Sunday 14 July 2013

This & That


Day 41 of Beyond Layers offered two challenges that I totally enjoyed doing. Again, where I started from was not at all what Kim did, and I didn't want to create dreaminess, but used her recipe to add crispness and clarity to the photo. Here Misaki is standing at the front door, staring at me wide-eyed like she often does, asking me if I really mean what I'm telling her. So herself here, that's what she's like with her large nose and big dark eyes under the topknot.

Serious?
Here's what I did to this image:
1 duplicated bg layer
2 added gradient map Pinkish by Kim Klassen, at soft light 100%
3 added a b&w gradient map at normal 30%
4 created text layer, font Shardee by Bright Ideas, applied stroke, turned fill to 19%
5 duplicated text layer, deleted stroke, turned fill back to 100%, set the text slightly off
6 flattened image & resized it for web
7 added frame: framing action Glass by Chain

The second image was an exercise in enlargening the canvas and using gradient fill. The photo is a detail of my belated birthday bouquet that I received last autumn. Since I was quite happy with the photo itself, I didn't do any processing to the actual photo, only enlarged the canvas, created and used a gradient fill and added the text. Can you tell warm orange is my favourite colour? Then I decided I'd like it better with a frame, so I made one using an action by WallStorm.


Editing steps:
1 used crop tool to make image canvas wider than original
2 created gradient fill (my own, warm orange)
3 added text layer with font La Belle Aurore by Kimberly Geswein, blending mode Vivid Light 64%
4 flattened image & resized it
5 added frame: framing action White Frame V4 from Photographer's Toolkit 2 by WallStorm

I'm very happy with both results here. Feels good to be achieving something satisfying with my pictures. And with two of my favourite photography subjects, too - dogs and flowers.

Saturday 13 July 2013

One Little Dog, Basking


Followed Kim's recipe on Day 40 at Beyond Layers. Because the original image was so different, so was the result. Hers was a dreamy image of pastel colours, a still-life with lots of white - a notebook on white table, lilacs in a white vase next to it, some blurred greenness on the background. What she wanted to achieve was to create more warmth.

What I did was almost the opposite. I started with a picture of a pansy, but it was too different for it to benefit the least of the kind of cross-processing Kim did. I trashed the image and took up a very old one: a picture of Foxy being scratched on the sofa back in 2006, when she was a young girl. Don't ask why. Perhaps because this one at least had some very faint resemblance in colour to hers? Obviously I had to adjust Kim's recipe quite a lot again anyway, but at least this time I got some results and got the dreaminess I was looking for. And in the end, what matters is whether I get what I want out of a picture I choose, not whether the picture is like Kim's. Because my pictures just aren't.

One Little Dog, Basking

Resources:
- framing action Shadow by Chain

Doesn't she look pleased? And uncannily like  her granddaughter...