**the april blast is being sent as we speak! we have VERY limited quantities of some of this month's blast items, so if you want to buy, get on it quick!**
April Showers Bring May Flowers, as the saying goes! April is normally a dreary month, not quite winter, not quite Spring/Summer, although here in California we've been having quite the heat wave! I was hoping that the weather would stick with the blast theme of the month, however all we've had is drought and heat. Therefore, I had to fake a rainy day to share my empathy with people who are experiencing more typical less-fortunate weather :)
Do you have any idea how hard it is to find rain boots and umbrellas in California? Most of these ended up coming from J.Crew, although I did get one of the umbrellas at the Gap. The boots were all $19.99 at J.Crew and even though I don't need them, I did buy them in my size :)
For those of you who aren't on the mailing list, here is the photo that went out:
A fairly convincing rainy day! Special thanks to Jeffrey Neal for being the garden hose sprayer while I shot safely and dry-ly from the sunny spot immediately to the front of the photo :)
This photo was processed using a few different means. First of all, I believe very strongly in trying to shoot a photo as close to the way you want it to be as possible. Photoshop isn't a way to make a bad photo good, its a way to make a good photo BETTER! As such, I knew that I was going to try to make the photo look as rainy as possible straight out of camera. I didn't do a very good job:
I knew I'd be able to work with it though. I knew I wanted the atmosphere to be darker and the colors to be more popped out. The first thing I did was use the Totally Rad Actions Yin/Yang to even out the exposure. Next, I used the clone tool at 100% to remove the piece of garden hose at the right hand side. Next, I used Jesh De Rox's Enlighten Action "blueberry night" at 62% to darken the photo down and add a purple/blue tone similar to what you might have on a cloudy, rainy day. I used Yin/Yang again afterwards to accentuate some darker tones around the back left of the photo, and used a slight "S" curve in Photoshop to make the colors pop a bit.
I finished it off with "Dappled Shadow", Jesh's darker vignette, and there you have it--this month's blast!
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