Thank you all for sharing your interesting photo crops for Patti’s challenge last week – so many good pieces of advice! As usual we can learn much from each other. Now we are happy to welcome our guest host this week – Sue (Mac’s Girl) of The Nature of Things.

Sue inspires us to post about our pastimes, old or new. ”Pastimes. It could be something that you are trying for the first time or a hobby or interest that you have enjoyed for many years.” Please visit her site for more inspiration!

Leaving my jigsaw puzzle for some hours, I have chosen to post my newly found (some weeks ago…) pastime, sparkled by ”Swirls and Twirls” at the World according to Dina.

These are some of my first attempts. I started with the little house (in the header) from a spring walk for Thursday Thoughts. Find the house here.

After making a couple of images, I realized that roads were good starters, leading straight into the swirl. This one is from Iceland, original photo here.

A lonely house on a hill, a cold, cold evening in Jämtland, Sweden. Windows are helpful to get the feeling of ”wind and light” running through.

The cherry blossom path. See the original photo here. As usual, click to enlarge.

Finally, this colourful library in Warsaw, where the original photo can be found here.

 

What did I learn from some hours of fun creating? Some things that felt right for me, were:

• Colourful photos (rather vibrant) worked best – monochrome worked well too.
• Roads and paths were good choices for a start.
• Buildings – doors and windows were helpful to make the swirling go”live”.
• Animals and people will need more practice…(Dina was very successful in her post!)

Another thing is how much time flies when you get absorbed in this – but that was of course part of the intention. If you want to try it, for guidelines, please go to Dina’s site (Link above), and/or to Youtube.

We look forward to seeing your interpretation of the Pastime theme. Please be sure to link your response to Sues post (use the original post link, NOT the one from the WP reader) and use the Lens-Artists TAG so we can all find you.

On May 23, challenge #98, we will be back on schedule, and I (Leya) will be your host. Until then – take care and stay well.