I decided that I liked the ‘grungy’ waterlilies so I made another one tonite. This is a waterlily shot that did not make the cut to post but worked with the struggling maple tree shot from Golden Gate park.
I found Carl Root’s photography on Photo.net. I really like his work particularly the rhythms portfolio. You can view the work here.
This is a composite with a macro of leaves and a water lily blossom. The toning comes from the Nik Duplex filter.
This is a rework of an earlier image. I was happy with the result but not thrilled. This afternoon, I visited for the first time a group of photographer who meet once a month to review each other’s work. I decided to show this image. One man, Monte Hartman, did a critique and thought this was ‘almost, but not quite’. After a discussion, there was consensus that the lightness in the lower right corner was drawing the eye out of the image. I re-worked a little to darken that area and make the bridge on the right-half stronger. I think this works better. Another suggestion was to mirror the orchid buds and try that as a composite. I kept a layered version but cannot decipher my compositing process enough to redo. Hmmm. Memory is fleeting.
Turns out that Monte has been teaching a composition course for 30 years and has an amazing eye for compositioin. I am taking the class starting on February 9th.
I am working on a creative Photoshop class for friends. This is one of the examples that I was experimenting wth.
On a different note, I found an excellent camera repair shop, Kamera Korner. They took care of replacing the focusing screen on my Digital Rebel while I waited and for half the estimate.
After visiting the Conservatory of Flowers, I made a quick visit to the de Young Museum. The museum was a zoo with tons of people crowding everywhere. I took a quick detail shot of this bouquet at the entrance. Then, I heavily fiddled it for this look.
This is another fiddled image from the Conservatory of Flowers. I started with a conversion to infrared color using the Nik filters. Then, a lot of fiddling for the final look.
This is fiddled orchid shot. Plus, I do not know the correct name. This is converted using a Photoshop plugin for to color infrared and then cross-processed.
Happy New Year! Here is to a great 2006.
This is another fun one. I had a shaky shot of my car’s spedometer.
I ran across a fun technique for fiddling an image, called Amazing Circles. This image was made with an variation of this technique that made it into an ellipse. The source image for this effect was the ‘Sea Monster of Alameda Fair’.
For both Amazing actions, start with a square selection covering as much of your image as possible. To make a square selection, choose the rectangular selection tool. On the toolbar, change the style to ‘Fixed Aspect Ratio’. Leave the width and height to 1 (meaning square). Make your selection, and run the action.
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