Some Special Sparklers.

On New Year's Eve, our three grandkids were together, which is always a wondrous thing.  After dinner, to burn off a bit of steam, the kids were ushered outside, where there was a fire in the fire pit, and sparklers for twirling (with appropriate adult supervision).

Theo, our daughter-in-law took an amazing shot with the slow exposure on her camera and this was the result. 

I knew immediately that I would have to "hook" this moment. And today, I had a little time to see where this would take me. First of all, I wanted to get closer to the action, so I cropped it.

Much better to get in on those expressions. Jackson (10) already has swagger in his sparkler. Everleigh (6) seems very focused on watching what she is doing. And Charlie (2) is enjoying the wonder.

Next, I ran the image through my favourite Photo Editor - Photomania. And I decided the effect I liked best was "Brush Strokes".  Simpler sketch, stronger values, a much better hooking road map. Not much different from the original shot. 

And to create my sketch, I ran the Brush Strokes effect through "Coal Sketch", another effect on Photomania.

The initial result was just way too many lines in black and white, so I used the slider to reduce the effect, and let more of the photo show through, while still keeping a good strong line I can use for my pattern. I will trace the key lines onto a piece of tracing paper, and use that to transfer the pattern to backing.

This whole photo editing process is one of the technology tools I cover in my workshop, Creating Fibre Art in the Age of Technology.

My Workshop Week 2024 class filled in a couple of days after registration opened. My wait list turned into a second workshop in early March. And now I have another wait list for a third. It makes me so happy that folks are keen to learn about all of these tools waiting out there on the internet.