Still Life

The March Focus on Photography challenge at the Digital Design Den is to create and photograph a still life. My flower arranging skills are sadly lacking and the lighting in our house is not really good for doing still life photography.  Since nothing is blooming in our part of the world yet - way too cold - I used a silk flower.  My SOOC image needed help, so I went to work with textures, gradients and adjustment layers.

This is the image straight out of the camera.  It was way too dark for me and I really didn't like the background.

And this is the image after I worked on it.  The first thing I did was crop it.  Then I added a layer mask and did away with the background.  Next I added the Sweettart texture by Kim Klassen - she has lovely textures on her blog, pay her a visit and see for yourself.  I did erase most of the texture from the  flower and vase using a layer mask.  After that, I added a pale white to pink gradient, then did a levels adjustment.  And I think the finished product looks much better.