December #One Four Challenge – Step I

Welcome, welcome!!!

First day of the last month of the year, first Monday, first week in a new One Four Challenge, courtesy of Robyn from Captivate Me. The idea is to take one of our own images and process it four different ways – sharing it over four weeks on our own blogs – one image per week. If you would like to join in the fun, please hop to her blog and read some more info.

Last month I revealed the original from the beginning. This month I will take a different approach, because my idea is to really make every step unique and as far removed from original as possible. I don’t know if I’ll succeed in my intentions, but it will certainly not be for lack of trying.

I don’t know if you get yourselves in trouble too often, but it seems I just look to make things harder for myself. I was bent to have a Christmas image as this month’s subject of my crazy experiments, but I don’t have a lot of “christmasy” images in my collection. I was playing with few and decided on this one from my trip to Vienna in 2007. I was so fascinated by the variety of decorations, I spent my time going around their famous Christmas Market and snapping pictures.

I could beat myself with a stick for the lack of quality. But if I did that for every poor image I ever took, I would end up in hospital. 😛 As my grandma and all grandmas around the world used to say – No crying over the spilt milk.

My post-processing choices are by now well-known and too boring to repeat over and over again. I am really trying to stay away from Orton, but every time I use it, I just can’t go back. One thing I used for the first time was adding the snow. There is a section in PicMonkey with different Themes, one of those is Winterland. There I found some snow just lying around and thought to myself: Why not?

Please, shower me with your love and admiration and I will smoother you with tons of “christmasy” stuff. 😀

EDIT:
My best friend just called me and demanded I remove the snow: “I don’t like it! Remove it, it looks so fake.” Oh my, she nearly gave me a heart-attack, but I am sticking with it.