A great tool to use as a photographer is to photograph your favorite things to be used as textural elements in your photography or collage for extravagant backgrounds on promotional pieces. I have a fascination for textures and use them a lot in my photography. Sometimes I will photograph metal boat supports, or wooden fences, or jewelry, or rocks to get interesting and abstract images. Then I will use these photos as textural overlays in my portrait images or as background elements when composing my businesses promotional material. No matter what photographing your favorite things will have great benefits for you as a photographer.
The bottom image is a photograph of metal texture I took and the top image is how I used that texture to create an intriguing background for many different purposes (i.e. cards, backgrounds, promotional material). You can see the texture faded in the turqoise color - this was created using layers in Photoshop and changing the layers' property settings to "soft light". Then I changed the layers' opacity. The creative possibilities are endless so start shooting!!!
