Dream Big!

Yesterday, my friend Marina (for whom I occasionally horsesit) asked if I could use my photo editing skills to help her envision a change she wanted to make on her property - building a barn closer to the house, near the top end of the driveway.  I've only recently begun to explore the fun things one can do with photo editing, using an online program called PicMonkey which is very user friendly, has great tutorials, and most of which is free (though I opted for the premium version which cost me a whole $35 per year, or thereabouts).  Even though my skills are still pretty shaky and amateurish, I like fooling around with this stuff, so I figured "why not?"

I started with a few photos of the property, like this one:

And a stock photo of a barn design that appealed to Marina,

And using the same concept I use for watermarks - an overlay - I inserted the barn photo into the property shot, 'erased' the parts of the barn picture that I didn't want, and voila, Marina had a barn. If I'd been really patient, I could have cloned the exterior of the house onto the barn walls so the colour of the two buildings would match. I'm not that patient.

Then I used the same process for a couple of other property photos, to give her a perspective from the road and from her patio.  Here's what it would look like from the road:

And from the patio, located on the rear corner of the house:

Once the barn is built, a fence added, and Boo and Magic move over from their present stable near the front pasture, the view from the patio and living quarters will look more like this: Okay, it looks like she traded in Magic for a mini horse, but you get the idea!

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone.   So with the help of a few of my other recent photos, I encouraged my friend to dream big.  After all, what's the use of acreage if you only have a couple of horses?

Dream big, Marina!