Get funky!

I thought I'd revisit some fun and odd looking 'art' generated by Deep Dream Generator. It has been argued that it is NOT art as it uses Artificial Intelligence to merge a pattern into your photo.

At first I had no clue of what I was doing. Some of the generations turned out simply awful and made no sense. 

Then as I experimented and looked at what others were doing and how they were using patterns,...it started to slightly click...just a bit.

Still.

You can end up with nonsense or something quite beautiful.

Original [actually I added a texture in DxOElite with this photo]

Um. Teddy Bear run through a painting texture and then another colorful texture then combined into this final image.

Original:

Next some just for fun. I don't recall what the originals were.

I really do enjoy doing this as a wonderful distraction to all the other things going on.

I posted an album of these on Facebook and it was shared --- another person asked where I 'sold' them.

Nah, I don't sell them. Selling items are so much work!

However, I will probably put them in an 'art' book in print just to keep around and page through occasionally. I have an idea or two also that I might see if I can print this following image to hang on the wall. I think it is so uplifting.

It feels so happy!

I think I will finally get serious on finishing up my photo book I was going to call The Creek. I've been photographing it for a few years to sort of see how it changed through the seasons and with flash floods.

It will be like my other two self made books 

The Enchanted Forest

and...

The Sleeping Forest

I have quite a few files to back up now and save along with some thoughts to get written down.

I'm thinking of creating a few designs with winter scenes for Christmas Cards.

It appears that with being so Isolated, it may be a good thing to sit down and write out many cards?

At least I could have fun designing them.

Get Funky.

Have a good week and stay well.

Taking photos/Random Thoughts

Of course there will always be the debate about how much editing is acceptable.
There will always be a huge debate.
To Edit or To Not Edit.

I am somewhat in the middle. A little editing can go a very long way. 

I like to take .RAW files now. I can breeze through them in CorelAfterShotPro 3 and get a good job done quickly. I guess I am plugging Corel because they haven't gone the way of Adobe where you have to pay monthly to use Lightroom and CC.

I've also found ON1 to be extremely easy and fun to use.
It has the ability of taking my .ORF and my .NEF files and working with them and I can save them in a variety of file types.

However, I am always interested in improving what I do. I read up on tutorials and watch the occasional video. 

One of the items I see floating around the internet is videos that teach you in certain programs of how to change the sky in your photo that you've taken.
Yikes! Okay, that is fun and it can add a lot of drama to a photo.

But when did we stop taking real photos? Or better yet, why do some folks post edit photos and spend more time on them in the digital dark room than they did thinking about taking the shot.

I've harped on this before. And I am as guilty as the next person for post editing shots. And perhaps I am all wrong too...

I have learned a few tricks that could help me get a more interesting shot than the conventional way. But swapping out skies seems a bit extreme for me.

I don't mind cloning out a small distraction, but going to the far end of the spectrum is a bit unrealistic.
So I don't know if I'd qualify as a purest ~ no, I am not. But I won't spend hours swapping skies, cloning in or out rocks, and other items on a photo.

I think about what I want to do, watch the weather for a perfect sky and then try to compose something that will work.

Here is an edit that is very obvious.

Here is another. Replaced sky added a moon, but it is all quite obvious.

Here is a shot I took a long time to think out and do. I took many shots on a beautiful morning. I used an Infrared filter and also did some shots with a ND filter.

I came up with this, edited to black and white.

[This shot was taken obviously before our house remodel.]

I like to do less as more.

I studied the lighting in this shot and went with what filtered through the window in the late evening out onto the porch.

I've done some pretty wild stuff, but always seem to come back to the basics.
I even once in a while go a bit overboard in exploring things like HDR.

Recently I've gotten an interest in bugs. I've read up on how some of the professionals get great 'insect' shots and learned about something called Image Stacking. Image stacking led me to Focus Peaking and searching out how to manual focus properly in an Automatic Focus world.

I'm making the circles. Landscapes, Macro, Panoramic, High Dynamic Range, Long Exposures, Still Life, and Infrared Photography, a bit of over the top artistic stuff, and then back to the basics.

All challenges to make taking a photo interesting and challenging at the time.

Edit? Of course. Have fun with it. 
After all when the debate dust settles, I guess it all comes back to the photographer and what the Artist Photographer wants to portray.

I guess if you are going to take photos, you just need to enjoy what you are doing.

Textures and photos, and the Grunge Movement.

Textures, grunge frames, overlaying of colors to a photograph seem to have finally caught on with the folks who teach Photoshop classes now.

You can even purchase a Texture stand alone, or plug-in program by Topaz Lab . I think they just released it last week.  I tried it, but decided I like the old way of doing things. Looking or creating layers myself and adding them together to come up with a 'piece'. Their plug in hated my processor and crashed non stop, so I ended up uninstalling it and going back to the drawing board.  

I first tried overlaying textures in 2008 and I can tell you I was pretty bad at it.

As I kept at it and reading and experimenting with it, I started seeing some improvement.

I even went a bit with the Grunge Look.  

However I do like straight shooting and not spending hours trying to edit a photo into a Grunge Fine Art Piece.

Fine Art Grunge Courses...Grab it now for only $395!
Oh wow.
I think I will pass.

I then tried some subtle 'Grunge' and Textures.  I found in certain images it really added a special feel to it.

Villa Louis in Prairie du Chein, WI.

Then there is all the reason in the world to experiment with Grunge, Textures, and ... composites.

This photo of a hound dog is my favorite.

So each year when November comes along and things are very dreary, I re-address other forms of artwork.  Sometimes it is graphic art and 3D type of fractals, other times I see what I can compose with a photo.

Yesterday I took some late afternoon shots of some of our mules.

I did edit them.

Old Mules:

A bit of texture added and vignetting.

Below is a screen shot of my workflow for this last edit.

Original shot:

and...

then the final outcome.

I look at it now and think it could use a bit more work, so I may take this back to the drawing board...or PaintShopPro and do a little more.

It isn't growing on me at all.  I like a softer backround and this is a bit too rough...

It is all according to personal taste and perhaps the fun of being able to alter something.

I've googled some photos regarding Grunge Wedding Photography.  In my own opinion, this is something a bit far out.  Some images just look dirty, which is what grunge is all about.  The Grunge Look.

Not sure this will catch on with me.  I'll dabble here and there but let's just say it doesn't tickle my creative bone too much.

Okay...final for now...

Today's Photography Is it Real or Art?

I was going to post about the Polar Vortex.  But after 3 days of 'it' with incredibly cold temps and wind chills that were nasty, I'm really not too interested in saying any more than. 
We survived.  Cars started, animals were kept reasonably comfortable, and I hated it because I couldn't go for hikes.

Recently I joined a group of people on Google+ that are B&W photographers.  I thought, cool, I'll learn things!

And I am learning a lot of things.

One of our requirements is to tell the steps of how we 'process' a photo and why we did it that way.

I've heard terms tossed around like ...  Photoshop CC [on line Adobe Creative Cloud], SEP2, which I learned is Silver Efex Pro 2.  This is part of the Nik Collection of plugins for Photoshop.  This is not a Nikon product!
There are others like I use by Topaz.

But I am a basic kind of photographer.  Black and white is my choice in the winter more often than not.  The landscape just sort of asks for it.

These are pretty basic winter shots that I've done mainly because the color of winter asks for it in my own opinion.

Conversion was pretty simple.  I used Topaz BW Effects ... Quick and easy.

For this group I did some more experimenting. 
I took a sunrise photo that was so-so and converted to Black and White.

Foggy morning September sunrise.  Simple edit.  I even used an ancient Adobe Elements 5 for this.  I ran it through the BW Effects from Topaz and viola.  I was done in about 30 seconds.

Okay enough bout that.

Here is some of what I am seeing in some other photographer's shots....
First off.  These shots are incredible.  Excellent.

Maybe far superior than anything I can hope to do.
But when the workflow is listed for some it sounds like a 9 hr job.
 

Luminance masks.
SEP2
Light room -- whichever current version there is.
Photoshop CC
Photoshop Creative Suite
Photomatix Pro
and other programs I've not heard of.

One person discussed his work flow.  The photo was incredible. He used 9 layers of edits in Photoshop CC to the original photo including SEP2 and Light Room.
Yes the shot was fantastic.  Yes, it was artistic.
But at what point do we lose the photo and does it become a 'vision'.

One could argue and I would agree, that a photographer's photo is an expression of art of sorts.
Even I do that.  I can't help it.

This is an age old argument and one that will probably never ever be solved.
Myself, I am learning.  
Maybe I will like what I learn about these super processed photos and then again, I may just stay and do what I like best.

Do it my way.