Going going gone ...

 ...to the nuthouse I go.

I made this sign and placed it in the mailbox so the mail person cannot put a 'no one was home' notice inside it without pulling this dayglow sign off. I signed and dated it once more. I am expecting a package I have to sign for and if he/she refuse as usual to deliver it... I will have to wait until Tuesday to get said package. Post Office is closed on Monday.

We will see the results. I'm betting that he/she will leave a note and not come to the house. 

Anyone want to bet???

So....

I thought I'd amuse myself by trying some old editing exercises. Like turning a photo into a drawing.

Original:

Topaz Impressions:

Adobe CS2: Photo to Draw method.

I sort of like them all for different reasons. Great exercise for my brain.

Original. Tea Time:

Edited for High Key Look with a texture:

I like this version. 

I moved around the tea towel that is hanging from the clothes rack...and moved in a bit. I settled on a subtle film color adjustment after trying several. Yep, I cut the poor rabbit's ear off too. 

Well this was for experimenting and brain work.

And then since nothing I was doing excited me very much. I did this.

It sums up exactly how I felt about trying my 'still life' experiments on Saturday.

Editing ~ Creative Stuff

I started doing photography and felt that every photo just had to be perfect and straight out of the camera as I saw it.

I joined Flickr and started seeing other photographers doing editing and other things to photos, I met those who did abstract computer art, and... suddenly my world started to expand.

I began to learn the basics photoshop, GIMP, and other programs. I tried most anything I could get my hands on. Yesterday I came across something in my searches called 'Paint with Light Effect'. I decided to check it out.
I'd done Painting with Light at night and had a lot of fun. However, I don't often go out late at night and do photography.

It has been fun, and so I wondered what this new Painting with Light was.

However, it was not what I expected. It was painting light within a photo to dramatically change a photo.

I happened on something called the Briscoe Lighting Effect.

Tony Kuyper covers this in his WordPress blog and has a short video regarding the method that uses CreativeSuite by Adobe. I can't afford the CS by Adobe and I don't like 'renting' a program and paying for it monthly.

I started using ON Photo, the free version after Adobe went to a pay monthly fee. I kept my version of CS2.  I eventually went for ON1 RAW and I like the program. I own it and can upgrade if I want. It is a bit easier than CS, but it is not as creative.

All that gobbledygook aside, I thought I'd take some techniques and try to use them in ON1 RAW.

Here is the original photo:

Pretty boring isn't it? This is not what I imagined it to be as my eye saw the sunlight just barely coming in from the far side of the stream.

I also wanted the photo to have a dreamlike quality to it.

After a lot of missteps and start overs, I stopped here. Yes, this is what I wanted.

I edited the specific colors in the far end of the stream. I also used a texture layer to darken the sides and one more cloud layer to put the reflection of the sky in the water.

It isn't realistic, but it was something I saw in my mind's eye when I took the shot.

Here is what the ON1 editing program looks like and why it is SO easy to work with.
No, they do not pay me to talk about their programs.

I'd met someone recently who had told me how lost she was when using CS/Adobe Elements and layers.

Here is ON1 with the same photo, but I am editing it to be a black and white photo.

The original shot was pretty unimpressive too. But I wondered how it would look transformed in Black and White. I brightened the yellows, the oranges, in the color enhancer and then shifted it to Black and White and played with the sliders.

Besides ... X marks the spot.

I took this next shot and of course did some more play with it.
Color:

Sigh. It is nice but...

Black and White:

The leaves stand out in this shot, where they really didn't in the color version.

Next up?

I watched a video on how to composite a fantasy scene.

I will have to use both ON1 and CS2 for that. It is a great challenge.

High Key Photography ~ my lesson

Our assignment for this week was High Key photography.

So I read up on it and was rather put out to find that most of this sort of photography was done in a studio with lights and things called softboxes, lightboxes, and other things that I don't own.

Never fear.
Some things can still be achieved by using natural light.

But I had to wait for the sun to shine.  That did happen yesterday, but I couldn't do the project outside as the winds were gusting to about 35 or more mph.

So I set up my little ugly wooden chair in the living room and put an old white sheet on it.

High Key=light ...upbeat, happy, bright...

Ohhhkay...

Well here is the 'home' fancy studio.

Not very impressive right?
I mean look at Morris's crate right behind it, the heater, the brick, the wall, and all of the distractions.

But...
Here is that red horse.

Items used.
Tripod.
40mm micro Nikkor lens, Nikon D5200.
Sunlight, bright sunlight coming in the window.  This reflected off the old white sheet I tossed on the chair, or should I say.... 'Artfully tossed' on the chair.

I had the sun at my back and off to the side.  The white reflected the sun onto the subject and into the camera.
I tried a few settings.  Manual settings were ISO 100, f4, 1/20th of a second.

I also used the setting on the D5200 of High Key.  
But because I wanted to learn how to do this, I decided to use the Manual settings.  I was able to over expose by .67, I thought it was +7 on the EV but the details say .67.

I took the photo in RAW, processed it to jpeg in CorelAfterShotPro and then used Topaz BW Effects in CS2 [I also was able to process it in PaintShopPro X6 the same way].

I tried the Topaz BW setting of Hi Key I.  It was close to what I was looking for but I moved the color filter towards pink to get the details to show up on the horse.

I like how this shot turned out.  Very high key.

I  used Topaz BW Effects on this one also.

But then I used another method of how to make a photo look like a drawing.

I finally settled on this shot as my presentation for the assignment.

I'd like to redo this shot and bring out the details in the wings more, but that will require another sunny day and a different mode of focus on the camera.

I'm not sure High Key is my style but it sure is a good exercise in photography.