Picture of the Day.

Finished Picture:  I channeled my fear of dogs in to a creative outlet and came up with this masterpiece via Snapseed.  Though this picture is very grainy, to paraphrase Gordon Gecko, "Grainy, for lack of a better word, is good."  Though the subject is way off-center, blurry, in motion, and the picture is grainy, it actually works very well and I love how the sienna/umbra color coordinates so well with the vicious dog.  

Original Picture:  People often ask me, "Jimmy, why do you have a fear of dogs?"  I typically respond that I do not have a fear of dogs insomuch as I have a fear of being bitten and going to the Emergency Room - AGAIN.  When I think of dogs I often picture them in a pose similar to this - fangs bared at me, ready to strike and hungry for the taste of Jimmy.  Those teeth are razor sharp and make a Piranha look like an old man with dentures.  I reek of fear around dogs, and dogs are attracted to that scent like honeybees to daisies.

Favorite Pictures of The Week

Original:  This picture is so boring that I fell asleep twice just taking it.  Please do not look at this picture while you drive - you might fall asleep too.

Finished Picture:  A perfect example that answers the question, "What can I do with all my crummy pictures that are so incredibly boring I fall asleep looking at them?"  Taken in the morning after taking my son to school.  Having to fulfill my quotient of "streets and electrical poles", I found a perfect subject.  Snapseed did the rest and I was just along for the ride.  Have you ever heard about the gorilla that painted pictures that sold for $$$?  I wonder what that gorilla could do with an iPhone and Snapseed.

Original:  The original picture is actually pretty good and has some merit.  The subject is interesting, it fulfills my sign quotient for the week, it has the number 4 in it, and I love the blue light.  Fun Fact:  Elvis Presley would have been 44 if he had lived two more years.

Finished Picture:  Taken in my favorite parking garage (see below) in the afternoon on my iPhone with my favorite new app, Snapseed. 

Original:  Just a boring picture of a boring parking garage taken on a boring day because I was bored.

Finished Picture: I recently started using an app on my iPad called, Instagram.  It is a great way to post your photography and have others look at it and rate it - a great way to get feedback on your work.  One of the fellow Instagram photographers posted their work and mentioned that they had achieved some really nice results in an app called, Snapseed.  I must have dyslexia because I thought it was called, Snapspeed, which sounds more appropriate.  Anyhow, I quickly checked out the app, bought it, and one of the fist pics I created was this above - a pic taken in a parking garage one afternoon.  The original pic was nothing exciting, but I liked the subject so I thought it would be interesting to see what I could do with it.

Favorite Pics of the Week

     People often stop me on the street and ask, "Hey Jimmy, what are your favorite pictures this week?"  In answer to that constant question, I post the following:

Finished Picture:  With enough dust on the car to write War and Peace, I ran the car through the digital carwash to remove all the funk from the original image.  First I ran it through Tiffen FX (iPad app) on my beloved iPad to bring out the colors.  Next I ran it through Tilt Shift Generator (iPad app) to give the colors more KAPOW! and add a neat level of blur and sharp focus to give the picture depth.  Then I ran the final image through Instagram to slightly tame the colors, and share with my friends on Instagram.  Check my work out on Instagram - I am jimmy1963 and I have a kajillion pictures in my portfolio.

Original Picture:  While driving through the big city of Burnet, Texas, this impeccable example of Detroit craftsmanship caught my eye.  But what to do with it?

Finished Picture:  A good example of "how to create the wow factor in your pictures".  Whites have been whitened, colors have been brightened, picture has been sharpened, and what was once a drab picture suddenly looks pretty good.

Original Picture:  A good example of my unique photography method known as High-Speed Accidental Photography.  Not to be confused with taking a picture in a moving vehicle without looking at the subject.  Colorful subject and interesting signage - too bad it is blurry and out of focus.

Finished Picture:  When faced with a boring picture and a boring subject - what to do?  Pull out all the stops - you can't make it look any worse.  3 minutes worth of work on my iPhone while waiting for my lunch to be served at Jimmy John's and I created something pretty cool.

Original:  Lots of grey and nothing remotely interesting about this picture.

Finished Picture:  4 minutes of editing on my iPhone in my favorite app - Tiffen Photo FX.  Approx 20+ adjustments made to the pic to compensate for the washed out grey skies, and the lack of color and pizzazz.

Original:  Church in downtown Austin, Texas.  Picture taken on a dreary winter day.

Instagram

     One of my photographic interests is purposely taking a bad photograph and trying to make something interesting out of it.  I do not see it as a waste of time or a waste of digital space.  Instead, I see it as a fun creative challenge.  

Original:  A boring picture taken with my iPhone while moving.

     I think of it as the Pablo Picasso challenge - creating beauty where it did not exist.  To many people, Picasso was the eccentric artist that created weird paintings of grotesquely formed people, fat women, and general debauchery.  In reality though, he was skilled and talented at drawing photo-realistically.  However, at a certain point in his life I imagine that no longer became a challenge for him, and instead, the creative challenge became being able to create something one of a kind and unique, instead of drawing exactly what everyone else saw.  

     I am reminded of that every time I take a bad photograph on purpose - anyone can point a camera and shoot, but not everyone can create beauty where it did not exist before.  And that becomes the challenge with an iPhone, Photoshop, and all the available photo apps - creating beauty or interest with all the tools available to you.  

Finished picture after massaging it in various iPhone apps and injecting a lot of KAPOW!

     One of my favorite new apps is, Instagram.  Instagram is essentially the Facebook of iPhone photo apps.  It allows you to apply 17 different presets to a photograph to change the appearance, and share those pictures online with your online social community - Facebook friends, Twitter, Flickr, and other Instagram users. 

     But like most apps, there is so much more that you can do with it, than just what you see on the surface.  For one, you can massage the image in Photoshop or other apps, prior to taking it in to Instagram - the results can create stunning images.  Another thing you can do with Instagram is to share your portfolio of work with the Instagram community and have your work rated by strangers with either a “Like” or a comment.  What I like the most about Instagram, however, is the ability to meet other photographers, amateur and professional, and see how others are stretching the photographic boundaries with all the available apps.  A few years ago HDR photography was the rage, but now you can see how talented amateur photographers have gone on to create all new effects and methods.  As my fellow Instagram photographer, Tonythemaindog, said, “It is a great place to people watch.”  A fascinating place to see what others are up to.

Original:  An iPhone pic taken on a drab dreary day.

     Everyone has their own style.  Some people have a portfolio of nothing but black and white photographs, some people take a lot of pictures of hands, some people like to take pictures of shoes - everyone has their own idea of what they deem to be photo-worthy.  And this is what makes Instagram so fascinating - the wide variety of styles, effects, and abilities.

Finished pic with colors enhanced, a colorful sky added, a slight blur added, and a heavy dose of KAPOW!

     One Instagram photographer caught my attention recently.  Mommyroo3 posted a picture of a rain gutter with water pouring out.  A simple picture of an uninteresting object, yet by a little effort and creativity, she turned what would have been a trash picture in to a work of art.  I would have never seen her art if I had not joined Instagram, but by joining Instagram I can not only see beautiful fascinating artwork, but also see what others are doing with their work.  

     Are you on Instagram yet?  I am - go check out my growing portfolio - I am jimmy1963.

Sunset Over Hutto

Original:  To the bottom left you can see the farm house that did not belong, the dark areas at the upper corners, and an overall film covering the picture.

Final Picture:  The farm house has been cropped, the picture slightly rotated, minor cloning performed, the dark areas fixed, and the colors enhanced.

     Being in the right place at the right time is always a great feeling - being able to capture an image that you would have missed if you had been 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late.

     And then there are those moments where you wait to be in the right place at the right time, like taking a picture of a sunrise or sunset.  

     One such moment for me was shortly after I bought my first digital SLR camera, my formerly beloved Pentax K100.  Currently it is my knock-around camera - the camera that I take with me in bad conditions - but previously it was the camera I constantly had with me to capture every exciting moment of the day.  I only had it for a few weeks when I captured a beautiful sunset over Hutto, Texas.

     At the time I was visiting family, and the visit eventually turned in to an all day event.  Anxious to use my new camera, I became decided to wander around and take pictures.   The area of Hutto I was in was located on top of a large hill that overlooked farmland and houses.  To the west of my location was a small farm, and as the sun began to set I had the idea that it would be great to capture that moment.  It was a cold, crisp day, no wind, and perfect weather for shooting pictures, minus the cold.

     The problem I had was that it was a new camera and I was not yet familiar with all the functions, and I was unsure what settings to use to perfectly capture the moment.  I did not want to take a few pictures and believe I had caught the image perfectly, so I decided to take lots of pictures at different settings, knowing that eventually I would have a perfect picture.  Which it turns out is a good way to shoot pictures - if you are faced with being in the right place at the right time, but you are not sure if you have the perfect settings for the shot, take lots of pictures using different settings, and hopefully one of those pictures will be perfect.  Part of the problem I had was that I was shooting straight in to the sun, so the reading I was getting was going to throw off the contrast in the rest of the picture.

     I came back home, eager to see how my pictures turned out, and was surprised that I had been correct all along - sure enough, the first pictures I shot were not the correct settings - I either overcompensated for the bright sky and it came out too dark, or I undercompensated and it came out too light.  Luckily, subsequent pictures had different settings and I was able to tame the bright sun and bring out the blue in the sky.  But like most pictures, only after taking it in to Photoshop was I able to realize how beautiful it really was.

     In Photoshop (I currently use version CS4) I started off with a beautiful image that just needed some color tweaking and minor retouching.  Photoshop always reminds me of the old Irish Spring soap commercial, where the actor writes in the soap film on the glass shower door to show the layer of film and grime you would have with a different soap.  When I use Photoshop, my goal is to remove that layer of film and grime that the picture has naturally.  The layer of film and grime is most evident if you do a split-screen comparison of the before and after picture - no matter how beautiful the picture is that you start with, Photoshop can remove that layer and make you wonder what was so beautiful about the original photograph to begin with.  

     To start, I changed the IMAGE (go to IMAGE, down to IMAGE SIZE, and change the dimensions to 10 inches width and 8 inches height, and resolution to 300) to a standard size I like to use - 8 x10 inches, 300dpi - and did some minor cropping.  In the original there is a farm house at the bottom left, so I cropped this out as it did not work in the image I wanted to create.  I also did a minor rotation of the picture by using the ROTATE function (go to EDIT, down to TRANSFORM, then select ROTATE; this will only work on a layer that is not the background layer; to do this, go to LAYER, and select DUPLICATE LAYER).

     To tweak the colors, I tried different settings to see what worked best.  Photoshop has lots of great color adjustments, so there is not any one particular setting to recommend.  Some times using the AUTO TONE, AUTO CONTRAST, or AUTO COLOR will be better than what you can manually do yourself (go to IMAGE, and down to AUTO TONE, AUTO CONTRAST or AUTO COLOR), and then other times they will not give you the desired results and you will need to adjust colors manually.  Using LEVELS and CURVES  (go to IMAGE, and down to LEVELS or CURVES) requires a very detailed explanation of how they function, but if you go there and either play around with the controls, or select the PRESETS they provide, you can see how the minute adjustments will dramatically change your picture.  The best way to learn Photoshop is just use the various functions - play around with a picture and see what the different tools and functions do.  If you are good at following instructions in a book, then pick up a User Guide for Photoshop, otherwise, just start playing around with all the functions in Photoshop - eventually you will start learning how they work.  Also, a great resource that I like to use is located at the Photoshop.com website - they have lots of short videos you can watch and learn how an expert does something - how the CLONE tool works, how the MAGNETIC LASSO works, and so forth.

Next Up:  Aliens Strike Llano!

When Butterflies Attack

...but they look so harmless in Grandma's garden.

     Most people are unaware of the inherent danger imposed by those delicate, wispy, bird-like creatures - butterflies.  They look harmless and beautiful flying around flowers and dancing about in a garden as the sun shimmers off their iridescent wings, but do not be fooled by their disguise - they are dangerous.

     The next time you are sitting outside and one flies near you, or gasp, lands on the head of a playful child, beware. They are not flying for your amusement - they are probing your defenses - looking for weaknesses in your perimeter. 

     At least that is story that led to my photograph, Attack!

     Armed with my beloved orange Pentax Kx, lots of time, and a fertile imagination, I set off one day to create a whimsical picture of what those dastardly creatures could possibly do if nature were left unchecked.

     Drunk on Starbux coffee, I started off with a concept - butterflies sweeping through a city and carrying away cars.  The idea was simple, and the execution took a modest amount of Photoshop ability.  Believe me, if I can do this, you can do this too.  

     The picture can be broken down in to several different parts - the skyline, the cars, and the butterflies.  The most difficult part of the picture was creating the butterfly in the foreground, as it needed to show motion.

      This is typically how I create my artwork - I develop a story first, then go about trying to illustrate the story. This is a good way to breathe life in to your work. If you find that your work is staid and lacks freshness, try this approach:  what is the story you are trying to tell, and does the image you create tell the story. The story does not have to be complicated and it can even just be a thought, such as what would the entrance to Heaven look like?  What would it look like if I were in a small town shopping one day when a 20-story robot from outer space attacked Earth?  

     Back to, Attack!

     In Photoshop, I created the base layer - a park surrounded by skyscrapers downtown - and used this to determine what else went in the picture, such as how many butterflies, what direction they traveled, and how big or small they appeared.   In the background, faces needed to be changed and altered to protect the innocent and the sky needed to be cut out.  Most pictures I go to this much effort on I will change out the sky, as usually I will get a good shot of the target (in this case the downtown park scene), but the sky will be blah.  The original picture had a nice blue sky, but a more vibrant and exciting sky needed to be added.  So the background base picture was cleaned up, sharpened, and the colors enhanced.  In Photoshop, I like to use the Unsharp Mask (go to FILTER, down to SHARPEN, then select UNSHARP MASK) to sharpen, as it gives more control over the degree of sharpness.  

     To delete the sky, I used the LASSO tool to select the majority of the background and delete, then blew up the picture and by hand I deleted individual spots in the trees so the sky could show through by using a combination of the ERASER tool with the Airbrush setting, and using the LASSO tool to select larger areas.  Deleting the sky around a tree is very challenging and takes a lot of patience, but if you have the patience to do that it will reflect in the quality of your work.

     After deleting the sky I added a layer with a new sky behind the base layer, then maneuvered the sky around til I found the perfect position.  With the sky I tweaked the colors to make them more vibrant, and used the CLONE tool to clean up dust and spots from my lens.  That is one of my biggest pet peeves - dirt on the lens.  It is very annoying and I have a hard time keeping my lens clean.

     Next I created each butterfly and car shot.  This was done by searching through my photo library for butterfly pictures and vehicle pictures.  One thing I do when I am out taking pictures is to just take random pictures of whatever I see - cars, buildings, street signs, clouds, leaves, hobos - whatever my big heart desires.  The reason for this is whenever I have an idea that I want to create, I like to have the tools handy.  It is similar to having a workbench in your garage where you have screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches and so forth - your photo library should be like that too, so you have a folder labeled, Clouds, a folder labeled, Cars, a folder labeled, Robots, and so on.  Then when you want to create a picture of butterflies attacking a city, all you have to do is sort through your folder of, Butterflies, and your folder of, Vehicles, to find all the tools you need to create your masterpiece.  

     The picture of the red car in the foreground was from a museum, for example, so I cut the car out of the background, cleaned up the car, made it more vibrant and fixed the problems with the picture.  For the red car I needed to fix the front window as it had a bad glare and reflection.  What I did was select the shape of the windshield then add in a series of colors with the PAINT BUCKET and AIRBRUSH tools to give it a shimmering window reflection of the sky. 

     After I fixed the problems with the car it was then time to add the butterfly.  I found a picture for each different butterfly, then went about the same process as the base layer by cutting out the background.  I wanted each butterfly to realistically look like it was carrying the car, rather than appear like it was just laid on top of the car, so I had to bend the legs a bit to achieve that.  I did that by using the LASSO tool to create the shape of the leg that I would be adding, then airbrushed in a series of colors to give it a realistic 3-dimensional look.  Next I needed to fix the wings so that they gave the appearance of being in motion.  This was easier than it seemed - I copied the wings on to another layer, then gave it the appearance of motion by using the MOTION filter (go to FILTER, then to BLUR, then to MOTION BLUR).  I then adjusted the OPACITY to approximately 50% in the LAYERS toolbox, so that you could see through the motion blur.  I then attached the butterfly to the car using the different layers, then under LAYERS I merged the layers together by using the MERGE DOWN layer command.  At that point I had one layer that contained nothing but the butterfly and the car.

     After creating 7 different pictures of butterflies carrying cars, it was time to add them to the base layer and position them properly.  The butterflies and cars needed to get smaller in background, so I did that by using the TRANSFORM command to shrink each layer, then rotate the butterfly and car to an aesthetically pleasing position.  The shot of the police car with the door open is a perfect example of why it pays to take pictures to build up your library.  If I had not taken a picture of an actual police car with the door open, I probably would have felt the need to create the door by hand using the LASSO tool.  So it pays to take pictures of nothing in particular when you are out shooting pictures, with the hope that one day you will have a need for a picture of a police car with the door open, or a cloud, or a hobo, or a stop sign.

     When I finish a picture that required a lot of time and effort, I always like to save the original as a PSD (Photoshop) - this way the layers are all preserved, so if I decide I want to tweak a picture in the future, I can pick things up right where I left off.  Once you save your picture as a JPEG or in another format, you merge all the layers in to one, and you can not go back to make changes to the individual layers.

     Next Up:  How to create a sunset picture with KAPOW!

The Accidental Photographer

     One of the favorite images I have of my Dad is of him with a baseball cap barely resting on his head.  It is if someone threw a baseball cap across a room, and it just so happened to land on his head.  Anyone else would have had the hat on straight and tilted upwards just right, but not him - he marched to the beat of a different drummer.

     In many ways, my favorite photography technique is much like that.  It is though I take a picture and just so happen to capture something interesting.  I avoid all the rules and techniques I learned in my photography classes, and instead I just take a picture for the sake of taking a picture.  No rules - just a rogue photographer doing things his own way.

     Primarily I use my iPhone 4S to do this, but I have used my beloved Pentax for this and it works just as well.  The iPhone works great for this because it is easy to carry and you do not attract any unwanted attention when you take a picture.  Carry around a big SLR camera with a lens and everyone wants to get in your business.

     When I use this technique, the idea is to not take the perfect picture, but to take numerous pictures over the course of the day and see how they turn out at the end of the day - see if there is a diamond in the rough.  Some days I might take 200+ pictures using this technique, and I might only end up with one good picture.  Typically I use this technique though, and wind up with terrific pictures I would have never been able to take otherwise.  You see, in photography school we are taught all the basics of photography, so years later we find ourselves taking nicely framed pictures of landscapes and flowers while using the Rule of Thirds.  The Rule of Thirds is great when you take your vacation pictures, and pictures of Grandma, but after a while your portfolio will lack freshness.  It will look boring to you and to everyone who sees it.

     Break away from what you were taught in photography class and try just taking pictures for the sake of taking pictures.  What you will come up with will be a nice little surprise.  I started doing this a couple years ago, and now some of my favorite pictures are ones that I “accidentally” took.

     For example, the picture below is one I took while driving in east Texas.  I saw something colorful and interesting while at a gas station, but with cars driving by constantly I was unable to get a good shot.  Plus I was in a hurry to leave for an appointment.  All I had was time to take one quick shot.  I did not frame the shot, hold the camera straight, and I did not even look to see what I was taking a picture of - I just pointed my iPhone at what I was interested in and snapped a picture.  It was only later as I looked at all the pictures I took that day over dinner, that I realized I caught a really interesting picture.  

The original picture - nice, but it is lacking some pizazz.

     The original picture is interesting, but lacks some punch to it.  In photography, not everything has to always be sharp, focused, and under control - sometimes it is okay to have something out of focus, sometimes it is okay to have the colors explode, and sometimes it is okay to have a picture that is crooked.  If I had stopped to focus the picture, make sure it was straight, and followed the Rule of Thirds, I would have completely missed the warmth and whimsical nature of the picture.

     I imported the photo in to Photoshop to set the image size and pixels, then imported the picture in to a new program I had, called Tiffen Dfx.  Dfx will do everything that Photoshop will do, however it has presets you can use to save a lot of time.  I love the program and it works great for what I want to do in photography.

     And what I want to do is create pictures that are visually interesting, colorful and different.  Afterall, like my Dad, I march to the beat of a different drummer.  I love pop culture, comics, and all those things we take for granted - like an Icee sign.  I like the dirt and oil stains in the parking lot, and I love how everything leans to one side because I took the photograph while moving.

The final picture - now it has some pop to it and screams KAPOW!

     In short, I love the picture for all the imperfections.  For me, it is a perfect picture.  And it does not follow any of the rules I learned in photography.


CP7SVBFETTCY