Okay, the title of the post kind of gives it away, but indulge me, okay? You can do that, right? (No, it’s not a contest for showing us your favorite photo where you’ve applied a texture. It’s not really a contest at all. More of a challenge. I’ll explain in a moment. I hinted at the challenge in this post about my comfort shoes.)
Okay, moving on…
Textures can be fun to use on your photos. They can give a little creative twist. Sometimes an otherwise blah photo can be made into a work of art. An added texture can set a mood, hide a flaw, make a statement. Here are some tutorials for adding textures to your photos. If anyone has a really good link to using textures, feel free to leave it in the comments.
But I digress…
I decided to make my own textures (another hint re: the challenge…) and use them on some of my photos…
This is pretty. But stark. I was looking for more of an artsy look.
I added this texture (my favorite texture so far!) It’s a macro shot of some etched glass we have on a bi-fold door.
Here is my finished California Orange Poppy.
This is a horrible self portrait I took when I was experimenting with natural light.
Here is a grid texture photo I took. It was the back of my ironing board. Figured I should use my ironing board for something! 😆
Here is an example of a texture attempt gone bad… 🙄 I guess I was going for a caged in look. 😉 So we’ll call this Caged in by Winter.
Here are some dying roses that SuperGuy took in Palm Springs. I don’t like the varying background intensity, and to be honest, I’m in a vintagey mood. (I still say that’s a word. Do you hear me Apple spellcheck??)
This is a basket that I need to pitch because it’s falling apart. I grabbed a quick photo and desaturated it.
Put them together and presto, I have a Vintage Roses.
Now none of these are stunning examples of textures added to photos…because I could spend hours and hours messing around in Photoshop adding textures to photos and I’d never would have gotten this post written. But they give you an idea what you can do with textures. Well, and what you should NOT do with textures. 😉
Textures you can use are all around you. This one?
It came from this father and son statue.
I’ve added my textures that I’ve taken (about 20 of them) to my flickr texture set. Go look and see what all I found to take a photo of and use it for a texture. It was such fun.
I took pictures of things like:
our shower door
pampas grass
milk glass closeup (of course!)
an etched vase
You don’t need a macro for this, since, as we know, I don’t have one! (But some were taken earlier with the The Photography One’s stolen borrowed macro.)
Here is the Challenge
Take some texture photos of your own! Share them with us. I’ve set up a flickr group you can use if you have a flickr account. The group is cleverly called Kacey’s Texture Group! I know, brilliant and creative name, isn’t it? Feel free to add to the your texture photos to the group. Please!
I’ve changed the permissions on my texture files that I added to the group so other people can use them. (I usually reserve all rights on anything I add to flickr.)
If you don’t have a flickr account (Why don’t you, you can get a free one. It’s a great way to share your photos. I’m going to post about flickr and all the ways to have fun there in a future post.)….wait, I’m lost on that impossibly run on thought/sentence. I’ll start again. If you don’t have a flickr account, feel free to do a blog post with your texture photos there, and link back here in the comments. Same thing if you use some other public web hosting site besides flickr.
Have you tried to create textures before? Try it, you’ll like it. Unleash the creative nymph behind the lens and look at things in a new way. Okay, grab your cameras and go find some interesting textures! (SuperGuy, if you’re reading this…we don’t really want to see the NYMPH behind your lens, you know, so just go with your creative side, okay?)
The Great Texture Challenge has begun! Let’s get a great group of textures that we all can use with our photos.
