Autumn it is :)

And in the meantime... two metres away from the heathers:

My very own toadstools and other mushrooms :) The one above grows under a beautiful 10-year-old Jasmine shrub.

And even more appear:

These two grow just by the front fence:

Autumn in all its beauty.

I took the pictures above a week ago, now the population of toadstools in the area is about ten ;)

If you can't believe it's a garden and not a forest, here's my fence in the background :P

  OK, I've shown you my huge toadstools so you should also see the small one that "grows" with ivies in a pot :)

   I had a visitor while weeding another part of the garden (which immediately made me run for the camera:P)

'My' autumn looks warm and cosy in the photos:

How can anyone say autumn is a gloomy season? I just love all the warm colours, suppose you do too, so let's enjoy this beautiful season while it lasts :)

Take care,

Picmonkey - a few ideas and lots of fun

I mentioned earlier that I would soon show you some fun ways to edit your photos using Picmonkey, so here they come :) There are a few web sites that allow you to edit and alter any pictures for free but I think that Picmonkey is the best. I use it almost every time before publishing any photos just to make them look better, more vivid. Here's one of my latest photos without any changes, despite a good camera the colors are a bit pale:

The easiest thing you could do is to enhance the colors. Just choose 'basic edits/exposure' and change the four options until you're satisfied with the results:

 You can end up with something like this:

You could also play around with the many effects that are available - just to make it look more 'artistic' :) A few possibilities that I liked:

changed 'highlights' settings

'urbane' effect

'boost' effect

'focal soften' effect, the element that you choose is sharp,
the rest of the photo is blurred.

I just love the possibility of adding the 'bokeh' effect, for example:

My version:

The bokeh here looks quite natural. I really like how I turned out in my dog's photo and I'm also pleased with how it looks in the one on the left. I'm not particularly happy about the bottle photo, however. I  went too far with the 'weave' effect :/  Here's how you can add bokeh to your own photos:

Choose 'overlays/geometric'. You'll need the two shapes that I marked below:

When you click on the circular shape it will appear in black as default::

Just choose the color that you want by moving the cursor on the color overlay window. You can also alter the size of  your circle. And remember to adjust 'Fade' so that you can see through the shape:

If you want to have more of such circles, just right click on it and choose 'duplicate overlay'. This is the final look of my photo:

You can add some more interest to your photo by choosing 'textures' and 'weave'. It'll look like streams of light shining down but again make sure to use 'fade' (you don't want to go overboard with it like I did :P ).

Textures/weave

Well, that's all I wanted to show you today. The possibilities are endless so play around with it and have fun!:)

Take care,