New year challenges!

Yesterday was the first day of Kim Klassen's year long class called Beyond Layers. In Kim's words it's 52 weeks of encouragement, motivation and inspiration……. centered around, but so much more than photoshop……

I've taken three other eClasses by Kim on Photoshop and have learnt so much from her in such a short space of time. I'd been using Photoshop for well over 10 years but was only using a small percentage of it's functions, now I'm able to not only use it quickly and efficiently but I can create my own brushes and textures to use on my images, and feel more confident explaining to the students at school how to use Photoshop.

I also decided to take on the 365 project - thats a photo a day for a year. I'm hoping it will improve my photography and open my eyes to new inspiration from my surroundings. You can track my progress here on flickr, I'll also be posting my photos in the Shutter Sisters flickr group.

Here are my first two photos - they are taken at school and are before and after a clay lesson.

Day 1 - cutting self-hardening clay into pieces ready for a clay lesson at school.

 Day 2 - carried on the clay theme - these are what the clay pieces turned into!

I'm really looking forward to the year ahead and what tips, tricks and surprises it will bring.