Wednesday, April 25, 2012

only six words.



Day 3 of Beyond Layers II with Kim Klassen. Todays idea was to use only 6 words to describe one aspect of yourself.

I tried to get out of my comfort zone and do something a little different for me. 

In the first image above I used 3 ornaments that sit on my wifes dresser and shot the image using a white board background. I applied two of Kim's textures, Poetic and Charmed, and a cloud texture of my own.

The second image below is a bit more me as my second name is "procrastination" according to my wonderful wife....... and she is right...... most of the time. Here I used one single texture of Kim's, "wonderful magic - scripted", using a screen mode.





The third image using the idea of expressing how I feel was one of whistling kite on a plain blue sky. I used Kim's texture" Oh My' on two layers, one as overlay and one as multiply mode. I desaturated both layers so that the blue of the original sky comes through.

I wanted to express the idea of freedom and aiming high in terms of expression and artistic/photographic outcomes. Wouldn't it be great to fly high literally?? "Fly high on winds of a whistling kite" did not really fit the bill so I used a little posting license here.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Just Enough

Awaken

An image of a lilly taken at the local Botanic Gardens here in Adelaide. I thought the image was quite appropriate for the name of Kim's texture and in line with the theme of simpliciity and "just enough". 


Just One Rose





A couple of images from week 1 of Beyond Layers with Kim Klassen. Above are the textures I have used: "Awaken" & "Evolve" from Kim and an old book cover by "playing with brushes" at Flickr.


Image #1 - Awaken.



I cropped and lightened the original in photoshop/lightroom - paying particular attention to the "glow" of the yellows and the delicate shade of mauve/purple in the petals.

Once happy with the original I applied the "Awaken" texture from Kim using an overlay blending mode @ 56% opacity - no need to mask any of this I think.


Image #2 - Just One Rose

This is a little more complicated to get the effect that I was pleased with - keeping in mind that I wanted a different feel than the first image.




This image of a single rose had some nice pinks and yellows and a nice dark background to set the flower off.

I applied the two of Kim's textures using a blending mode of soft light @ 80% opacity to both layers. I masked these layers so the texture was applied only to the background. I choose Kims' texture "Evolve" because of it's nice texture, light centre and good vignette to the outer part of the image. 

I then applied the layer with the "old book" using a multiply blending mode at 85% - no masking.
On yet another layer I duplicated the image and converted it to B&W left it at normal blending mode but at 23% and masked out the rose leaving the muted effect on the background only.
A little long winded but that is what we do when we are in a creative mood. :)
Cheers
Andy

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

White Eye

White Eye




An attempt to add texture to one of my bird shots of a White Eye (Zosteropidae).

The original background in the image was a little bland and grainy so I applied two textures. I think they add something to the beauty of the little bird and the fruit it is eating.




The first texture was a white "paper" and when applied it brightened the image. I use and overlay blending mode at 66% opacity.



The second texture of painted and cracked concrete (thanks to Shady Medusa on Deviant Art) was applied with a soft light blending mode at 75% opacity.

I applied a layer mask to both textured layers to remove most of the texture from the bird.

If my future attempts turn out so good I will be most pleased.





Monday, April 16, 2012

Beyond Layers


Trying my hand at applying textures to my photos. This seems to be a growing trend  and I like the effects I have seen on some of the better images around.

To learn a little more about textures and how to apply them I have enrolled for 52 weeks in the Beyond Layers e-course with Kim Klassen.

Here's hoping the course is the inspiration it proposed to be. I guess to a greater degree that is up to me.

So I will use this blog as my posting media to keep an eye on my own progress and hopefully post losts of images using the techniques I am learning along the way.

As they say "It is the journey that counts."

Cheers
Andy