Adrienne in black & white

Readers of this blog should know my friend, Adrienne, by now. She's actually the daughter of my best friend, Karen. She comments as Acorn, when she comments. She's usually too busy with her job, her dog, and lately with travel. Today she called my cell phone. While I was at school. Here's how the conversation went, as I recall:

A: "Hey, Katy!"

CG: (in a whisper) "Um, hey Adrienne. What's up? I'm at work."

A: "Well, guess where I am?"

CG: "God only knows, Adrienne. It could be anywhere."

A: "I'm at a bar in Key West. Renee (her sister) and I are having a beer!"

CG: "Um, that sounds like fun. Wish I was there."

A: "So guess what the bartender's name is? You won't believe it! It's Katy!!! So we thought we'd better call you right away."

CG: "Well, that's good. Drink at toast to me, ok?"

A: "Yeah, we already did. And we're about to toast you again. Just wanted to say hi!!!"

We then hung up, but I told her to check the blog tonight because I was posting a nice picture of her. I took this picture back in December, shortly after my husband had given me the camera for my birthday. And I have to be honest, people. On Sunday, I did something bad.

On Sunday, I had a few glasses of a lovely pinot grigio. And by a few, I mean the whole bottle. Please don't judge me. It took a long time to drink it, and by the time I was finished, I had discovered that I'd been online at Kevin Kubota's site and I ended up purchasing a set of his actions for Photoshop that I'd been lusting after.

How this happened, I don't know.

So I've been playing around with a lot of the black & white effects. For this picture, I had first gotten it to where I'd wanted it to be, cropping it and doing other things that for the life of me, I can't recall. I originally worked on the picture back in December and I don't recall exactly what I did to fix the picture. But I opened up the retouched color picture and added a "skin cream" effect to prepare it for the black & white process. The one I chose was "Chocolate Syrup 2". Originally, I'd chosen it just because I liked the name, and then after I used it, I realized how much I really liked it.

Well, I'm vowing off the wine for now, and am truly sorry for what I've done. Well, sort of. Here's the original image below. And there's my friend, Karen, in the background. I think the finished product looks so much nicer in black & white.