Celebrations

What do you do when you want to celebrate a special date? You pack you bags and go away!

Harrison Hot Springs Resort is the best place on earth. It's my small piece of heaven. Great food, good music, magical atmosphere, wonderful people and late night swimming are only a few of my favorite things about this place.

Cheers for now.

Birthday's

If I could give anyone birthday advice it would be not to plan life. Expect a lot, prepare for everything, but don't plan past your breakfast. Life has a way of surprising us. Sometimes, it just wants to pick us up and turn everything upside-down just to let us know it can.

You can't take life too seriously. You have to realize that you're on a stage participating in the biggest "Comedy of Errors", and no, the curtain doesn't go down for intermission.

So, eat your birthday cake, do something unexpected, and see what comes out of that.

Cheers.

Portrait How-To by Ags

How to get from a regular looking image like this one:

To something more eye-catching:

What I did:

In Photoshop CS3:

Unlocked "Original Layer" renamed it to "Layer 1"

Duplicated "Layer 1" and made "Layer 2"

"Layer 1"

-used "Dodge and Burn Tool", to increase the eye colour and brightened the eyes until I got the desired effect; you may go back to this step after the next few to darken the eye colour more.

"Layer 2"

- converted to B&W - no filter

- used the "Eraser" to carefully erase the eye area to show the "coloured" layer

- used "Burn Tool" again to darken the eye contour, focused on the eyebrows until I got the effect I was looking for

- increased contrast

Created "Layer 3"

- selected the whole picture with "Rectangular Marquee Tool" set to 250px feather

- "Inverted" the selection

- used "Gradient Tool" set to "Radial Gradient" with preset to "Foreground to Transparent" in black to draw a line from the centre of the photo up (this should create darkened edges -- vignetting)

- copied "Layer 3", created "Layer 4"

"Layer 4"

- "right clicked" Layer 4 and selected "Blending Options" >> "Overlay" - this should make the vignetting more visible

Created "Layer 5"

- selected "Gradient Tool" set to "Radial Gradient" preset to "Foreground to Transparent" in white, I drew a line from the centre of the photo up to get a radial gradient in the centre of the photo

- "right clicked" Layer 5 and selected "Blending Options" >> "Overlay" - played with "Opacity" and "Fill Opacity" until I found the effect I was looking for -- slightly lighter centre. Don't over-do this step as it may make the skin look flat. The the effect is supposed to just brighten up the face and make it stand out more.

Saved file as .jpg and .psd

Uploaded to Flickr

In Flickr, using Picnik Editor I added text on the right hand side and voila, photo's ready for sharing.

Thanks for reading!