Boat Graveyard & Repair Facility – Charleston, Oregon
I spent a couple of hours exploring an old boat graveyard in Charleston, Oregon, I was fascinated with all the chipped paint on the old boats from a by-gone era. They had seen a much better time. I can just imagine the stories these old boats could tell. I picked an image at random and played with it in Topaz Impression. I applied a Van Gogh painting style as an overlay. Today I needed a break from reality
Roseate Spoonbill
I needed a little change of pace and started reviewing some photographs from an earlier wildlife photography trip. In my review, I found this “fellow” just waiting to be processed and displayed.
Lesson Learned: It pays to go back and review old images from time to time.
Face Abstract – Valley of Fire, Yellowstone National Park
Photography has taught me to keep my eyes open and be ready to see the unusual. Walking along a path in Yellowstone’s Valley of Fire, I gazed down into a bubbling hot spring and saw this face looking up at me. I stopped worked the scene and captured an image. On my computer, I softened the image and added a little impressionistic touch. Can you see the face?
Photography, vision, and imagination go hand in hand.
Onomea Falls Water Color
I recently visited the Hawaiian Botanical Gardens, near Hilo, Hawaii. My mission was to photograph creatively. I did not focus on the overall beauty of the environment around me. My focus was on separate scenes, small vignettes, and macro detail while using creative photographic techniques.
For this image, I took multiple exposures covering the range from the bright water and sky to the dark shadows. When I brought them together into an HDR, all the tonalities were captured. However, I lost the feeling of the dense tropical rainforest setting. So I decided to play a little with Topaz’s new ‘Studio” software. I used the watercolor effect to create this image.
I haven’t given up on the natural presentation of this image yet. It will require a lot of luminance masking with layers to get the natural image that I saw in my mind. I will do this at a future time when I am in a very patient mood.
Colorado Blue Spruce Abstract 1
Sometimes it is just fun to play around with images. I knew that I would use various ways of post processing when I first took the image. Here is one version. Playing around a little more, I came up with the following abstract :
Colorado Blue Spruce Abstract 2
Multiple Exposure: Dogwood Blooms and Asphalt Pavement
I got a little bored shooting in the garden. Nothing was “Popping” for me. So I thought I would have a little fun with multiple exposures. This image is a combination of a Pink Dogwood branch and a texture photo of a section of asphalt pavement. Magic happens.
To finish it off I decided to experiment a little with Topaz Impression. Here I used the Impasto I preset. Something a little different.
Fonthill Yellow Room Christmas Tree Impressionistic Detail
This image is an impressionistic perspective of yesterday’s post of the Yellow Room Christmas tree detail. I used Topaz Impressionism plug in to achieve the look.
This posting ends my series on the Fonthill Castle Christmas Decoration Exhibit. I hope you have enjoyed the series. I have enjoyed sharing it.
This probably be my last major project at Fonthill. I will be moving back to the Washington State next Spring. I have thoroughly enjoyed my experiences at Fonthill starting with a workshop led by my good friend John Barclay. I want to also thank Ed Reidell and the staff at Fonthill for the opportunities to help out. It was truly my pleasure. I enjoyed every moment of it.
Tomorrow starts a New Year. Every day is a gift to be enjoyed to the fullest.
Fuji X-T1, XF18-135mm @ 62mm, f/11, 1/350 sec, ISO 400
Driving up to Oregon’s Painted Hills, I saw this pastoral scene and stopped to capture the feeling. It was “high noon” and the sun was bright, but I still wanted to give it a try. To recreate the feeling I had, I processed the image in Topaz’s Impression and added a little texture in Photoshop. Who say’s you can’t make good images in bright noon day sun!
Impressionistic Cherry Blossoms.
I was having a lot of fun creating multiple exposures and just experimenting with various artistic ways of processing images when I came up with this combination. I first started out taking individual images of fallen cherry blossoms. I then experimented with multiple exposures (5 exposures in this case). I then further experimented with different artistic presets in Topaz Impression (Georgia O’Keefe II) to arrive at this image.
For reference, below is the 5 image multiple exposure:
Canon 5D MkIII, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 70mm, f/8, 1/30 sec, ISO 200 (5 exposures)
Lesson Learned: Enjoy experimenting, you can never tell what you can come up with!
Canon 5D MkIII, EF24-70mm f2.8L @ 35mm, f/11, 1/13 sec, ISO 200
When I saw this scene of our front porch, I felt like it was an impressionistic garden painting with all the pink and light green color. So, I post-processed the image that way using Topaz Impression plugin.