Saturday Star Spotlight

My students have done a lot of fun and exciting things that I will sometimes feature Saturday in our Star Spotlight.

Normal Things

While rummaging around in my files looking for some collages my students had created I found a folder from one of my Photoshop Elements Special Projects classes that had some fun, creative images in it that I wanted to share again today. The assignment for the class was to create a picture of a normal thing, in an abnormal situation.

Here Dana Kimborough created a cat and a fish that filled the bill for the assignment. Great thinking, fun image. Am I surprised? Not one bit.

How about this one that Helen did with a graduating cactus!


Jane Kennedy has contributed to our blog in previous months. She got some great pictures on a trip she and her friend Linda Baker went on to Africa. How about this elephant?

As I perused the folder I was once again struck by the sheer force of the creativity of this age group of students. This untapped resource will never cease to surprise and inspire me. Seniors have been there, gathered information from many life experiences, and do a wonderful job of creating images from those experiences if they have the technical skills to do it.

No question about it--seniors rock!!!

Special Effects Projects

This week we will be doing a series on Special Effects. These images were all created by my students at the community college where I teach. I continue to be charmed and inspired by the creativity of the people in my Emeritus classes!

Janice and Bud

"The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart." ~Elisabeth Foley

Over the years I have met a lot of special people in my classes. Age 50 to 90 years is in my esitmation the perfect student! They are there to learn...bright and experienced...they are also there to create and have a good time.

Janice and Bud are perfect examples of the best students in my group and two people I call friend. Janice has been with me nearly as long has I have been teaching, Bud for the last couple of years.

They both enter their work at the county fair here in Dallas and always place or win. We have featured their work on this blog before, and here is more!

A hot dog with a glow around it, hand made smoke and hot text! What could be better!

It's a bird, no it's a plane, no it's a bird-plane! What a great image! Talk about creative! Definitely one you give a double-take!!

"Friends are those rare people who ask how you are and then wait for the answer." ~Author Unknown

A special thank you to Janice and Bud Roden for letting me share their exceptional work!

Special Effects Week

This week we will be doing a series on Special Effects. These images were all created by my students at the community college where I teach. I continue to be charmed and inspired by the creativity of the people in my Emeritus classes!

Grandchildren's Faces

Gene Perret said, "What a bargain grandchildren are! I give them my loose change, and they give me a million dollars' worth of pleasure!"

If you have been blessed with grandchildren you know just what he was talking about! Here is a picture taken of Betty Malone's lovely little Hannah. She added the Palette Knife and Poster Edges filters from Photoshop Elements and now the photograph looks like a painting!



Alan Frome said, "Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from the responsibilities so that we can be friends." That is evident in the next image. Betty and her grandaughter Lily cooked up the sweet concoction you see below. Lily did the posing and Betty did the picture taking and Photoshop special effects. They knew they were going to use these to fit into the letters of Lily's name.

Grandmas hold our tiny hands for just a little while, but our hearts forever. ~Author Unknown

A special thank you to Betty Malone for letting us use her charming images on our blog.

Friday Star Spotlight

On Fridays we will feature special projects, photography and ideas contributed by talented seniors along with information about the Internet.


Special Effects and Scrapbooking Links

Norma Babbitt is a wonderful photographer. She has that great eye some people are blessed with which helps her put unique images together in Photoshop as well. I have included several of them in this post.

I am also including three scrapbooking links she kindly gave us where we can find some great backgrounds and other fun (and sometimes free) image enhancement items.

Below is an image Norma and her grandson created together for a Special Effects Class. She had the idea, and he helped by adding the mouth. Won't he be dynamite with Photoshop?!

The next two images come from taking a picture of an easel and window and adding a personal touch. First a field of flowers:




And then a Halloween greeting. Too much fun right here folks!! You gotta love this one!



And here is the note from Norma about the scrapbooking websites:

"These are some of my favs in digital scrapbooking. I signed up for newsletters from each of these websites:

http://pro.poshprintsonline.com/
Click on her “freebies” and download those. They are really nice and have layers. They would be good for your students to play around with. Her stuff is usually expensive to buy.

http://www.scrapgirls.com/ (my very favorite!)
This newsletter comes every day except Sunday and each has a “freebie” in it toward the bottom. Also, tutorials are in there on some days. The stuff here is inexpensive to buy and it’s fun.

http://www.scrappersguide.com/
This is one I joined for about $35 per year. You get a full kit each month to download and also some videos on different subjects. Linda Sattgast is the owner and I have purchased her instructional videos in the past and they are good. I think she has a new one on Elements 8.

**One thing to keep in mind – none of these scrapbook pages can be shared with other people or sent to others via email in their original form. And they can’t be used in anything that is sold, they are just for personal use. They are copyrighted and each site has it’s own rules.

Hope you and your students have some fun with these sites."

Happy surfing!!"


A special thank you to Norma Babbitt for sharing her images and favorite links with us.

Friday Star Spotlight

On Fridays we will feature special projects, photography and ideas contributed by talented seniors along with information about the Internet.


Special Effects for a Rainy Day

I don't know how the weather is where you live, but here in Dallas we have rain, rain and more rain! And I have some fun special effect images to post today that remind us of sunnier days!

Lionel Ruiz was in the Special Effects class I teach at a community college here in Dallas. He came up with some gems and has generously agreed to share them with us.

Lionel is a photographer and he and his daughter are balloon enthusiasts--that's a recipe for cooking up some cool images! Here are some of his images, along with quotes I've found from various sources:

Winnie the Pooh said, "Nobody can be uncheeered with a balloon!"

In The Twenty-one Balloons, William Penne du Bois said, "The best way of travel, however, if you aren't in any hurry at all, if you don't care where you are going, if you don't like to use your legs, if you don't want to be annoyed at all by any choice of directions, is in a balloon. In a balloon, you can decide only when to start, and usually when to stop. The rest is left entirely to nature."



In 1908, Le Figaro said, "I have known today a magnificent intoxication. I have learnt how it feels to be a bird. I have flown. Yes I have flown. I am still astonished at it, still deeply moved."



And how about this creative idea--two images combined to cause you to do a double-take if you see the picture! Yes, that is a train following the car!

A special thanks to Lionel Ruiz for his contribution to our blog!

Tuesday's Treasures

On Tuesdays we provide our Faculty an opportunity to feature the talented work of some of our students and friends. You may see a display of creative Photoshop work, their beautiful photographs or an interesting story about an individual’s meaningful contribution to his or her community, country or the world.If you have memories, old or new, you would like to share, send them to me at mxw8110@yahoo.com.


Nine Square Novelty

This week we are featuring the work of five of my Collage Class students. The assignment was the same, but the results as usual were as diverse and interesting as the students themselves.

I love the Fall! If we keep our cameras with us, we can get some wonderful pictures this time of year. Tom Whitman and his wife took a trip to the Ozarks to see the color and returned with the lovely pictures collaged in the image you see below.

And how about this one. I didn’t realize that we have a butterfly pavilion in Ft. Worth, Texas. That is where Barbara Maimbourg went to gather these delicious images.

And of course the nine square template lends itself to pictures of loved ones. Ed Relder did this charming image using his great grandchild as a model.

Below Alyce Fisher features her son at his graduation. This is a really effective way to present a series of pictures of the same subject. If you had these as individual pictures you might quickly thumb through them, thinking they were pretty much the same. But the nine of them, gathered in one place, along with the text, present an image of a very special moment in time.

And how about this one that Karen Barnett came up with?! It is the The Cullen Family from the movie Twilight. But isn’t this a great idea. I was thinking how much fun it would be to do a collage like this with family members gazing out of the squares and put the family crest in the center square.

As always I am struck by the ability of our age group to continuously create unique images. When we get that technical skill in place, we're dangerous!!

Marcel Proust said, “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

Special thanks to Tom Whitman, Barbara Maimbourg, Ed Relder, Alyce Fisher and Karen Barnett for their contributions to Tuesday's Treasures.

Tuesday's Treasures

On Tuesdays we provide our Faculty an opportunity to feature the talented work of some of our students and friends. You may see a display of creative PhotoShop work, their beautiful photographs or an interesting story about an individual’s meaningful contribution to his or her community, country or the world.If you have memories, old or new, you would like to share, send them to me at mxw8110@yahoo.com.


Normal Things

I was rummaging around in my files looking for some collages my students had created for a special class we are having today. Shelly Slater from WFAA.TV Channel 8, the local ABC affiliate, is doing a series on Aging in America. They are coming by the community college where I teach to film our class and talk about seniors learning how to use the computer.

I found a folder from one of my Photoshop Elements Special Projects classes that had some fun, creative images in it that I wanted to share today. The assignment for the class was to create a picture of a normal thing, in an abnormal situation.

Here Dana Kimborough created a cat and a fish that filled the bill for the assignment. Great thinking, fun image. Am I surprised? Not one bit.

How about this one that Helen did with a graduating cactus!


Jane Kennedy has contributed to our blog in previous months. She got some great pictures on a trip she and her friend Linda Baker went on to Africa. How about this elephant?

As I perused the folder I was once again struck by the sheer force of the creativity of this age group of students. This untapped resource will never cease to surprise and inspire me. Seniors have been there, gathered information from many life experiences, and do a wonderful job of creating images from those experiences if they have the technical skills to do it.

No question about it--seniors rock!!!