More Images from Baguio City

I truly felt I didn't take a lot of pictures while I was in Baguio City for two days, but it makes me satisfied and happy that I have more images to share to you guys.


{My entry for Texture Tuesdays}

The prompt this week was "Dreamy" and  I truly had a difficult time thinking what to share, until I saw this picture. Original image had more space... I actually cropped out one more dancer at the right side of the image to make the spacing tight. On one of my previous posts, I did say that I love my camera's abilities to blur backgrounds (making the subject clear), but one of the bad things I didn't like about this camera is its limited abilities to capture moving subjects. The space was well lighted, but it cannot really freeze moving subjects clearly, thus some of the elements appear blurred.

Editing this image, I first made a selection around these four dancers using the paths tool... feathered the selection at 5%, made an inverted selection and blurred the background at 27%. This step I used over and over on selections near the dancers' arms and faces to achieve a uniform blurred look. From the original size, I then cropped it to 1000x750 pixels and made a rectangle selection of 640x480 pixels. From there I made these steps:

• Applied the "Mute Colors" script, using desaturated overlay to tone down the colors.
• Added a layer of Kim Klassen's "Poetic" texture, set to overlay at 80%.
• Added a layer of Kim Klassen's "Trust" texture, set to hard light at 25%. Flattened the image.
• Applied the "Urban Acid" script at 20%.
• Ran the "National Geographic" script, using my preferred settings.
• Ran the "Romantic" script, with layers tweaked a bit so it won't be too rosy.
• Flattened the image and added my watermark.

For this prompt, the blurred body parts worked good because it appeared dreamy. Still, capturing moving subjects proved to be difficult for me.

February is probably the biggest month for Baguio City because it's this month that they hold the Panagbenga Festival - the festival devoted to flowers, as "Panagbenga" meant "bloom." The grand street and float parade happened last weekend, which I wasn't able to witness because I was there last Tuesday and left the day after. Time may be limited, but I was able to take flower pictures:


These two flowers I captured around the grounds of SM City Baguio (a mall).


This one (is this Baby's Breath?) I captured after the event I attended, and was part of the floral centerpiece. Another reason why I love my camera: I can go as close as possible and still capture a great macro shot!


These three I captured along the grounds of the Staff House, while we were waiting for our companions before we travel back to Manila. Flowers are truly abundant during this time of the year in Baguio City... and I am happy to share that I will be traveling back to Baguio with my family this weekend. Hopefully time will be enough for me to capture more flowers from the Summer Capital of the Philippines.