Winter Beauty

We finally got our gorgeous 5"+ snowfall over the weekend, so I donned my snow gear and headed out our back door.
This is our butterfly bush, apparently ready for spring.

Beauty is the theme this week at This Life is Sweet, pretty fitting I think.

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This is the 'doorway' to our backyard.
As you can see, there was already a good amount of snow on the ground and more coming down.
Keep scrolling to see how I edited this shot.





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Are you kidding me?!?!
I won again - for the second week in a row - at Pixel Perfect for my Bleeding Hearts shot last week.
Talk about craziness!
I believe a big, huge THANK YOU to Monica and those who voted for me is in order!

Before:

After:

I have found that my shots of snow falling are much better when I switch my camera to manual focus. Since it's impossible to focus on snowflakes as they fall, I guesstimate where I should focus, shoot and adjust accordingly.


I use PSE 8 to edit and did the following:

Step 1: Ran Paint the Moon's Jubilee action.
(hello. my name is katie and i'm addicted to jubilee)

Step 2: Added Kim Klassen's Grey Day Slate texture, set opacity to around 20%.

Step 3: Cropped to 8x10.





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Faces pressed against the glass,
inside and warm,
watching Mommy tromp through the snow with her camera.