The image on the left is the original and the one on the right was the result of my editing efforts in Photoshop6. Why PS6? Because I got it for free! I've posted the image to a number of different group pools in Flickr and it's gotten many goood comments and awards. Personally, I didn't think it was all that good. I didn't like the way the edges of the trees looked with the gradiant I applied. I'm working on a couple of other ideas and will be posting them here.

More Photshop DA

These are latest attempts. I made use of the gradiant tool. This is a really handy tool that allows you to have complete control of how the color will blend, the direction it will blend from.

I took the picture of the Jesus statue about 2yrs ago. Although it looked neat to begin with I knew I could get a better look by tweaking the colors and adding the gradiants. I included before and after shots.

Digital Art - Flower and Stone

Here's another Photoshop image that I created from two pictures. I used a few more tools then the last post. I'm using Photoshop 6. It's a pretty steep learning curve. There's just so many things you can do and sometimes it's hard to figure out which way is the best way. It really depends on your workflow and what you're the most comfortable with.

Spooky Car

I've been doing lots of reading and tutorials on Adobe Photoshop. I'm currently using Version 6. I have always been a bit intimidated by this program, however, I decided it was time to really get into it. I've been learning about layers and what you can do with them.

There are things you can do in this program that are amazing. Here I took two photos and combined them into one. I used the extract tool to lift the car from it's source photo. I also worked with adjustment layers and gradient fill to blend the scene and render the overall color. This is a rough draft, I'll be posting another revised version that will look even better.

Glassboro Auto Show

These are a few of my favorite pictures from the Glassboro Auto Show held August 29, 2008. More of the pictures can be seen by following the link to my Flickr Photostream at the bottom of the page.

Capturing your Setup Shots

After looking at many of the millions of Flickr photostreams that make use of off camera flash, I've decided to start including some captures of the setups I used for pictures displayed on this blog. I'm starting to see the benefit of doing so. It gives you a much better idea of where the light is actually going. This is something that's hard to predict when you're tightly focused on your subject. These setup captures act like mental notes of what worked and what didn't in a lighting setup at the time you were doing it. I've added a second umbrella since my last post. I was happy with the results, but I still have a lot to learn. Practice! Practice! Practice!

Quick Studio Style lighting

I had an idea for a little off camera lighting project. The entire setup took only 15 minutes. I borrowed a guitar from my son and decided to shoot against a bright background (my dining room) for some contrasting colors. Here are a couple of the pictures. I especially liked the contrast between the bright guitar and the darker orange wall and so I also did a few captures in black and white.

The setup: Guitar was suspended from an overhead shelf using a bungee. I used 3 strobes, one mounted on camera, but pointed away from the subject it was the trigger for the other flashes. I used Vivitar 285HV with optical trigger and pointed into a shoot-thru umbrella at camera right and an SB800 in SU4(Slave mode)was positioned under the guitar and pointed upward.