. I added several textures and used masking for the iris leaves.

Lauri Miller - Give Me Your Best Shot

What a challenge this week! Where to start, what direction to go? I noticed some moss growing outside that looked very happy with the recent moisture we’ve had so I used that as a subject for practicing some macro photography. Then I noticed this lone pinecone, so I switched to a Lensbaby Twist lens and stood the pinecone up within the bed of moss. The result makes me think of all we are going through with the chaos all around. I made a small crop and adjusted the highlights, shadows, whites and darks in LR.