I ♥ Faces - Texture

This week the theme at I ♥ Faces is using textures in your photography. To be perfectly honest, textures added during post processing are one of those things that I see some other photographers do, and I love it, but I struggle doing to my own photographs. I started playing with it again last week with a few images of the girls because I knew this theme was coming up. I have purchased several sets of incredible textures because the artists that created them have inspired me so much. But then I get them and I am overwhelmed by them and I just stop trying. But I am inspired again and think I will start trying again. The textures used on this image of precious Samuel are from Flora Bella's fine art textures original set. I used Elysium {b&w} on soft light and French Canvas {b&w} on overlay, both at reduced opacities and both removed from the face using the Gaussian blur technique that was taught when you purchase the textures. I think my main drawback to textures is that I often see them overdone on images. But when someone knows what they are doing with them, like Shana and many others that I follow on Flickr, they add a magical quality to photos. I am still working on that!