One Subject, One Focus
f/4.5; 1/200; ISO 800; 18mm
“Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.” – Henry Ward Beecher
I happened to be walking through Millenium Park in Chicago one evening and spotted this little girl in a yellow dress who was focused on her own adventure and oblivious to the world around her!
Before and After – This photo was taken in Venice, Italy on the Grand Canal. Challenged once again in this week’s class assignment – to create a dark, moody image. My tendency has always been to use my go to standard workflow adjustments; highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, clarity…..I was quite surprised by how motivating and challenging it was to go for a different look. My big learning in this assignment was the discovery of the power and different effects you can achieve by using the Curves tool.
“Where words fail, music speaks” Hans Christian Andersen.
This week’s class assignment was still life photography. This is my first attempt of 5 photos we need to compose. It is new and a real challenge for me. I put a black cloth under a piece of glass on a small round table and set the brushes up. The wall behind the table was a blueish green. Then I side lit the setting which created the reflection and all types of shadows. The image was processed in raw: shadows, highlights, whites, blacks, brightening, sharpening, and a little clarity. In Luminar® I then added a subtle sunlight effect near the brushes and then did a little split toning.
Last week we drove to upper Michigan to view the wonderful fall colors. The timing and lighting were just right the day we went to Tahquamenon Falls State Park in Paradise, MI.
The upper Tahquamenon Falls is 200 feet across with a drop of almost 50 feet. The lower falls are about 4 miles downstream, and are made up of a series of five smaller falls around a small island. The water is a golden brown color which is caused by tannins from nearby cedar swamps that drain into the river.
After so many years of taking and processing “traditional” photographs, I decided to expand my creative side and signed up for an “unconventional” photography class at a local community college near me. The class is designed to sharpen your photography skills and combine images artistically through photo manipulation. The professor displayed a number of creative photographs that were the result of combining two or more different photographs. Window frames became works of art, and portraits were fashioned into painted illustrations. It awakened me to a whole new photographing/editing adventure!
Part of class last night was to take abstract photographs inside the campus. Below is a closeup of part of a waterfall taken with a slow shutter speed inside the entrance of the building my class was in. I liked the way it turned out and decided to try my hand at combining two photos. I had taken a photo of a white pelican on a lake a couple of years ago. Given the white edge at the top of the waterfall photo, I thought these two photographs might blend well. Both photos where processed separately then processed again when combined. I used two Apps, Snapseed® and Painnt®. Then finished it off with Photoshop Elements® and NIK®. I am quite sure this can be done using just Photoshop. I haven’t mastered it enough so I improvised with what I know well. If you haven’t tried this yet, I would highly recommend it. It has awakened a whole new energy within and expanded my parameters on what to photograph!
