A Summer of Collaborations

A Summer of Collaborations by Jen Bracewell and Mansi Bhatia

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”  ― Henry James (1846-1916)

Here on the left coast of North America we are witnessing quite the battle between Summer and Fall, as Summer shows her spirit and refuses to bow out and let Fall take center stage.  These unseasonably warm days and mild nights tug at my heartstrings and give me hope every day that maybe it could stay summer forever?

The days packed with swimming, grilling, and chatting with my neighbors and friends long into the night will undoubtedly soon give way to raking leaves and warm fires. It seems like just yesterday we were eagerly awaiting summer’s promise of longer days and camping trips and now we are already making plans for next summer- anticipating the fun it will bring.

I love summer, and the fact that it is still here in mid-October makes me love it so much more.

In this second edition  of a four part exploration of seasonal self-portraiture, Mansi Bhatia and I explore summertime with you as we share our interpretation of a photo of ourselves as well as a photo of each other while keeping summer in mind.

Enjoy!

Summer heat
Beach memories
Luscious greens
Sultry evenings
Light breeze

Decadent salads
Roses and marigolds
Barbecues on the deck
Family time
Laziness four-fold

Tutorial by Jen for Mansi’s image #2

• I used Filterstorm and adjusted curves and added exposure, adding a photo of sunset.
• I then took the image into juxtaposer where I added a bunch of seahorses. I had taken this photo at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and saved it as a stamp (they can’t be seen well in the final image as my vision changed as the edit went on).
• The next step was IColorama S where I used the painterly filter at full strength
• I then brought the image into “Jazz”, random until I got something I was pleased with.
• The last step was Lo mob, postcard 3

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Polka-dot bikinis
Yoga poses
Hiking, biking
Cravings satisfied
Mango mousses

I melt away
Into another state
My mind free
My body strong
Summer is my favorite

Tutorial by Mansi for Jen’s image #2

• Mokuhanga: multi-color portrait canvas
• Image Blender: blended the portrait image with that of a tree
• BlurFX: blurred the blended image using the median type blur
• ModernGrunge: added texture to the image (ran it through this app twice to eat two different textures) and then blended them in ImageBlender.
• Blended the image of a bright sun with previous image in ImageBlender.
• Next blended the image of a lotus using the luminosity blend in the same app.
• Ran the image in Scratchcam to get some color and texture in the lotus.
• Superimposed this resulting lotus image on to the last blended image using Filterstorm’s add exposure feature.
• Lastly blended this image with the resultant image from the moderngrunge run to get back some color and blend the lotus better.