Summertime...
“School’s out, school’s out, teacher let the monkeys out” the old rhyme goes. Summer has begun. I remember those years (long ago) when the last day of school ended and summer vacation began. I got a similar feeling a few years ago when I retired. "Way back then" summer vacation consisted of bailing hay and straw all summer and then going to the county fair to show steers and other livestock. Now everyday is a vacation. I have six Saturdays every week. As you read this blog I am off on another adventure to Southwest Florida hoping to capture some more award winning photographs to share.
I am starting to venture into a new area of combining bird photography with digital art enhancements and background effects. In the “film days” the photographers spent hours in the dark room dodging and burning and touching up photographs. Me personally, I never did those things, I just dropped off the film at the drug store and picked them up a week or so latter already developed. With the advent of computers with photographic software applications, cell phone cameras, and digital photographs, we photographers (pros and amateurs like me) still spend hours doing what was once done in the darkroom. Computer software like Photoshop, PhotoSuite, and others, can take us way beyond the darkroom days. To me, “Photoshop” is still a “dark art” but I am gradually learning some of the tricks of the trade. For this week’s Reflections I am sharing some of my first attempts at what I call “Photartistry”. Emphasis on attempt.
Software manipulations of digital nature photographs aren’t for everyone. Perhaps not even me but I thought it would be fun to try. That is what summer is all about right? Having fun. Grab a cup of coffee and feel free to give me some feedback if you like. Or just simply enjoy them (or not). I will be back next week and start sharing the hundreds of photos I hope to take in southwest Florida next week. Be blessed..because after all, “It’s summertime”. Harry
Big Bird (a Reddish Egret photo) recently won first place in the annual "Wild Amelia Photo Contest for Adult Beginners class in 2014. I used this photo to create some early "oil painting" texture effects that turned out nice.
I applied a similar artistic canvas oil painting texture effect to this Tricolored Heron photo..best seen if you enlarge your screen.
I used the same artistic effect on this gator reflection photograph.
In this photo I took a pair of herons and again used the canvas artistic effect.
For this one I took a photo of a Pelican against a clear blue sky and replaced the blue with another photo of a sunset for a completely different effect.
Here I took the same Pelican, added a different sky, added a layer with an ancient wall texture and some blurring to give it a an aged vintage look. This is the Editor's favorite so far.
I call this one Oystercatchers Rockefeller..did a similar technique using an antique wall background over a faint sky overlay. My version of ancient cave paintings with a modern twist..this will be printed on canvas.
I call this one Vintage Eagle..similar technique using antique wall and sky overlays in layers.
Laughing Moon, here I used two photos (gull and moon) and two overlays to give this laughing gull a more whimsical look.
This final one is called Summertime , I took a Seagull photo…then I used a bit of all the above techniques, the canvas oil texture, sky and ancient wall texture overlays to create this one..