Hunter Valley Gardens, Part Two

To follow on from a recent post, I wanted to share another five photos to round off this visit. Yes I could've swamped my blog with garden photos; I love taking photos of anything in flower, trees and their barks, landscapes etc. To narrow down lots of photos to just a few is difficult.

From both sides of the Japanese pagoda ..

Inside the small chapel, across the lake.

Topiary horses depicting those on the Brokenback mountain range nearby.

And the finale' - a cool retreat under the weeping willows.

Playing with Graphics using PhotoImpact

For the past few months now I’ve been slowly re-working my way through the Beginners Workshop (for PhotoImpact). The opportunity to learn how to use Ulead’s Photo-Impact for graphics manipulation, is available to all.

Volunteer mentors are assigned to each student to assist when needed, and more good news too is, that it’s a free workshop. If you’re looking to learn how to do creative things with your digital photography, PhotoImpact offers a most versatile and cost effective means to make it happen.

Having been through the Beginners Workshop six years ago, over time and with new interests taken on, I found I’d lost touch with some of what I’d learnt back then. I’m loving that I can re-aquaint myself again with the fabulous graphics creativity that can be achieved with PhotoImpact.

Two favourite projects within Level Two (there are 96 projects over three levels within the workshop), have been those from a most talented tutorial writer, Wouter Demoet. If you visit Wouter's website you'll find a comprehensive listing of the most wonderful tutorials available, and so much more.

First is Mitred Corners Frame that I’ve applied to a Fred Mullet rubber-stamped image, working with watercolours on watercolour paper. Suddenly this image was able to fit wonderfully in my Mitred Corner project application.

Second was a Plate Tutorial and, remember a post I’d just recently added with photos from Hunter Valley Gardens? Well, the violas are from a beautiful mass planting there too. I loved their delicate colours especially with an added watercolour effect.

You can check out the array of wonderful forums on PhotoImpact International site.

If you'd like to try PhotoImpact for yourself, just visit the Corel site, where you can download a free-trial of their latest version X3.