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What’s Now, What’s Next
It’s a new year and changes are in the making– new job, new dog, website changes, new projects. I’ll be hanging some photos downtown February and March. Website changes have been done and will continue. Some personal projects are in the making.
Thanks in large part to my lovely wife, Martina, the website has been optimized to load faster. Continue reading
Merry Christmas Everyone!
I hope you all have a relaxing, joyous Christmas. Kiss the loved ones, embrace the less fortunate, and dream of all the wonderful possibilities of the new year.
All the best,
Dwight
Tagged Holidays
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Photo Painting
Hello again.
I’ve had some time off lately, so I have taken the opportunity to view some Photoshop tutorials and try to develop some new skills. One of these was a set of video lessons by Corey Barker at www.kelbytraining.com on how to use a pen tablet. As part of that lesson series he explains how to digitally paint over a digital photograph. I played around with this technique on a photo that I took in Maine. There were some things I liked about the photo, but it had some fatal issues that kept me from ever exhibiting it.
Before
I thought it might be a good candidate for painting over, though. So I spent some time stumbling through the process of adding painting strokes to the photo. This process is a bit hard to describe unless you use Photoshop, but in short, it’s a brush technique that allows you to paint over the photo with colors and tones are already existent in the photo. It’s a bit more complicated than just “coloring book” work because the direction, pressure, and fluidity with which you perform the strokes affect the final quality of the work.
Result
It was a lot of fun; and although there’s much room from improvement after the first attempt, I may consider this technique for some future photos.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
…and don’t forget to buy stocking stuffers.
Dwight
WWII Reenactment
The other day, on a whim, I got up early and took a cruise through the back roads to Watertown, TN. I had heard of this place before, and although it was in the same county we live in, I had never been there. I was up early on a Saturday and set off to explore the countryside on my way there. There were storms rolling in, so I hoped to get some great landscape shots (that would be a first, since I consider myself a pretty poor landscape photographer). I just wanted to get a chance to capture the good light and rural scenes.
On the trip to Watertown, I searched for some decent vantage points to capture landscapes of the countryside; but had little luck between the shoulder-less road and the ubiquitous power lines. But, when I finally got to Watertown I found a quiet but interesting small town that seemed to be a combination of rural middle Tennessee and arts and crafts retreat. I had breakfast at a place called Lulu’s, named after the owner’s dog. It had a laid-back retro-hippie vibe, and I liked it.
I haven’t posted any of the photos from this trip yet, they haven’t aged long enough. However, I enjoyed the morning and vowed to take my wife on a similar journey in the near future. We revisited that trip together this past weekend. We headed out in the early morning to enjoy the sites and score some breakfast in Watertown. The town square had been roped off so that cars were not allowed to enter. Obviously, something was up. Through eaves dropping during breakfast at Lulu’s, we learned that a WWII reenactment was about to take place. So we savored our breakfast and stayed for the show.
The “troops” camped out the night before next to the railroad tracks and awaited the arrival of an excursion train from Nashville before starting the reenactment. I wandered about their encampments and caught a few frames.
I tried several different post-production techniques with the photos to see which I preferred. Let me know which you like most, or least by leaving a comment.
These were a couple of static shots prior to the event.
Then the action began…
Not to denigrate the sacrifices made by the veterans in the least, nor to glorify war; but being a guy with a camera, it’s hard to pass up a serendipitous event stumbled upon while just wandering around. My wife and I enjoyed the small town culture and cuisine and just basked in the opportunity to get outside of the routine for a moment.
Oh yeah…the Allies won.
Dwight
Also posted in Miscellaneous, Travel
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Halloween Photo
OK, I couldn’t resist halloweening a photo from my recent trip to England. This was taken at a chapel near Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. It was a really cool place that had all of the elements that you typically don’t find in such a place in the US (if such a place existed in the US). It being October, a heavy dose of PS seemed in order to try to recapture the feel of those old black and white horror flicks from back in the day.
Happy Haunting,
Dwight