One Subject, One Focus
f/8; 1/125 sec; ISO 100
I had the opportunity to visit Olympia in the springtime during my trip to Greece where the ancient olympic games originated and were held. The trees were just blossoming and the sky was overcast which brought the ruins to life.
There is a very cool little app I discovered called PAINNT-pro art filters by Moonlighting Apps, LLC. It is available for Android and Apple tablets and phones.
I found this app to be a lot of fun to experiment with different artsy effects. It is easy to use and provides tools to control the effects. Would be awesome if they added brushes!
Thought I would pass it along!
Two yellow flowers, two different backgrounds.
With the summer days quickly flying by, I decided to visit the Chicago Botanic Gardens to photograph flowers. My focus was to isolate a flower and pay attention to background. At the time of capture I honestly had nothing in mind in choosing a background. But, after reviewing, discovered color can really impact the mood of an image especially when photographing flowers…two yellow flowers, two different backgrounds evoke two different moods.
Chicago Skyline – f/5.6; ISO 800; 1/15 sec.
Danube River – f/7.1; ISO 200; 1/125 sec.
Sorrento, Italy – f/10; ISO 200; 1/250 sec.
Click on images to enlarge.
In looking over trip photos, the original image taken in Venice has a great memory attached it. But the composition screams of chaos: strong competing colors; multiple lines from buildings, windows, street reflections…. It is soooo busy that your eye keeps looking for a place to rest. Through manipulation of color by using a filter overlay, I was able to change the mood to reflect the rainy day, while adding a subtle focal point.
Below is the recipe for brushing in color using the Retrolux filter. Watch Video. Note: this brushed-in color technique can also be duplicated using tools provided in other photo editing software/apps. To see a demonstration: WATCH VIDEO
Click on photo to enlarge.
After many years of traditional photo editing, sometimes I just want to get a little creative in processing my images and achieve a different look. In Snapseed® there are a variety of Looks and Tools to achieve many different effects.
In processing the two photos above, the editing Tools and adjustment/brush settings used are the same. As you can see, the outcome is very different. The bird image is much more subdued while the dog image contrast is much stronger. The beauty of Snapseed edits is that they can be changed at any time during the editing process by fine tuning the edit adjustments or by brushing out the adjustment in different strengths or all together in select areas.
Workflow Processing steps to achieve this effect are shown below. To see a demonstration: WATCH VIDEO.
