Under the Pear Blossoms (Digitally Edited Photo)

Under the Pear Blossoms (Digitally Edited Photo) Originally uploaded by randubnick

This morning, while waiting to get into a local restaurant, I took some photos of flowering pear trees in downtown Beverly. (There was a wait to get in the restaurant because it was Mother's Day.) I was standing under this tree, and I loved the flowers against the blue sky. Tonight when I transferred the photos into my computer, I could see that there were wires and tiny electric light bulbs, hidden under the pear blossoms. (Like a lot of cities, Beverly keeps lights on its trees all year. North of Boston you need all the light you can get! I had forgotten about that when I was taking the picture this morning.) Well, I was disappointed but not defeated. I opened the photo in Painter IX and got to work with some digital pastel. The wires were everywhere. But I liked the challenge and it was good practice at drawing on the computer. I went through the photo looking for bits of the twisted wire and tiny bulbs, and used digital pastel to transform wire and bulbs into sky or blossom or leaf or branch, whatever was closer, and whatever would work. While I was at it, I cleaned up a few scraggly branches. Now it looks a lot better, and I am glad I went to the trouble, because now I have a nice souvenir of a wonderful day.