<- Click hereGot rocked today by a posting at Passion N' Frames. Click here to see it. PNF has cranked the power-art dial beyond 10.
And it left me wondering how to-do-dat? How to take an image from the Fourth Of July picnic I'm working on this week - and ramp up the pep. And I also wondered if you would find the image - accessible? If it would leave you going "Wow!" and "Hmmmmm...." - thinking AND feeling what I enjoyed as this image revealed itself.
Background: A momentary downpour submerged the party for some minutes. At first the children raced with the adults toward the trees, when abruptly one screeched, "KICKBALL!" And everyone under 15 scampered back to the softball diamond - playing again like... like kids on the Fourth of July. And I got a chance to picture their wonderfulness, and feel my legs, arms, and body happy like... like... a cavorting boy in the rain.
8 comments:
Jepp, gotcha. That picture is just the matching visual of your story. Dynamic, enthusiastic, speedy...
Just one technical (booring!) remark: The dark trousers are vanished. Of course, you intended that - but I would prefer some hint of a connection between the legs and the upper body.
Hmm, I would also prefer to have my shots from family celebration as expressiv as yours... Ah, forget what I just said.
Vibrant and dynamic is what I would use to describe your piece. I really an drawn to the work you have done here. Now tell me how ya did it. It has such a great mood to it fun but intense. Excellent!!! Ya know the piece Advman had the other night with the lights it has the same rich green you two are on a roll.
This rocks ....wow and hmmmmmm....the Essence of Play!!!
PS...thank you for the special mention I am very touched.
(Thomas} Actually there is a bundle of detail in the trousers. I recently used my Spyder2Pro to adjust all four of my computer monitors. Perhaps that's why I see stuff that others miss? Dunno, you are not alone in telling that my images are on the dark side. Yet they print wonderfully capturing on paper almost exactly what I see on the screen. I hesitate to mess with the monitors since they seem so well calibrated to my HP Photosmart 8750. Any suggestions? Anyone? Hate to have the posted images disappoint needlessly.
Ted
(Pnf) How I did it? Simple...
Took the original and cloned out everyone but the boy (he raced along a large grassy lawn.
Then I expanded the lawn on the right to get the boy onto the vertical power line (think I cropped the top and bottom some to reinforce the pano dimensions).
Diddled with a few curve adjustment layers and their masks to maximize the relative light values.
Created a hue/saturation layer and exagerrated the lawn colors.
Collapsed all the layers, copied that layer and on the upper copy applied a motion blur filter. Then masked the boy back in from the layer below.
Finally I created a couple of new upper layers and painted in various highlight colors. Gaussian blurred them then reset their blending modes appropriately along with their appropriate opacities. I probably masked them as well to paint away the distractions.
And that was all it took. Total time? Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. I knew ahead of time what I was after. In fact I knew when I took it what I wanted it to say. It was just a matter of chipping away anything that didn't reinforce what I heard it singing.
And yes, I was impressed with Andreas' recent post and his exquisite use of green. Hmmmm... I wonder if it influenced me? Maybe, although one way or another I was stuck with all of that green lawn. Still, there is a similarity in the glow of the color I finally lighted upon. Perhaps I was unconciously following his lead. There are a lot worse folks to learn from, eh?
Ted
My monitor is also calibrated, so that shouldn't be the problem. I would assume it's more something related to Webrowsers, Mac vs. PC or something somewhere down that road. Most of the time everyting works reasonable well, but if you are approaching the extremes, those subtle differences might make a difference ;)
Ted... you did a great job on this project and I do love the bright green and the richness of mood. I hope to learn the ps skills as well. I am learning!!!
(pnf) - PhotoShop can be ghastly intimidating. After ten years I am still continually discovering significant tools that if offers me. BUT... there is a simple way. When I started I bought the simplest, thinest, paperback book on the Barnes & Noble shelves which promised me, "Learn PhotoShop Simply" (no NOT the "Dummy" series... I find them to be too complex and condescending at the same time. You are not a "Dummy", neither am I - let the "Dummies" read the things. When you are ready for the major authority, get Deke McClellend's latest PhotoShop Bible - but start way simpler than that). I cannot recall what the book was, but what he really taught me was that you can start using this application immediately. And that even the most modest understanding of its techniques allow you to diddle with images in imaginative ways. And that you never need risk your original in any way.
You will continually discover yourself muttering, "Wow! Look I can do this with that!" And no matter what rock you turn over in the application, out rush new opportunities do intrigue you.
Frankly, I'd recommend that you make it a winter project when there's more time available indoors and, like a squirrel, you have an abundance of multi-chromatic nuts stored away in photo-folders which you can enhance.
Meantime, don't trash anything unless you feel it's really redundant, or reeeeeeeeeeeely junk. It's amazing how useful an inventory of spare parts becomes when you are working on an image (skys, sunsets, sunrises, backgrounds, textures, people, pets, fuzzballs, Etc.). It is normal for me, during an enhancement project to swipe a feature, or even an entire palette from an extremely different image.
Let me repeat, don't be intimidated by PhotoShop or people who use it who are farther along. Even if you only pull a shovel out of it at first, you will dig a lot more holes than with your nails... and eventually you will work up to driving an Adobe back-hoe.
With your imagination... I suspect that you will do a lot more with the elementary shovel in PhotoSHop than I accomplish with its cranes, bulldozers, and blasting devices.
Enjoy....
Ted
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