Surround Yourself with People who Believe in You

Quite frankly, there's no more important message to those who want to be creative. Creativity requires a safe space - a sense that you are safe to share ideas that may be new and unusual to others. Select your creative circle carefully, allowing those circle members to hear your ideas and share their own creative moments with you.

This image was taken with a 100mm lens at f/8 aperture (aperture priority mode). Using the Rectangular Marquee tool in Photoshop, I created a rectangular selection (the green frame) and used Edit > Stroke to stroke that selection with green. Because I completed this on a new, empty pixel layer, the green frame appeared in the layer above the photograph. Applying a layer mask, I was able to mask out the portions of the blossom I wanted to break through the frame.

I also chose to slightly darken the outer portion of the image. By selecting the inner rectangle first with the Rectangular Marquee tool, I was able to invert that selection and create a Curves adjustment layer for just the outer portion of the photo. A slight darkening of the midtones of the curve was all it took.

You can learn the individual aspects of this process in Photo 1: An Introduction to the Art of Photography, found at http://goo.gl/Aou5IE .