2x2

Playing on Photoshop

Boy is this blog out of date! Have to spend some time catching up on posts.
If you want to keep more up to date on what I'm doing, check out my Facebook page.
Did I mention I had a baby? Hmm... I wonder why I haven't been keeping up with blogs and art.
Today though I was fiddling around with some images of my boys on Photoshop Elements and this is what I came up with...

Playing with Nostalgia

So sorry to have been gone so long, but my brain has just been completely fried this pregnancy.  I wasn't able to finish the portraits for the giveaway and I have been struggling the few times I have attempted writing something.

But I did a little something today!  With the impending arrival of our second child, I've found myself needing to return to the images of the arrival of our first child.  I started playing around with some images from that time and thought I'd share what I came up with.

I miss film, and the soft nostalgia that film grain imparts.  Although I'm kind of against 'faking' things like film looks and film grain, I still do go there at times.  And I've been forever dissatisfied with options that Photoshop Elements offers for adding grain.  So I looked online and found a random grainy photo to model my grain after.  And after much playing and tweaking, I turned this photo my husband took of me holding my son at 2 days old...

...into this:

I'm pretty pleased with it.  It's not perfect, and this experiment makes me want to just return to film to get the real beauty back.  Ahhh... film is just so beautiful.  But still, I kind of like what I achieved here.

[EDIT] I'm a little frustrated with the sharpening that I think Flickr did here.  It's softer in the version I made.  Looks better if you click through and view it larger.

Boise - Best photos of trip

I have been neglecting my blogs a lot lately. But it can be difficult to keep up with them when you have life going on. I recently took a trip to Boise to visit my sister, I have gotten myself a graphic design contract with a big company, and I got myself a pet baby corn snake all in the last two weeks. It's been very busy! I really haven't had any time to draw. But since I have a couple nice shots from my recent trip, I thought I'd include those here. (Click on any image to enlarge)

Some portraits first...
My Sister


My Niece -- gorgeous, even with bed head.


My Nephew



Then some landscape...
They took us on a drive up into the nearby mountains to do some hot spring-ing.


It was gorgeous.


This little nook was a mini hike down from the highway. The water was warm enough that it was difficult to put more than your feet in for any real length of time.


Then we drove some more for some pools that required a hike through a forest to get to.


Look at the steam rising off the rocks! This site only offered us mini pools, so we didn't soak here like we did at the previous spot.


My hubby soaks in some rays at the first hot spring spot.


The drive home to Denver...
...offered us some surprising sights. First off we saw a small planted forest right by the side of the road.

The trees were planted in very precise rows.



This is probably my favorite shot of the whole trip. I love the soft oranges and the graphic lines of the trees. I also love that you can see through to a similar planted forest in the distance.


Then we spotted some cows feeding.
This is probably my second favorite shot.


Just to give you context, this is looking to the right of where I stood, and if I turned and looked to the left, the feeding cows stretched just as far into the distance.


Our dog Bongo watched everything from the back seat of the car. Here he checks out the cows (as you can see in the reflection in the window.)



Well those are the best ones... hope you enjoyed them. I am starting to really wish I had held out for a digital SLR instead of plopping down that money for the next step down (Sony Cybershot DSC-H1). I miss the quality and options that the SLR affords, and using a digital viewfinder just can't compare to seeing the real thing through those lenses. Still, this camera gives me some decent pictures every now and again. Since the user's manual stinks, I am still learning how to use all of the features by trial and error. But one problem that I have found that doesn't seem to go away is that there is often significant chromatic aberration -- particularly in areas of high contrast. Also, there isn't full clarity in these pictures. I wonder if this is because of the lens, which for some reason is the only lens on any Sony camera which doesn't bear the Carl Zeiss name.

Incidentally, I am becoming more adept at digital photo editing. I am learning how to remove unwanted details in digital images. I found I had to remove the food from my nephew's face in many shots (ahhhh boys), and was pretty pleased at my initial efforts in doing so.

Here is one such photo...
Before


After


And here are some close ups of the before & after shots.


They're not perfect. I had to edit this one so much that to me there is something odd about his mouth in the after version. But others came out pretty convincing in my opinion. Like the one of him laughing in the portrait shots at the top. He had food on his face in that shot too! Not too shabby eh? Like my hubby said when I showed him... It's cool, but also really scary.


Back to the full blog...

Spring Beauty

It's so exciting to see color popping up everywhere in the garden.

So I had to take some shots of the back yard. (Drawing/painting is not
my only thing you know).





(Click on any image to enlarge)


Look at the texture of this daisy:


And here is a little color play:


HAPPY SPRING!!!

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Amazing Circles

I found this thing called Amazing Circles which is basically a technique of photo manipulation that is so popular on the internet that there are entire clubs that create these all the time. I read the how to and thought I'd give it a shot. Thing is, mine are done in GIMP instead of Photoshop, so it's not quite as pretty, plus, I haven't yet figured out how to get that reflective/translucence thing down yet that makes the really good ones look totally 3D. But I still had fun. Check out these three that I made.

This one (left) is from some snowy branches by our house. I love the delicacy of some of the lines, but the image looks very flat to me.
Click here for the original image.





This one (right) is a close up of a display at the Bellagio in Vegas. I love the way that most of it looks like some kind of metallic icing. But the white part is an error of some kind. Not sure what happened.
Click here for the original image.


This one (left) is looking up inside a building with a skylight. I tried really hard to make this one more 3D. It's my fave of the 3, but I am not there yet.

Ah well. Fun to experiement.
Click here for the original image.



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