Bleeding orange and having fun

August Break- Orange

I've had several hellacious days, hence no posting.  Even though my health is improving I am still disabled and as anyone who has chronic health problems can tell you there are days when you do not function well.  If I had still been employed I would have been calling in sick.  Anyway more on dealing with chronic health issues at a later date.

When I saw the theme for the August Break challenge was orange I thought I would have a hard time until I walked into Wal-Mart.  It had slipped my mind that I was in Tennessee and the college football team here , the Tennessee Volunteers, have orange as their team color.  When I got home after taking these photos Laura said she thought that if they could the town folk here would paint the whole town orange they would.  After seeing all the orange around including all the apparel on those same towns folk I would agree, in fact I would think that they would bleed orange if they could.   

Since I am not a football fan and I difinitely needed a just for fun break, I decided to play with a photo editing program I recently downloaded.  Photoscape is a free photo editing program that I downloaded from cnet.  It is a fun program that I have used in the past but due to computer problems I have not used in a while.  Now that I have a new computer, well new to me anyway,  I've reinstalled it  and now have to remember what all the filters and enhancements do, so I'm having fun playing with it . 

The original photos on the left side where kind of ho-hum, but after I played with them and had a great deal of fun with them, I like the abstract pieces of art.
Hope you enjoyed my little excursion into photoscape filters.  If you have any questions on what filters I used and how I applied them please leave your question in the comments section.
☺☻☺Enjoy☺☻☺
Johnina

Back to Kingsport Tenn

Rest area on I-75
All in Bloom

Took a break from visiting my daughter to continue working on my health, but I traveled back last week during the heat wave.  I made it back to Kingsport in record time.  Last time even though I thought I left at the right time to miss Atlanta traffic it still took me 2 1/2 hours to get from Locust Grove through Atlanta to Marietta.  This time it took 45 minutes.  It always amazes me at the time difference that can occur while driving in the city. Sometimes for no apparent reason your time can double or triple.  How do those who commute everyday figure this out?

Blessed shade on a hot day

The other thing that continues to surprise me is the different personalities of the rest areas.  Each has it's own beauty.  The difference between rest areas between states is even more remarkable.  Georgia's tend to have lots of wide open spaces with minimal landscaping mostly around the main building and they are not staffed except at the main You have entered Georgia Rest Area.

Georgia rest area picnic site

Tennessee has smaller rest areas with more landscaping spread across the entire area.  They also have the bonus of being having an attendant on site.

Beauty at the rest stop
Art edit

At one of the Georgia rest areas I saw some evergreens that where in some places dead, dying, and other places growing and thriving.  I loved the textures and color combinations so I snapped a shot.

Life goes on

I have been looking at a lot of abstract photos and art lately so since I really liked the colors and textures I decided to try my hand at turning this photo into an abstract art piece.

  I edited it in Photoscape (available for free on CNET) using the swirl filter then I added a lens flare.  I added three lens flares in three different colors and turned down the opacity on the flares.

I then transferred it to Gimp and layered the edited version with the original. (Gimp is alsoavailable for free on CNET). This was my first attempt at using layers. I then cropped it to emphasize the center flare and came up with this:

What do you think?
Enjoy
☺☺☺Johnina☺☺☺