Building Blocks of a Project

If you have stopped by my blog lately you know that I am working on a new Photoshop project.  I recently wrote about a tree bloom that I am hoping to include in the project.  The instructions for the project are to pick a master painting and recreate it in some way.  A way to express yourself using another person’s art as the jumping off point. It’s a pretty broad assignment.  The painting I have picked is Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses by Georgia O’Keeffe.  I picked Georgia O’Keeffe because I admire her work.  I picked this particular painting because I have actually seen it in person.

My hope for this project is for my work to be a tribute but not an identical copy.  I will be using a cow’s skull though.  I borrowed one and took some photographs.  The rest of this post is about the shooting and editing of the skull.  Here is the original photo:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/125

Because the tree bloom that I shot a few days before was shot in natural light, I also shot this using natural light and at about the same time of day.  The first thing I did with this unedited photo was to get rid of the cloth seam.  I used content aware fill to do that and it worked nicely.  I then sharpened the image a bit.  Next,  I used the Oil Paint filter to create a painted look.  Here is a screen shot of the settings that I used:

These are the settings for the Oil Paint filter

And here is the final skull:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/125

The next step will be to add the tree bloom and then to consider adding a background element.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any thoughts or questions about this project.

Cheers!

Seeing Red in RAW

Just yesterday I published a post where this climbing bag was the finished result:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/60

While I was working yesterday, I saw in my textbook that there was a way to desaturate an image selectively using Camera Raw.  It was a technique I had never tried before, so I thought I would give it a shot.

Here is my finished result:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/60

I found this pretty interesting, and there would be a lot of fun ways to edit using this technique.  It was very straightforward as well.  I opened the image in Camera Raw from Bridge.  From the original dialogue box I clicked open the HSL/Grayscale tab and made my adjustments.  Here is a screenshot of the settings that I used:

Here are the settings I used

I started with desaturating all the colors but red and then decided to boost the reds just for fun.

So what do you think of my red version?  What kind of photo do you think might work with this technique?  I am thinking a landscape or floral photo.

Cheers!

Serendipity

I was reading this Macro Monday post by Cee at Cee’s Photography this morning. And it reminded me that I had been given a fortune cookie in honor of Lunar New Year that I had forgotten to open.  So, I opened it and here is what I found:

ISO 400 4mm 0ev f/2.7 1/50

Good advice for any week, but I have a project due this week and a test, so I guess I should get to work.

I shot this photo using my point and shoot on its macro setting, in part to copy the style of Cee’s post;  seemed fitting since her post was the inspiration for this one.  I also thought that using the macro setting would draw attention to the fortune and blur the background nicely.

I edited this a bit in Photoshop, cropping, straightening, and sharpening the image.  Then I headed off to school, ready to invest my time wisely!

Cheers!

Going Outside?

I knew I was going to have to go outside, despite the snow and freezing rain.  But before I did that this morning I set up my camera in a window by the bird feeders.  Here is one of my visitors:

ISO 640 50mm 0ev f/9 1/250

In order to get this shot I am using my tripod and remote shutter.  That way my camera can be close to the window to eliminate glare, but I am not there scaring away the birds.  I used the live view function on my camera which allowed me to see what I was going to take a photo of.  In this case I have also increased my ISO because despite the light of the snow, it was a bit dark.

Once I had this shot, I edited it in Photoshop.  I will show you the original at the bottom of this post, but I started my editing in Bridge and used Camera Raw to adjust the exposure and clarity.  Then I opened the photo in Photoshop and did a levels adjustment and some sharpening.  I also cropped the image. Here is the original:

ISO 640 50mm 0ev f/9 1/250

As you can see from the snowflakes on the bird, it was actively snowing.  It stopped shortly after so off I went to clear the walk. Hope you are warm wherever you are!

Cheers!

This post was written in response to Daily Prompt: The Outsiders.