Negative Space

Mouse over to see "before" image

Wow - two blog posts in one day - someone check me for a fever!  Actually, this is for Photo Art Friday.  I dawdled so long last week that I wasn't in time to link my work.

The suggestion for this week was a photo that included negative space.  Using the zoom feature on my camera, I had caught this fellow just as he was into "lift-off."  This is my original photo, and the one at the beginning of the post is my final image.  If you're interested in how I got there, read on:

Bonnie, and Kim from the Beyond Layers class, recommend doing more than hitting the Desaturation button when you're converting from color to black & white in Photoshop.  I started by converting to Grayscale mode, and then working to enhance the image.

My next step was to use the filter, Stylize, Find Edges, which I set at multiply blend mode, 30%.  It added a bit of an outline to the gull, but it wasn't showing that much of a difference, so I moved on....

For this step, I used Bonnie's (free) texture called Nitty Gritty.  I blended it with Soft Light at 100% opacity.  You can mostly see the effect of the texture in the sand.

This time I used Gradient Map (special effects, 2nd from the left), at Normal, 10% opacity.  Finally, I was seeing something interesting!  (This is the gradient map I was using when I did my "haunted house" in a previous post.

My last step was to use Brightness/Contrast, at +10 each, to give the image of final wee "pop."  This is the same picture that appears at the top of the post.  And, as I said to myself, enough already!