Twas the Night of Christmas, and All Through the Streets.

My girlfriend bought me a great gift for Christmas. It's a book for any photographer who wants to expand their mind, and it says it's not really a "how to" but a "what if". You're supposed to make generalizations after reading it, and combine the techniques to try new things. The book is call the Photo Idea Index, and is written by Jim Krause. I highly recommend this book to anyone who even remotely likes pictures, or is the best in the business. It's great.
Anyways, in the book, there is a pic of a snow flake on a lamp post. It's a really neat pic. Marina wanted to try and do our own rendition of this pic, and we tried a few angles, and decided not to go for a recreation but work with it. Dave LaBelle talks about such techniques in his book, The Great Picture Hunt 2. LaBelle says to listen, be observant, and be open to taking another photographers idea and working with it. It's not copying, it's borrowing the original idea, working with it, improving it, and making it an original idea of your own. LaBelle's book is great too, I love to read it.
Back to the snowflake idea. Well, the problem last night was that I left my charger in Lexington, so I didn't have my camera, I borrowed Marion's (Rina's mom). Well, I haven't developed the pics I shot with that camera yet, but I do have the ones I shot with Rina's little point and shoot camera. Now given the fact that I was using such a simple camera, I think this picture turned out quite nice. I'm going to try and recreate it to get more of what I want in the picture. I've tried to photoshop it, and bring out what I wish was already there. I just didn't get the color that I wanted. The picture is beautiful though, the blues, purples, yellows and greens on the pavement. I love this picture. If anyone has any suggestions or would like to just say what they would do on photoshop, let me know!!!

This is the original. I love the streets colors, but if I don't get a nasty day of rain before the beginning of January, those flake lights will be gone.

Okay, so this is my final product so far. If anyone has any suggestions on what might make it look a little better, feel free to fire away.

Here is another version I thought I'd slap on here. Less color blur, and I don't know what I like.