This is a photograph I took the other day on my way home from the supermarket. I thought it quite atmospheric, the way the sky was reflected in the water, the boat and two men silhouetted against the rippling clouds.

I published a post a little while ago about using stock photography, and another about using images on books and blog posts, and then talked a little bit about using our own photography where possible. It’s quite easy to manipulate images to create different effects, so I thought I’d have a play with this one:

This is a marker effect,

This is a watercolour sponge effect,

And this is a chalk drawing effect with the edges blurred, making it look like an old photograph.

Each of these effects took just minutes to do, and I did them in Microsoft Word, saving the altered images as JPEGs. I think each effect creates quite a different feel for the images, and they’d work quite well as a book cover or story image. What I like about doing this is the fact you don’t need fancy software or loads of expertise to make an interesting image for your blog or book cover – rather, you just need to be able to see the potential in a photo you’ve taken, then play around with different effects.

Hope you’re all enjoying Sunday – wishing you a happy week! 🙂