Friday, March 16, 2012

Taken To The Cleaners

Concord is not a huge city but it has grown up since I have lived here. I have been trying to find little pieces of past that give Concord a small feel. I am trying to give up the excuse that if I could only go somewhere else I could make a great image. I was having a discussion about this with my mother and she brought up a quote "bloom where you are planted" by Mary Engelbreit. I am trying to find interesting things in and around Concord to photograph. Dont get me wrong there are many places I would love to go for photography! But I am looking for interesting things that I pass every day.

About ten years ago I saw a neon sign that was in the shape of a shirt and said shirts inside and wanted to include in a photo. It was hard to get the neon and the rest of the scene to balance out then came HDR. I saw that same neon in another cleaners with all the racks up front. I thought that would make a great shot, judge for yourself. Make sure you click the photo so you can see the detail!


Here is the shot that "tries" capture everthing within range without HDR. Compare it to the HDR above.



I think the HDR looks much better. There are some people that don't like HDR because they say it looks fake. I'll admit the final outcome is open to artistic interitation. Some of my work looks like a Norman Rockwell paint (I've been told). Sometimes I want the image to look realistic and sometimes I like a little creative interpitation depending on the scene.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Barn in Washington on 97

This is a barn I have passed many times in my lifetime. I have seen it at all times of the day and  definitely had better chances to photograph it. My wife was driving and I had my camera in my hands so I had her pull over. I was mid day, when I saw the results I was less than impressed and forgot about it. Today I was looking for another image when I found it. It was taken in 2006 and a little over exposed and flat I don't know if it was the tolls in Photoshop CS or my lack of trying.  I started to play with it in Photoshop CS 4 and it started to come to life so I thought I would post it.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

New Mesh From Grayscale feature in Photoshop

I have watched Corey Barker on Photoshop TV and got many ideas from him. He is the reason I bought Photoshop Extended for its 3D features. Today on Episode 297 he gave me an idea to experiment with the New Mesh From Grayscale feature. I took a picture of our dog Daisy wearing a happy new year hat and used the New Mesh From Grayscale feature on the layer. I thought the results were interesting because you could still read the type as you can see in the image below. The Idea of his tutorial was to create an interesting background.



Here is the original image below.