multi December challenge - Festive fever

[z3z]

Well it's THAT time of year again, and there's no avoiding it...

This month, create something related to the holiday season. This could be a photo of a Christmas Tree or a Christmas lights display, a wintry landscape, your dog in a Santa hat etc. If you're looking for an extra challenge, try to work in some unusual angles or experiment with depth of focus. When posting, if you can, please also write a sentence of two on the editing techniques you used or the filters you applied, so that we can learn from each other.

Alternatively, create something in Designer or Publisher that expresses 'December'. This could be a holiday greeting card, a gift-wrapped box, Santa's reindeers crossing a starry sky, etc etc.

If your style is more 'Christmas Grinch' than 'Santa's Little Helper' (no judgement here), create a photo or piece of art that channels 'Mid-winter', or 'the shortest day'. (Apologies to people in the Southern Hemisphere - maybe you could do the longest day and make us northies jealous of your fine weather!)

We had some gorgeous pics last month, and I hope more of you can find the time to join in again.

Let's see what you've got!

 

[v_kyr]

Already did a bunch of such stuff in the past for the community...

• Christmas Photo Storyboard
• Xmas texture styles 1+2
• Xmas FB Cover
• Xmas trees
• etc.

Therefore showing some excerpts from those ...

 

[jmwellborn]

@v_kyr  I am so glad you were kind enough to include your beautiful designs again here!  A few weeks ago I posted a comment about your glorious Christmas trees (which I spotted last year), purposely hoping that new forum members would see it and discover your spectacular work.  Here is the perfect spot!!   I am in such awe of your genius.  And so grateful for your generosity.  Happy Saint Nicholas Day to you -- 5 days early!!

[v_kyr]

@jmwellborn Happy and a stress free X-Mas time to you too!

[z3z]

Some nice images here, @v_kyr Thanks for sharing with us. I love the pic of of the girl in the red hat (left image in your first pic). That's just beautiful The Christmas trees are fantastic too.

[khdasel]

Super Idee kann Man gebrauchen 

Edited December 3, 2019 by khdasel

[Cecil]

I took photo with iPhone XS of our Christmas Tree.  I used Level, Curve, HSL Master and Green, Gradient adding a little pinkish tint and finally Depth of Field focusing on Hope.  I guess hoping this post is not an insult to the current posts. Merry Christmas.

[v_kyr]

Found another way to make Christmas stars, well sort of, the truth is actually I wanted to try out AD isometric drawing stuff, but then discovered ... 

 

[William Overington]

[William Overington]

I used some clip art from Serif PagePlus X7. In PagePlus I enlarged the reindeer and I flipped the hedgehog horizontally. I set it all out in an A5 horizontal publication in Affinity Publisher. The text is in the Annie BTN font, which was bundled with PagePlus X7.

I initially typeset using Arial but changed the font as Annie BTN is narrower setwise so I could use a bigger point size so as to fill the space better.

I set it all out on a plain background first then added a large rectangle, changed the fill colour and then moved the rectangle to the back.

I exported the whole page as a png, setting the height as 512 pixels.

William

 

[khdasel]

[khdasel]

allen schöne Weihnachten lg.

[z3z]

Oops, I wasn't getting notifications and didn't realise a whole bunch of you had posted in this thread! Great to see so many different ideas and expressions of the festive season.

@Cecil Your tree is beautiful, and it's a lovely image with the message of hope.

@v_kyr Haha, genius! Great concept. I love isometric work.

@William Overington That's a sweet pic, though I think you're going to have to explain the Esperanto to me. I seem to recall someone teaching me a tiny bit a while back, but I confess I've forgotten it all

@khdasel Sehr gut! (Thank you, Google translate!)

I've been experimenting with photographing Lego minifigs and I took this earlier today. Shot it in Raw, and did a few small edits in the Develop personna (a little bit of cropping and some small tweaks to exposure), then I shrunk the size down and gave it a little bit of sharpening. That was about it.

Minifigs are so much fun to photograph!

[William Overington]

15 hours ago, z3z said:

 

@William Overington That's a sweet pic, though I think you're going to have to explain the Esperanto to me. I seem to recall someone teaching me a tiny bit a while back, but I confess I've forgotten it all

@z3z

Hi. Just as a hobby I like to write original song lyrics sometimes.

Most are in English, though I have written two songs in Esperanto and one in French.

Years ago I was looking for rhymes for the word paco (which means peace) and I went through the dictionary that I had available to try to find Esperanto nouns ending in -aco.

I found various, including boaco, cetaco, erinaco, glaco, graco.

https://translate.google.com/ 

Those words shaped the lyrics of the song.

I cannot find the original text at present, it is on a print out in a box somewhere, but I have got a bit of it on the web.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/lingvo_de_paco.htm

The key part in relation to this discussion is as follows.

Kiam neĝas se vi imagas
la branĉkornojn de boaco
Se vi dolĉe respektas
la vivon de erinaco

 

When it snows if you imagine

the antlers of a reindeer

if you sweetly respect

the life of a hedgehog

 

I used the word dolĉe rather than gentile (kindly) because it has two syllables and I wanted the sort of "tang" of the last two letters of dolĉe

The thing is, I would not have thought of having a reindeer and a hedgehog in the song if the song was in English, the imagery is thus of the language.

William

 

 

[Cecil]

Pulled out a true life photo, Christmas Eve photo, several years past.  Made several adjustments and copied photo on stock photo iPhone.  I forget the original program used to add the snow.  I was in the process of telling the Christmas Story of Christ birth.  My daughter took the photo on Samsung cell phone, as I recall.  Not a great photo; however, grandsons head on shoulder made my Christmas, as well as other asking all the questions.

[z3z]

@William Overington Wow, thanks for the explanation, I enjoyed reading it. Languages are such fascinating, 'living' things, and I've got to admire people who are good with them, especially the slightly more obscure ones like Esperanto! I've got mad respect for conlangers.

 @Cecil Thanks for sharing that with us, Cecil. The best photos are the ones that have memories attached, regardless of their technical qualities. I love what you've done with the iPhone image and the snow. It takes a special photo and makes it even better.

[v_kyr]

12 hours ago, William Overington said:

Kiam neĝas se vi imagas
la branĉkornojn de boaco
Se vi dolĉe respektas
la vivon de erinaco

Well at least for some books (a child book in this case), the new trend seems to be to also translate them to Klingon.

[v_kyr]

Let's move back to topic ...

 

[z3z]

Lovely pic!

[jmwellborn]

That little girl is even more charming wrapped in her fur and scarf.   Her quality of serenity and stillness is phenomenal.  What a beautiful photograph, @v_kyr!!

[v_kyr]

At this cold time of year one has also to think about themes like this (not my shot, seen among some TV-news) ...

[thisldo]

Trying to keep the thread going with a  holiday creation done in Affinity Designer.  I am an unschooled designer doing this only for my own pleasure.

[Noxxi]

On 12/4/2019 at 12:16 AM, v_kyr said:

Found another way to make Christmas stars, well sort of, the truth is actually I wanted to try out AD isometric drawing stuff, but then discovered ... 

 

Very nice; depending on the perspective's view : )

But actually I liked to know how you managed the last layer, correspending as wished.

I can't get the clue : (

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Noxxi said:

But actually I liked to know how you managed the last layer, correspending as wished.

I can't get the clue : (

Usually kept as a secret, since it's one of those impossible geometric drawings ... - But maybe this here gives you the idea behind it (inspect the first and last two used layer object parts) ...

 

[Noxxi]

So many Tys, but it got me some time to figure it out.

Anyway, I made it. TY again