Red Sunflower Artist Trading Card

  January's ATC. I played with Photoshop for this one--a great exercise for improving those skills. At the bottom is the original photo, taken while driving through the Loire Valley in France, during September 2011. This was the only field of sunflowers in bloom that we passed during our entire three-week trip. All the other fields were brown and gone to seed. The photo was quickly snapped, without much effort to compose, thus, not too thrilling a picture.
   A design class project had these requirements: 1) Choose a photo; 2) Artistically crop it; 3) Change the colors. I chose to use Photoshop, as I'd like to improve my  competentency.  In the process of fulfilling the requirements, I also significantly altered the photo to change the shaded flower face into one which was light-filled. I finished that project in early December and was thrilled with what I had learned. The more I use Photoshop, the more I enjoy it.
   For this ATC, I have further cropped the project picture and I think I now like it even more.