Color theory

When I took this picture, I knew it was destined to be shown.

But this picture had issues, power lines and power poles. Ugly things. I had intended to eliminate most of the sky to dump the power lines. I showed it to Art Teacher Jeff. Jeff said I shouldn’t crop it so severely, that the power lines actually helped the picture. That was unusual! I did need to remove one of the power poles, though. That took some doing. Removing pole wasn’t that bad, but lining up the power lines to the remaining pole took a long time. Jeff showed me some tricks in Photoshop, otherwise, I doubt I could have accomplished it.

When we got the matboards, we chose orange for this picture’s mat. While Jeff was cutting other mats for me, I looked at the picture and frame on the mat. That orange was garish, a horrible combination. I tried yellow, but that wasn’t a good color, either. Much of the background washed out. I shuffled through my matboards, but nothing I tried seemed to work.

He looked at what I was doing. I showed him the various colors I had tried. “Try the purple. It’s yellow’s complementary color.“ I put the photo on the purple paper. Wow!

Wheat stubble at sunset

Last night, I went looking for some boards to frame pictures for my upcoming show at the local arts center. I nearly didn’t take my camera, but, at the last second, grabbed it. I’m so glad I did. The light was beautiful. And I got my boards, too.

I have always wondered how I could photograph the beauty of the light playing on fields. I don’t have a wide-angle lens. But last night was so beautiful that I had to try. I felt as if God had painted a beautiful light show just for me and I wanted to capture the beauty.

This morning I started playing with this image in Photoshop. I thought it might be a good black-and-white photo. As I slid around the sliders in the black-and-white adjustment panel, the clouds became more ominous as if a storm were approaching. Our storms usually come from the west or southwest. I was facing east for this picture. Any storm that comes uphill from the east is usually a severe one, so the ominousness fits. Amazing what Photoshop can do.

Sunset

Many of the best sunsets occur when a storm is on its way. Such was the case Tuesday night. I watched rain clouds forming when I came home that night. I had to find a good vantage point from which to photograph the sunset. Finally, I stood on an Interstate overpass and aimed at a farmstead on the horizon.

The camera didn’t do justice to the sunset, so I began to enhance the photo in Photoshop. I used both cooling and warming filters, then dodged and burned the image until it became what you see now. Ansel Adams had to spend hours in the darkroom enhancing his images; I’m only following in his footsteps.

Halloween bunny

This rabbit posed patiently for me while I took several photos. When I downloaded this one, I burst out laughing.

Mr. Red-Eyed Rabbit is not one I’d want to meet on Halloween night! He appears to be possessed.

I could use Photoshop’s red-eye removal feature, but I like the “possessed-rabbit” picture.

Years ago, we covered a football game involving the Jackrabbits. At halftime’s end, ‘Rabbit fans formed a lane for their players’ return to the field. As the players ran through the lane, fans chanted, “Rabbits! Rabbits! Rabbits!” The chant sounded more like “Rabids! Rabids! Rabids!”

Maybe this rabbit was the rabid rabbit they were chanting about.

That radiant glow

Until I used this photo in an illustration, I did not notice that the leaves glow. I swear that I did not do some special tricks in Photoshop to make that happen. I don’t know that much about Photoshop! And even if I did, I doubt I’d have the patience to draw glowing areas around each leaf.

The glow is just some natural lighting effect, God’s gift to this photographer.

Or maybe the sunflower is radioactive and I’ve received some as yet undiscovered supernatural powers from exposure to this thing?

Lights, camera, actions

I have recently learned to love Photoshop's Actions palette. Actions allows the user to automate repetitive tasks. I created an "Initial Processing" action. It runs all Photoshop's automatic adjustments (auto levels, auto colors, auto contrast) plus unsharp mask.



Here's the original picture using my own actions.

I have found that auto colors tends to make pictures bluer than I'd like. If I don't like new color, I go into the history palette and click on the step before auto colors. That removes auto colors.

Then I use the unsharp mask command again. It's under filter ---> sharpen. Unsharp mask has three sliders. I have set my amount slider at 50 percent, radius at 1.0 pixels and threshold at 0 level. I rarely change these.

I've also automated changing the photo's dots per inch from its original setting to 72 (web quality).

To make your own action, choose the actions palette under windows. Click on the circled arrow or three bars at the upper right of that palette for the menu. Choose either "New Set…" or "New Action…". "New Set" will make a folder for your actions, but a new folder is not necessary. After naming your new action, click "Record", then complete the commands you wish to automate. When finished, choose "Stop Recording".



I found some very fun actions, including the collage, at Visual Blast Media.



The Pioneer Woman is another source for great actions. Hers are more practical than the fun ones at Visual Blast Media. I used Quick Edge Burn on this one.