Mom's day

Happy Mother’s day to all of the moms out there.

Happy Mother's Day to all you great moms out there.

I was honored to take this family picture celebrating their 60's anniversary. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned with it raining outside, so we did plan B. Shoot indoors during the celebration. Never forget to keep looking for the moments.

As you can see, this was not the best; this was just the family picture. But, no fear, I already knew I would take this in Photoshop and make it into a studio picture.

I don't know about you, but I feel it's something that I would print and hang on my wall. The celebration continues, and just like a wedding, I am always looking for the moments. I could not help myself when I saw this one Grandma and her Grandson. Tell me this will not be a special picture someday.

The customer loved them, and that is how I know I did my job. While a lot of Photoshop was done, I wanted to give them what they hired me to do. Sometimes you need to take that extra time.

New Year new Changes

Well, it's 2023, and like everyone else, new changes always occur. No different for me, also. I am excited about this year. I will spend more time with my photography on Products, Headshots, Events, Travel, and Commercial. I am also looking at doing more videos. I started enjoying playing with this in 2022 and look forward to doing more in 2023. Life is a Journey

I had fun with this one in Photoshop. All of this, but the sun background is fake. When I say fake, all of the blacks are done with shapes or the use of brushes. Yes, even the backpack person is a brush. The ground is a brush. The trees were rendered in Photoshop. Photography continues to be a journey, but I love every moment. I have been so fortunate to take what started to be a hobby into a business and stay alive with even all of the photographers out there. I continue to learn about color and what makes good art, and I have used this information in my processing. I continue to educate and practice with the Adobe program and become better. You can't do it all in one day, so you might as well enjoy the trip.

2023 will be exciting for me. I plan on still posting some of the things I have been up to, but I plan on making more videos, especially some of the trips I plan for this year. So again, thank you for your following, and I hope your Journey this year is a good one.

Winter Imagination

One of my favorite Holidays is coming. (I think I inherit this from my mother) At the beginning of the year, I had a few goals that I wanted to do in my photography. I wanted to be more creative and better with Adobe software. Well, this whole year, I have been working on both. I got inspired by this composite by watching a Holiday Special by Adobe.

It started with 3 adobe stock pictures that I blended into the main scene. The castle was one, and I cut it out. The snow with the trees and hill was the second, and third was the sky after blending everything in. I added one more cut-out. I needed a deer in this picture. I did a lot of color blending, and my final picture that once again was in my head.

I enjoy compositing and look forward to doing more. Regarding Adobe products, stay tuned; I have some more Holidays with different software coming this week.

Creativity

I always felt that I lacked being creative in my photography. I love the technical side of photography, and my brain moves that way. For the past year, I have studied others' work and why I like it or am not too fond of it. I have joined Facebook groups to help, Instagram to get ideas, and so on. The best I found is doing compositing and understanding art. All those things that I was taught in High School are now making sense to me today. One person who is helping with the fundamental of art is Rikard Rodin. Richard makes compositing fun, and his teaching process has been great for me. Not only am I learning the basics of art but cool tricks in Photoshop.

The Woods

I watched a session on silhouettes. After watching, I went to stock photos and downloaded a wood scene. Now to make a silhouette. With the help of brushes, I came up with the idea. Now to make it look natural. That is where art and photography help. We know to get a silhouette, you need light. Light needs to be the backlight. Ok, it is done. Next was the shadow and shadow color. To make it real, you need to see what the scene gives you. Last, I wanted to add something to make it memorable: a bird, fog, and shadow of the horse. Yep all fake but fun art. How does this help my photography? First of all, it helps improve my creativity; second, understand what you are looking for. Last, it helps with your photoshop skills and knowledge and why you are making changes.

Taking away things you don't like

I hope everyone had a great time during the Holidays. For Lisa and I, we sure did. We got to spend some family time. As with any event, you always want pictures. In this case, it was no different. We went to a restaurant in the Cincinnati, Ohio area, and after we were done, we wanted a quick picture. So you got it, the waiter took it with my iPhone. The picture is great for us. It did what we wanted. A memory.

We got back home, and I looked at the picture, and I thought. I wonder what this would look like if I got rid of the distractions. This will be an excellent picture to practice on. With that said, I opened photoshop and started to get rid of what I call the easy distractions. The easy thing I used is what is called the patch tool. Easy items would be like the glasses in front, the silverware in front. For me, it starts looking good. Next was let’s finish it with some of the hard things. Like Lisa with the napkin. Notice her hand is blocked. With that, I needed to make fingers that looked like they belonged. Out came the clone stamp. I had other tuff things and used a combination of clone stamp and brush tool. I got what I think is a better picture.

Final Image

Practice makes perfect, the old saying goes. I m always practicing something. One to keep up with the new things out there, and second, to be good at anything, you need to practice and, yes, practice some more. That's what this exercise was all about. You see, the first picture will be fine; after all, it's not going to any magazine, but my thought was, what if a client wanted something removed? Can you do it?