Who knows why, but this young man is intensely focused on his girlfriend’s manicure. They entered the salon together and he stuck right to her side as she picked out a color, took a seat and rolled up her sleeves.  He sat down at the manicure station with her and the girlfriend giggled and asked “is this ok?”

She looked as diametrically opposite to him as possible.  Pick a feature on him, reverse it, and apply it to her.  Body composition, hair, angularity of features …. you get the picture.  But under the skin, they seemed to be perfect soulmates.  Same regional accent, same general category of cultural orientation, same income bracket.  When put together with his paramour, there was a strange vibe in the heretofore placid nail salon.

He was so fixated on the set of acrylic nails being glued to his love’s fingertips that he failed to notice me taking his picture.

I dressed him up using Noir, plus a little cropping.  I tried SimplyB&W, but couldn’t get the tricky lighting to look right, but Noir has a few tricks up its sleeve to put the light exactly where you want it.

– the Daily Grunge

 My bedroom windows on a sunny afternoon.  There was so much light coming in through the blinds, creating nice lines on the wall, that I had no choice but to take a picture.  Lots of contrast added.  Love those diagonals!

– the Daily Grunge

 Ok, just one more mushroom pic.  This one was so unusual I had to work on an image.  It was nearly transparent, with the edges curling up, just beautiful.  Both treatments here from Jazz, with a little initial processing in PaintFX to bring out details.

– the Daily Grunge

Leaves are the new mushrooms.

 This is my favorite leaf pic so far.  Really not much needed to be done to it, except a boost to contrast, and a “burnt photo” grunge effect, which changed the color and added the chopped-off vignette border.  It gives it an aged effect that suits a leaf on the ground.

– the Daily Grunge