work flow ~ musings ~

I’m so glad that I learned proper workflow from the beginning. To recap;

Make it a good picture before playing with filters
straighten
Fix white balance color caste
Fix the exposure (shadow/highlight, paint with light)
crop (I’ve learned the hard way to keep it to a standard size if you ever intend to print, also keep resolution in mind)
Bring out details
Sharpen now if this is as far as you’re going to take it. If it’s only going to be shown on the Internet it can be much smaller than if it’s getting printed. For manipulations I usually leave sharpening to the end

Play. With stuff. I’m more of a filters person than a painting person. I like the look of old paintings – the light and the rich warm colors. I like to use a little bit of grunge texture to ‘glue’ a photomontage together. I’m really fascinated with blending multiple images together to make futuristic urban landscapes.

flickrhivemind ~ filterforge etal

I’m really digging looking at flickr images on black

I am quite impressed with filter forge’s grunge photo filter;

It’s been a weird week. People asking to use my photos as textures and others liking the above texture as a stand alone image. I’m just happy that people are looking.

popularity

I seem to be making explore on flickr more often now that I’ve bought a pro account. Certainly is a funny beast…but if you try and understand it in database terms it all makes a sort of crazy sense

Virtual Museum tour II

virtual museum tour

Last Wednesday I went to the buoyman van beunings museum to look at the golden age art. The allow pictures without flash. Here are some that didn’t turn out too badly;

r

digital paitings of Dutch Landscapes

I figured out how to take auto-bracketed pictures with my camera so that I can HDR them. Then I’ve been adding texture after messing them up a bit with painting plug-ins;

This was taken in the ‘new land’. The clouds are really different there. I think they look like van ruijsdael’s

I guess this would be modern genre art because it’s a scene I see almost every day. Sometimes there’s even a sheep to greet me.

I really think this captured the delight I feel on the local bike paths through the woods. Dig the light.

This Delights Me

This is the first macro I ever took with the SLR combined with a shot of a bottom of a pond. For some reason the mottle with the bright spot in the middle is kinda like Spanx underwear…it makes everything look better. I guess one size does indeed fit all.

Bunny with texture

I think I’ve gone off the deep end. Monday we took the bikes to Hilversum and on the way back stopped at Franskampen. I saw this marvelous scummy brown water with a bright spot in the middle and immediately thought it would make a great texture. And you know? I was right. This little guy has been a supporting bunnie in other works so I’ve decided to give him a starring role here.

Halloween 2003

I loved the way my pigtail was flying out in this picture so I remixed/rendered it;

My birds were okay;

[see link for credits]

but I decided to work with something I felt stronger about;

[see link for credits]

Because of this Housemartins song;

Sometimes I get so angry with the simple life they lead
The shepherds smile seems to confirm my fears
They’ve never questioned anything, they’ve never disagreed
Sometimes I think they must have wool in their ears
And when you see a can I see a crook
And when you see a crowd I see a flock
It’s sheep were up against
Sheep were up against

When I was young they used to get me counting sheep
But the counting I did was all in vain
No when I’m tired and I’m trying to get to sleep
I count humans jumping onto trains

And when you see a can I see a crook
And when you see a crowd I see a flock
It’s sheep were up against
Sheep were up against

Here’s to me not being a sheep in my Photoshop rendering…

the results of the painting plug-in smackdown are in!

I would say the winner is Snap Art, wouldn’t you?

gallery