Coloring ChrisB's Roots

Some time back (June 2nd actually) Chris B issued a challenge to her readers in general and me in particular and because I had just gotten back from our trip to Texas, I had somehow missed the throwing of the gauntlet. Under most circumstances, this would be a good thing - but under any circumstances it smacks (haha) of rudeness to be addressed and refuse a polite answer, SO after a gentle nudge I am doing the gentle(wo)manly thing and responding.

The challenge is as follows:

Take Chris B's picture of this fallen tree and turn it to an even more spectacular image using photoshop elements or whatever.

Here is the image (It is slightly truncated because her image was too large for my dial up modem to capture. You can see the original image and challenge HERE ).





I'll warn you, this one is harder than it looks because of the complexity of the image. I will post a couple of weak attempts today and then there will be Fun Monday and then I will turn my efforts to this more seriously during the course of the week.

Failure Number 1:



And here is Failure Number 2




The difficulty I see with this image is that it needs a stronger focal point - so I am going to have to cogitate on this a bit (Hear that, Mindy?) and will get back to the physical after a bit of the cerebral. I'm sure at least a couple of my readers will be willing to give this a try!!