Photoshop Taketh, Photoshop Giveth Back

I was new to digital photography and Photoshop when I took this picture on a misty morning.  I loved it!  Couldn't wait to get home and play with it in Photoshop.  Knowing computers, I backed it up and then backed it up again.

Over the next several months I continued playing with it until I finally decided to make a print.  It was horrible!  Then I discovered I had accidentally "dumbed" it down to a very small file size, resulting in severe posterization.  No problem, I had backups.  Wrong.  I had overwritten my backups with the new, downsized file.

I now know what I did wrong; original in JPEG rather than RAW, not saving original file in a safe place, and not understanding Photoshop.  Over the years I have mourned the loss of this image but have kept it with the hope that someday I would figure out a way to salvage it.  

Voila!  The other day I came across the image and thought of the technique that radically alters colors.  The result lacks the mystique of the original but certainly is an interesting image.  Posterization is reduced and its effects minimized by color and texture.  Photoshop has truly given back what it took away years ago.

Library Opening Reception

My photographs are now on permanent display in the Brunswick library, 3649 Center Road, Brunswick, Ohio.  They are located on the back wall of the computer room in the adult section.  The opening reception was held on March 2nd and I want to thank everyone who attended and Friends of the Brunswick Library.

Angela Huston wrote a very nice article about it in MedinaCountyLife.com and her husband, Russ, took the photographs.  Thanks to them also.

 MedinaCountyLife

The following link shows larger images.  The first five are photographs in the collection.

Photos in Collection 

Warping

I recently met Nancy, a photographer friend, at a meeting where we began talking about different aspects of photography, including the use of fisheye lenses.  When I told her I had straightened such a photo, she asked how and I told her I would post the answer on my blog.  The (almost) finished image is above.

 I may crop it before printing so it looks something like this.

This is my original.  I took it with a ProOptic 8mm Fish-Eye CS lens mounted on a Nikon D200 modified for infrared light.  The lens costs $280 at Adorama.com and I enjoy using it.

 

To straighten the lines I simply added a guide line and then applied a series of warp adjustments (Edit/Transform/Warp) to a duplicate layer.  You can limit the area of the image impacted by the warp by making a selection first.  I then removed lens flair, did some burning and dodging, and added some structure and a little color to get my final image.

Using warp adjustments can be a little tedious, but the results are usually worth the effort.  I always enjoy it when another photographer looks at one of my images and is not sure how it was done. 

 

The English Cotswolds

Kelmscott Cottage
Print Options 

I recently returned from a two week walking trip in the Cotswolds and Cornwall regions of southwest England.  The area abounds with photo ops.  All of the images in this post are from the Cotswolds.  Several of the photos, including the one above, were taken with my infrared camera on those rare days we had sunshine.

Road House
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 The first three photos were taken in Kelmscott, a small and very picturesque village.

 This silversmith from Chipping Campden uses hand craftsmanship to turn out fine pieces.

I could have spent hours in the churchyard cemetery in Chipping Campden.

We had lunch in Bibury, where I took this photo.

River Walk
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England has wonderful old trees.  I took this shot on our walk to Oxford.

 

Our final stop in the Cotswolds was in Wells, the smallest city in England with a cathedral.  This is a famous double staircase in that cathedral.

Which One Is Real?

When I came upon these masks in a store window while strolling down a narrow street on a cloudy day in Venice, this is what I saw.  Masks.  My eyes were riveted on the masks.  I found the range of emotion they displayed to be compelling.  Inanimate objects expressing human emotions, and expressing them very well.  And the reflections of buildings and passersby in the plate glass window added an ethereal touch.  Wonderful!  I waited for a break in the crowd and took just one photo.

This is the photograph I took.  It accurately portrays the scene, but not what I saw.  It does not evoke the emotional reaction in me that I had in Italy when I saw the masks.  I find the background way too distracting and harsh.  I barely noticed the background when I took the photograph.  

Cropping helps, but there is still too much going on in the image that takes away from the masks.  What I saw was soft and ethereal rather than harsh and angular, so I used Photoshop to soften background and angularity.  

The final image has a vignette to white and is printed on watercolor paper.  It has been in several shows and people seem to either like it or find it somewhat disturbing.  Regardless, it gets noticed and it evokes an emotional response, which is what I think art is all about.

I have had many conversations with friends, photographers, and painters about the ethics of altering photographs for artistic purposes.  Future posts will probably go into this in more detail, but for now the question is, which of these images depicts reality?  I think you already know my answer, what is yours?

Pondering

I have been pondering why I like photos with garish colors when my normal preference is for black and white.  Why black and white?  The obvious answer is that I see it as more dramatic and more interesting.  Why?  Because color sometimes seems to get in the way.  It distracts.  I think there are two reasons for this.  First, unless we are totally colorblind we see the world in color.  To present it without the color tends to cause us to look more closely.  Familiar things become less familiar, and thus require more of our attention. 

The second reason, however, gets to the core issue for me.  My motivation for photographing a scene is usually very simple, I like the way it looks.  I have recently realized that what has attracted me to scenes are their abstract elements, primarily line, shape, and form.  Pattern and texture also matter to me but they tend to be secondary.  I find that black and white lends itself to emphasizing abstract elements in my photographs, making them more interesting to me.  I often enhance this by subtly changing values within the image and sometimes adding a hint of texture. 

Ironically, it turns out that radically altering colors can give the same results; requiring more of the viewer's attention and emphasizing abstract elements.  It is not something I would do with all, or even most of my images, but I will over time develop a collection of very colorful images.

A quick update.  Since my last post we decided on the five images for the Library Project and the 20x30 metal prints just arrived.  They are BEAUTIFUL!  The "winners" are the two in this post and numbers 2-4 in my last post.  I can hardly wait to see them in the Library (scheduled for February, 2013).

Library Project

When our local library contacted me recently about putting in a permanent display of very colorful and very contemporary photographs of area parks, I realized it was a great opportunity to get very funky.  They definitely wanted something that fit into their "uber-modern" decor, so I took photos and went a little crazy in Photoshop with duplicate layers, blending modes, color overlays, and layer masks.  These are some of the results.  

Five of them will be mounted as 20x30 metal prints on a wall in the computer area.