Photo Recipe: My Moody Winter Sky

I was was so proud of myself for keeping up with my thankful posts even as I struggled because I didn't want it to turn into an inventory of the reasons my life is awesome (I didn't want it to feel braggy.)
So, one co-old morning, when I opened all of the shades completely to let the sun shine in and warm the house (total opposite from a typical summer day,) I realized what was what I was thankful for that day: the warmth of the winter sun.  I went out on my front porch, in my pajamas, and tried to get a photo of the winter sky.  I wanted leafless tree tops and that cold blue sky and that quality of the sun that just hollers "It's winter!"
Now, my house is across the street from the Junior High School where my son is an eighth grader.  I did not take the time to play with a lot of settings because I didn't want his buddies to look out the window and see crazy Mrs. K on her hands and knees taking pictures of the sun.  They all know the camera is attached to my hip, but still...
So, I came inside, loaded the photos and this is what I ended up with:



Bleh.  I like the silhouette of the trees, and the sky definitely doesn't look summery, but I just didn't love it at all.

Three days after this, we had horrific storms (I live about 9 miles from Washington, IL) and all I could think about was what a moody, fickle sky we have.  With that in mind, I decided to aggressively edit the photo to make it moody.

I am an experimenter and I picked some different textures from the Love that Shot Collections to see what they would do with my photo.  I started with "Wicked" from the Fairytale collection.  It has a nice midnight-blue feel.  At first, I had hoped it would give me a little blue in the sky, but that's not what happened.  But I loved the way it looked:



I next decided that I wanted a little more color variation, and more texture (remember, I am not subtle) so I chose a texture called "Mauna" from the Kalani Collection.  I loved the colors it added to the photo around the sun:



Finally, I decided to completely embrace the dark, foreboding feel that this photo was taking on.  I went to the Olde World collection (my favorite of all of the collections) and chose a texture called "Calais" for its dark vignette and ancient feel.  It reminds me of old parchment that has had ink spilled on the edges.

After I added that, one, here was the finished product:



In review, I added Wicked from the Fairytale Collection (overlay, 75%) then "Mauna" from the Kalani Collection (overlay, 75%) and finally "Calais" from the Olde World collection (overlay, 75%.)  Here is the comparison.



I like how my winter sky now looks like a creepy full-moon Halloween night!  I didn't end up with what I had intended, but sometimes that's just how life is.

If you'd like to learn more about Love That Shot's Photo Veils and Textures, just click here! Experiment and enjoy!