It's a snap.

I'm taking a break from painting, stamping, and gluing right now so my fingernails can grow back in. Art is hard on the hands. Meanwhile, one of my other big playtime projects is taking photos, and then altering them on my Corel Photo/Paint program. I used to think it was cheating to digitally alter photographs and even my own artwork, but since I took the photos in the first place or did the artwork myself, I realize that I just have another tool to experiment and mix media with. Not only that but I have restored some old family photos to their former brightness, and have eliminated scratches and stains on them. Of course, there is probably some program or App to ADD scratches and stains, to create a faux antique look but I prefer my wabi sabi to happen naturally.
This is a photo my Dad took at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe in 1954 when we lived in Zambia and were on vacation. It was a small black and white photo so I sharpened it and gave it a slight pastel tint. Just because I wanted to. Old black and white photos are the best. They never fade.

I have also recently added a little App to my android phone called Vignette that allows you to take photos in all kinds of styles and play with the colour and lighting. In other words it does the altering for you without having to scan and play with the photos on your computer. Some of the effects and results are unpredictable, others are very subtle, but that's what makes it fun. The irony is that you can take a photo and make it look like a faded Polaroid image from the Seventies using a state of the art gadget from 2012. Here are a few photos I took around the house and patio yesterday. This first is a reflection in our fish pond using a technicolor saturation setting. Then one of our patio after a light rain using a diffuse, dreamy pastel setting.

 A few more 'moody' style images of a rainy day:

 Penny on the patio looking warm and relaxed:

My daughter, Naomi, not too pleased at being photographed (or appearing in this blog):

 A film noir view of our bedroom, including a photo of me from 1993. I swear this room is painted a sunny, light yellow but you'd never guess from this quiet, melancholy photo.

And finally I went crazy with colour. I shot a photo of a pot of winter kale in a rich hue setting then I downloaded that image to my computer and digitally altered it even more by adding posterizing effects and additional art effects with a pastel drawing tool. It already gives me new ideas for painting or for quilting.

It's so much fun to have that much control over my photos now, rather than taking a roll to the drugstore to be developed and hoping for the best. Plus I can use that handy Corel clone tool with my recent photos and erase all my wrinkles. At least on paper...........