I’ve wanted to visit the Notre Dame des Neiges cemetery for a long time, but somehow the time was never quite right.  I guess I was afraid of not being able to capture the beauty of the place, the way I wanted it, in my own style.  Most of the cemetery photos I see carry that dark and heavy feeling, I wanted something lighter.  I don’t hang out much in cemeteries, or churches for that matter, but I can admire their beauty.  This cemetery is a truly beautiful one, delicately carved statues and rows of flowering trees, nothing heavy about it.

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” 
-Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

I just love my garden!  I devote a lot of time to it every year,  it’s my happy place…   When my flowers bloom, it’s just like long-awaited friends coming for a visit,  I’m excited for each and  every little bud.  They fill me with joy and make this small patch of land a beautiful home.   I have plenty of flowers,  an eclectic mix of annuals and perennials.  Many bloom in spring while others last through October.  I try to add new flowers every year, though it’s going to be crowded soon.  There’s never enough flowers!!

Here comes spring, the long awaited season…

Where you take off your heavy winter clothes and put on your flip flops. Where you feel free to run at the park, go for extra long walks of for a quiet bicycle ride.  The time when I can fully enjoy my morning cup of coffee outside, alone with my (yes, mine) birds.

I just love those ten minutes in my day…  The ones we spend together at the school bus stop.  In these ten minutes I get to know you a little better every day.  In these ten minutes we reinvent the world.. We create one of our own.

The basics.

The first thing you have to remember when working with textures, is that the results will vary depending on your photo, the texture you choose, and the blending mode you select.  You have to play with them a couple of times to determine the effect you like best.

First step is to open both your photo and the texture you want in an editing software that allows layering (PS, PSE, Gimp.  But not Lightroom unless you add a plug-in for it, and that’s a whole other story…).

Then you slide the texture over the photo with the move tool or by copy/paste.  You will have to adjust it’s size with the Move tool or the Free Transform tool so it fits perfectly your document.