Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: sparkling

It's a wonderful thing when a twinkling light catches your eye and it's possible to capture the magic of what you see with your camera. This can be a maddeningly elusive challenge! When I looked to see what was flashing at me, I remember mumbling, "You'll never get that shot...it's gonna look like nothing." However, I consider such nay-saying commentary to be a personal challenge, an irresistible invitation to find a way so I can return with, "HAH! I GOT IT!" I spent some time looking at my subject and then I took a bunch of pictures with different compositions, angles, depth of field and I also stood at different distances away. I had about a dozen pictures to look through, and most of them went flying into the trash. But I got a couple that were ok, and then I found myself staring at this picture. Hooting gleefully, I announced to myself, "HAH! I GOT IT!" :)

I'm going to tell you right now, this is a photoshopped image! :D The mushroom you see was laying in a bunch of grass and weeds, and I was only just able to get a picture without leaves obscurring the mushroom. I thought it was so beautiful though, I tried to think how I could share it. Then I remembered that I'd taken some pictures of a very cool stump that was bristling with frost, and to my great happiness, I happened to take one picture at an angle that would work for the mushroom! So, I carefully cut the mushroom out of its grassy image and then darkened tha background in the stump image, cut out a layer to go "in front" of the mushroom stem, so that I could nestle it into one of the gaps in the stump, and placed the mushroom in place! :D To me, this is a nice way to be able to share two images I wouldn't have bothered with if I didn't put them together! And what's extra cool is that I didn't even think about this possibility when I took pictures of either of them. It just worked out. :)