Calla Lily in Black and White

It’s been a fairly busy week for me in my Photoshop class.  I was preparing for the ACA exam for Photoshop.  I passed it today. I was happy to pass on the first try, but to be honest I have some issues with “standardized” testing, and have some questions as to how much they really prove.

In terms of photography, I am thinking about a new project in Photoshop.  At this point the assignment is in a pretty vague spot.  So, instead of worrying too much about the details I am taking some photos and just thinking generally about some of the effects and filters from Photoshop that might apply.  With that in mind, I made this image this afternoon:

ISO 200 50mm 0ev f/8 1/80

For the project I am not sure if I will be working in black and white or color.  So, for this exercise I decided to convert the image to black and white and work from there.

One of the things I was thinking about when I was creating this image was the background.  I wanted it to be wavy and somewhat textured.  So what I did was create a duplicate layer and then applied the Oil Paint filter to it.  From there I put a mask on the Oil Paint filter layer and painted back in some of the realistic detail in the lily itself.

It’s an interesting effect, what do you think?  I’ll be trying some other things in the coming week, but I am thinking my final project will incorporate the oil filter in some way.  Here is the original image:

ISO 200 50mm 0ev f/8 1/80

I was inspired to try this in black and white in part because Open Topic is the theme for Cee’s Black & White Challenge. Since my project is just beginning and not even fully defined yet, I thought that certainly is open-ended.

Cheers!

 

 

The Family that Dropped By

While I was filling my bird feeders the other day, I accidentally spilled some bird seed on our front step.  After I was inside, I realized that some sparrows were eating it.  I thought this might be a good opportunity to take some bird pictures that did not feature our feeders.  Here is my favorite picture of the series that I took:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/8 1/250

I got this shot by setting up my camera on a tripod and using a remote trigger.  My camera equipment is outside and I am watching from inside waiting for the sparrows to come back and pose, which they were nice enough to do.  I set my ISO to 100 because although it was still pretty early, it was really bright out.  I used an f-stop of f/8 and shutter speed of 1/250 to stop the motion and retain detail.

Once I was finished shooting I cropped this image and then edited it in Photoshop.  I changed the levels and turned it into a black and white image.  I started with the blue filter setting, but did tweak it a bit as I thought the blue was too dark on the wings of the sparrows.  Here is the image as it was in my camera:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/8 1/250

Fifty two species of sparrow live here in North America.  That is one very large family, and family is the theme of this week’s black and white photography challenge hosted by Sonel

Cheers!

A Beautiful Spot in the Neighborhood

This photo and post were inspired by Sonel who is hosting a weekly black and white photo challenge.  This week’s topic is neighborhood. I took this photo at a park that is in my neighborhood:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/3.5 1/160

I love that our neighborhood has this green space.  I love even more that a lot of people use it.  It has playing fields, a playground, benches, a walking path, and a pond.  I just think it is healthy for people to spend time outdoors, so it always makes me happy to see so many of my neighbors here.

For this shot, I was thinking that I might want to do a HDR image, so I was using exposure bracketing.  It can be tough to get a flower exactly still so I was using a pretty fast shutter speed.  I was also using the fast shutter speed to cut out some of the light I was letting in by having my aperture so open at 3.5.  I knew I wanted a pretty shallow depth of field though, because I thought the background would distract from the flower if I didn’t.  Even though the background is blurred you can see that there is quite a bit there, imagine how distracting it would be if you could see all that detail.  I merged the three exposures in Photomatix and then did some sharpening in Photoshop.

I liked this shot well enough to then make a 5×7 card of it and put it for sale on my website.

Do you have any thoughts, comments, or questions about my image? feel free to leave them below.

Cheers!