The comments Donna Hughes made about my digital art creation yesterday prompted today's posting. Yesterday's image was indeed manipulated but not in the ways one might have interpreted from my posting statement. The base image I referred to is shown in panel A. I saw this imperfect leaf under a couple of inches of water next to two groupings of shells - all lying on the rock bottom of the Shenandoah River. Since I frequently produce digital art creations that involve starting with a less than ideal base image, I am not reluctant to shoot something like this to use for producing an image that is more to my liking. In addition, it was a hand-held relatively slow shutter grab shot I took while on a walk with my wife along the Shenandoah River - I was not on a serious photo shoot with a tripod.
Panel B. was my first attempt at producing a digital art creation from this base image. As you can see, the image is cropped and considerable cloning was done to eliminate the imperfections on the leaf surface. I also removed the bubbles - I found them distracting. Then Photoshop filters were applied to produce the texture I wanted in this creation. The contrast was boosted substantially to bring out the texture of the elements in this creation.
I was not completely happy with this result mostly because the composition seemed unbalanced. There seemed to be too much space between the two groups of shells and too much space between them and the leaf. But I posted this creation on NatureScapes in the Digital Creations Forum and one critique basically suggested the shells could go.
Based on that suggestion, I cropped the image additionally to eliminate the shells and produced the creation shown in panel C. It is much simpler and perhaps more appealing than that with the shells included, especially if you had not seen a version with the shells included. The problem I had was that I liked the shells.
So to include the shells, I cut and pasted various sections of the image shown in panel B. to come up with the digital art creation that I posted yesterday and which is shown in panel D. I decreased the space between the two groups of shells and cut a section from the image between the shells and the leaf. I also shifted the two groups of shells to the right to position them under the leaf to achieve better compositional balance in the image.
Thus, I used a very pedestrian image of a leaf lying on the river bottom near some shells to create, through the use of Photoshop, what I wished the scene had looked like. Bottom line is that the image I posted yesterday is indeed a highly manipulated one but the result pleases me.
It is just such manipulation that has caused a photographer friend of mine to declare that 'real' photography is dead - killed by digital cameras and post processing in Photoshop in the hands of would be 'photographers' like me. As for me, I'll paraphrase another digital art creator colleague who says in his signature line, 'I'm Still Having Fun!'
Name:: bill
Friday, November 16th, 2007
You certainly put a lot of effort into the post processing. And it paid off. As for real photography being dead I suggest a visit to the Corcoran Gallery in DC. Take a look at the Ansel Adams exhibit. Upon entering the 2nd or third print on the left wall is a gorgeous print of Yosemite. Ansel's notes describe how he used ink and wet darkroom techniques to remove a road and park buildings. Photo manipulation is nothing new and it doesn't "kill" the medium.
Name:: Donna
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Thanks for showing us how you did this, Bud. Very interesting. The most impressive change for me was the shift of the shells slightly to the right. Just that little change improves the balance and composition. Thanks, I learned something.
Name:: don
Friday, November 16th, 2007
I appreciate the explanation of you arrived at an image you liked. Very informative and worhwhile.
Name:: Robert
Saturday, November 17th, 2007
That's what it is all about; having fun. Thanks for the walk through.
Name:: kebrunella
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
Nice job! The result is really nice and I agree with you....we're having a lot of fun!And that's the most important thing to me.
About me
I work for a public Botanical Gardens in the Wings of Fancy Butterfly Exhibit. Since my passion is nature photography, this is a fun job for me. Images posted on this blog are © 2002-2008 by Bud Cline (dba, images by buddell) and all rights are reserved. No image may be used in any way without written permission.
I work for a public Botanical Gardens in the Wings of Fancy Butterfly Exhibit. Since my passion is nature photography, this is a fun job for me. Images posted on this blog are © 2002-2008 by Bud Cline (dba, images by buddell) and all rights are reserved. No image may be used in any way without written permission.
Currently, I am...
Having fun: with my new Nikon D700 camera!
Having fun: with my new Nikon D700 camera!