It’s Here

Originally uploaded by Heather Green Photography

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas morning. My husband got the new 50D for me. I’m in love with that fast shutter, woohoo! Can’t wait to get out and do some wildlife photography with it, hopefully this weekend.

Have a great day everyone!

Textures are HOT right now.  Whether you use them on photos taken of families or seniors, landscapes, wildlife, pets, or just add them to your own personal photos…they create some amazing effects.  Once you get the hang of it, adding texture to your photos isn’t hard at all.  There’s no set ‘rules’ on how to add texture except…you need to find some textures.  I’ll go into that later in this post.

You should have basic knowledge of using brushes and layers in photoshop.

Here’s three of my textured wildlife images, that I framed and donated a couple months back to a wildlife rehabilitation group:

First up, texture tutorials

There’s so many ways to texture your photos….the best thing is to play around and find the best and easiest way for you.  Here’s a few tutorials:

Here’s a texture tutorial on Flickr

Here’s a texture tutorial on Associated Content

Here’s a texture tutorial on DeviantArt

Those tutorials will give you the basics on how people add textures to photos.  Once you start playing around you might come up with your own ideas on adding texture.

Finding Textures:

There’s so many free resources out there for textures, just make sure when you find textures, that the owner of the textures allows them for the use you have in store for them.  If you’re going to create a textured photo and sell it, you should make sure that the texture is allowed for commercial use.

here’s a few resources for textures:

Textures on DeviantArt HERE

CG Textures HERE

Texture King HERE

Textures For Layers on Flickr HERE

Texture Inspiration:

And, there’s so much out there on Flickr that can inspire you and give you ideas for your own images, try checking out these groups to get ideas on your next texture project.

Totally Textures

NinianLif’s Texture Addicts

Texturized

Textures By Ash

Before showing you some lovely items I’ve found on Etsy, first I’ll show you what I have for sale on there

You can check out all of my etsy shop HERE  where you’ll find my digital art prints like this Crested Caracara image below:

My prints are from photographs I have taken and then digitally altered in photoshop to give a textured and vintage feel.  These prints are printed by my favorite photo lab on photographic paper and shipped right to you after you purchase them through my shop on Etsy.

Ok, now onto some Etsy finds:

I love this gray horse print by animalsincolor.  Bright and bold!

Or what about this beautiful Zebra print by irenesuchocki ?  I love the composition of this and the use of texture. 

And in keeping with the four-legged and hooved theme, how about this gorgeous Blue Mustang giclee print by wildlifegallery ?  It reminds me of the vacations I used to take to the southwest with my family when I was younger.

And with that, I’ll leave you with one more of my prints available on Etsy.  A Friesian horse print:

My husband and I, and both of my parents went on the Hendry County Farm Tour this past weekend.  There were a total of three FULL tour busses in our group..I was surprised at how many people took the tour!  We had a great time and it was interesting to learn about the agriculture and the businesses around the area where we live.  From doing that tour we’ve decided to buy as much produce from local farmers as we can instead of buying it all at the grocery store (there is a vegetable stand we pass to and from work that we will shop at).  And if we do have to buy it at the grocery store, we’re making sure that whatever we buy has been grown in the US.

We also came away with tons of free vegetables.  Last night we made two quarts of homemade salsa using the veggies we got (plus ingredients we already had at home) and for dinner we did steaks on the grill which we already had at home and I fried up some zuchinni which we had also gotten from the tour.

Here’s a few pictures from the tour:

Corn growing at Alico Ranch:

We got to see cowboys and dogs work a herd of cows:

We visited Southern Gardens which is an orange juice factory.  Here’s trucks being unloaded:

We visited Shawnee Farms where they grow sugarcane:

And here they are loading train cars with cut sugarcane: