It’s not stained glass.  It’s not fabric.  Believe it or not, this is the swiss chard pic I posted about a week ago, superimposed over a background pic of tree lichen.  I used a tonal mask on the chard to leave behind the outlines of the stems while bleeding off most of the color. I have to admit, this absolutely blew me away.  I can’t stop looking at the details, it just looks amazing.

I rarely work in color, or that used to be true.  When I shot film, it was always black and white.  Everyone sees different things in art; for me, I see form and structure and graphic elements and color is often a distraction.  For some reason though, when editing on the iPhone, color is just another element to work with.  And since my object in creating pictures is to stretch myself creatively, sooner or later I was going to have to tackle this sacred cow and work with color.

You just don’t know what you can do until you try it.  I’ll say it once more: taking bad pictures is a good thing.  If you aren’t taking bad pictures, it’s because you aren’t trying anything new.