He has a new name, that boyfriend of mine. “Gear Man.” Oh, I love him.

Here are some photos from a couple of different trips down into Old Louisville. As I mentioned previously, the area is rich in history, and is decorated with enormous old Victorian homes. St. James Court (below) is a premiere place to be, and home of an annual art fair. The area is dotted with real gaslamps! So charming!

Below is the clock tower on the University of Louisville campus, and on the right, a beautiful church in the area.

Does that picture on the right not look exactly like a face?!

The guys I was meeting with for this photoshoot told me they were envisioning vintage imagery with little pops of color… kind of like the Pleasantville posters. I, however, was not a big fan of that idea. They were saying “Yeah, Jess, what is that called?” And I said– “Cheap photographic trick??” But, alas, I caved. I did a series of photos that all have a pop of green in them. These, to me, symbolize new life coming up from the old. We, as a part of The Louisville Project hope to bring revitalization to the neighborhood through the power of the gospel of Jesus.

Here’s one example of the amazing architecture down there. This is a famous mansion on St. James Court. Can you imagine living there back in the 1800’s??

One way to add some character to photos you make, and to give them a bit of a “fine art” quality is to overlay a texture on top of them. It just makes for an interesting pic, don’t you think?

So, the next time you are out shooting pics in an area, take time to see the interesting textures around you and take a pic of them to use in your image editing. I think it is especially neat to overlay a texture from that same area onto a pic. Its as if you are infusing a bit more of the spirit of the place onto the photo or something.  As I was shooting around Old Louisville I snapped this one:

You can click on the picture above and then save it to try on your own images! Or, another great source to find free texture files on the web is Grunge Textures. If you have some cash to drop, see Jesh de Rox’s incredible fine art textures, or these by my friend’s husband, an awesome photographer, Matt Nicolosi. Of course, there are also the Totally Rad textures from the Boutwells. You MUST get the Totally Rad actions if you’ve not… I process nearly every image on this blog using something they’ve made.

Basic Texture Layer Tutorial:

Here’s what you do in Photoshop–

1. Open your photo you want to apply texture to

2. Open the texture file

3. Go to the layers palette and drag the layer texture over onto your photo. Then you will see the texture on top of your photo. Make sure they are lined up so your texture covers the whole photo (this may involve changing the size of the texture layer–(hit Cmd- T to transform the layer size)

4. Set the layer type of the texture layer to Overlay (this is in the layers palette… it says “Normal” until you change in)

5. Change the opacity of the texture level until you like what you see!

6. Flatten and Save!

If you try this tutorial out– leave us a link in the comments so we can see your newly textured image!