My Happy Accident

Yesterday, I posted an image on my Facebook Fan Page that was created using a lomographic Holga 120 camera with a Polaroid instant back.  I have taken responsibility for creating it but it really was a happy accident - to some degree.  I had taken 4 shots of some candles in our bathroom using the Holga and scanned them into Photoshop.  I took the images and extracted useful portions that showed the flames and parts of the candles and merged them into the best of the photographs.  As I was doing this I was getting the "this is going to be a piece of crap" feeling.  Any creatives reading this post should understand what I mean, but just in case, let me explain.  The feeling I am referring to is one that, to me, means that I am doing something edgy that no one would appreciate - not even me (eventually), because this lack of appreciation would feed my insecurity as an artist!  My hand hovered the cursor over the "x" to close the file with no intention of saving.  However, as I started to process the image, adding layers, changing saturation, contrast and brightness, I started to see something interesting evolving but it still had an element missing.  What was missing was at first a mystery but soon I noticed that the image had no message or feeling to convey and again thoughts of trashing it started to surface.  I decided that all I could do is try to turn the image into a painting hoping the texture would save the piece.  It looked horrible!  DELETE! was my immediate response and it almost went bye, bye but I happened to notice the plastic wrap effect two selections over from paint daubs, one of my favorite artistic effects.  I had never used it before so I had nothing to lose here.  At the very least I would find out a bit about what it did.  I applied the default setting for plastic wrap and boy was I surprised.  Suddenly this image had a message; it became interesting.  It had texture - texture that was relevant to the image.  It looked like wax!

Photo Restoration

A request from a friend to scan and restore an old photograph, featuring her son, posed an interesting challenge.  I scanned the photo, which was printed on what appears to be regular 81/2" x 11" paper that was folded for years.  It was intriguing to see how well my Photoshop skills would stand up to this project.  I must admit that it was far more laborious than I had envisioned.  However, I believe that the final result is a vast improvement over the original. Take a look.

Before and After

It feels like forever since my last post. Been busy will lots of stuff and lots of nothing. Anyway, I have still been shooting and had the pleasure of shooting a friend and his dog a few weeks ago. The dog, Boris, a red doberman pincer, was recently diagnosed with a heart problem and I thought it would be cool to get some shots of them together. Boris is about 9 years old and his age shows a bit in his fur which has a few bald patches. The night of the shoot he was looking and feeling good as the new medication was doing its thing. However, his bald spots betrayed him. Determined to turn back the clock and show Boris at his best, I used Photoshop to do some creative editing on these shots!  I am happy to see Boris is doing better and look forward to another fun shoot with him in the future!

Before

After

Selective Coloring

The wife and I went on a city walk in Providence Rhode Island today and I was able to capture some shots that made for interesting Photoshop post production experiments.  I used a lot of selective coloring in this series and was most proud of one result in particular.  This manipulation took quite a while to complete but it was worth it - I think that the result makes the photo come alive and makes for some creative interpretation.  The approach I used to create this effect was simple; I converted the image to monochrome and then used to the history brush tool to reinsert the colors where I wanted.  I used extreme magnification to avoid "coloring" too far outside the lines.

The next example is use of selective color to draw attention to the subject of the image. In this case the guy sleeping on the park bench.  Here I used B&W conversion on the image and selected the area around the subject to leave colored with a feathered effect that radiates from the center of the subject.

In this final example, I turned the sliders down on all the colors in Camera RAW except for the blue and aqua and voila!  The sky and reflections in the windows remain colored while everything else is pretty much monochrome - there are a few areas where blue color cast can be seen around the fountain but for the most part this technique works!

Hypocrisy

When the Way is forgotten
Duty and justice appear;
Then knowledge and wisdom are born
Along with hypocrisy.

When harmonious relationships dissolve
Then respect and devotion arise;
When a nation falls to chaos
Then loyalty and patriotism are born.

-LaoTze-