The Color Orange

The challenge this week for Collage Obsession is using the color orange.  This is a digital collage, and I created it using parts of the following photos. 

Day Lily

Jellyfish, North Carolin Aquarium

Sunset, Atlantic Beach, North Carolina

Me, St. Maarten, circa 1980

This was fun to do.  Hope you enjoy it!

Those Fish Really Get Around!

For Photo Art Friday this week, our theme is "improbable pairings."  I was going to post some pictures with my large stuffed gorilla, Big Louie, but the fish took over again.  I'm calling this image "Flying Fish."  I guess you could say, the gull is dreaming about his dinner.  My last post, Gone Fishin', made good use of these fish, if you'd like to see where they came from.  Here's the original photo of the seagull:

I used the fish picture as a texture layer.  I also used another texture I created that I call "Jade Stone."

I blended Jade Stone with Soft Light, 100%, and desaturated it to remove the color. 

Well, the fish swam their way into another picture!  This is what happens when a hurricane comes to the coast and the water gets too high....

Here's the original photo of the beach houses:

I did many, many things to this picture to get the above image, one of which was making the houses taller and thinner!  I used my Jade Stone texture in this image, as well as using Bonnie's Soft Light Overlay.

In case you don't feel like making your way to my previous post, here's the last improbable pairing:

GO, FISH!!

Gone Fishin'

Today's theme for Texture Tuesday was to take a photo from the natural world and use one or more of Kim Klassen's textures on the image.  Here's my original photo:

The textures I used were "Cool Grunge," normal 50% (erased over the pier), and "I am", multiply 25%.  I also added text - lyrics from a Louis Armstrong song.  Then I remembered that our theme for this week's Collage Obsession is "fish" or "fishing."  Could I use the same picture?  I wasn't sure if adding a couple textures, and text, was enough to qualify as a collage, so I gave that a bit of thought....

During my recent visit to the Aquarium, I'd taken this photo of some very active fish.  Obviously, what my fishing pier needed was a multitude of fish!  Here's the result:

Yes, I know it's silly, but I'm okay with that!

Jellyfish

I visited the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores a couple weeks ago.  It's a challenge taking photos there because everything is behind glass, light reflects off the glass, and the residents won't sit still to have their pictures taken! 

These are the best of my jellyfish photos.

To give you an idea of how things went, I took almost 400 photos while I was at the aquarium - and saved 25 of them!

I've done a lot of work on them in Photoshop.

The jellyfish mostly looked orange through the glass.  I don't know what color they would have been if I'd seen them in the ocean.  I always thought jellyfish were mostly white, judging by the dead ones I've seen on the beach.

I've other pictures to share on another day.  I decided to purchase a family membership for the Aquarium.  It gives us free entry to all three North Carolina Aquariums, as well as the state zoo, and discounts on lots of other places.  I see many more photo ops in my future!

Photo Art Friday - Light

Today's challenge for Photo Art Friday - highlighting light in a photo.  I also used Bonnie's texture, Soft Light Overlay, and blended it at soft light 30%.  This photo of seagulls was taken at Atlantic Beach, North Carolina.

Collage Obsession - Maps

This week's Collage Obsession theme - maps - was perfect for me.  Ventotene is a small island off the western coast of Italy, and we visited the island when we lived on our sailboat, Tropic Moon.  I had spent part of a day there, wandering around, taking photos, and these are the results. 

Dated Disco Dancer

This week's theme for Collage Obsession was dancer(s).  My tendency would be to do a digital collage, but I thought I'd try "messy art" for a change.  I started with an 8"x10" wrapped canvas.  The background is a piece of fabric I glued to the canvas.  I cut the dancer's body out of black paper, spread the paper with glue, and poured on gold sprinkles.

When I'd been looking for my glitter, I came across a head that I'd made with polymer clay.  It's one of those faces only a mother could love, so I knew I wouldn't be using it in jewelry - or in anything else I could think of!  I decided to use the clay head instead of the black silhouette that was there originally.  The "disco ball" is a button from my collection.  I stuck on gold and silver stars.  The "floor" is a piece of burlap I glued on, and then painted black. 

This picture shows a side view of the wrapped canvas.  I painted the edges of the canvas black.  This was fun, though it took me the whole week to get it done!  Today is the last day that I can post my link....

Whoops!

The Beyond Layers assignment today was to take one of my photographs and use Kim Klassen's texture, "I am," and one of her brushes.  The texture added the blue tinge to the image.  Kim creates brushes that stamp whole quotations!  The one I picked to use says (in case you can't read upsidedown), "Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful."  So I wanted to do something that wasn't perfect, but still wonderful.  :o)  The background photo was taken in Maine.  The fellow is a young version of my late Uncle Bob.

This is the family photo I used.  Not everyone in the family is in the picture - there were eleven children!  My Dad, John, is in the back row, far left. 

Hidden Treasure

To me, this image looks like a really old postcard.  I called this post "Hidden Treasure" because, as I work with my old slides, I feel like I'm finding treasures within the original photographs.  Here's the original scanned slide:

This slide was taken in St. John's Harbor, Antigua (in the Caribbean), in 1980.  If you look off to the right in the picture, you can see the steeples of the church, and the masts on the boats. 

Photo Art Friday - Fencing

Our theme this week, for Photo Art Friday, is "fencing." 

My original photo is some orange construction fence that I saw near Bogue Sound (Morehead City, North Carolina). 

Hue/Saturation in Photoshop gave me these strange colors.

The next step was using the Gradient Map called Chrome.

Then, to get this image (that's also at the top of the page), I used Equalize, Mosaic Tiles, and Radial Blur.

Starting again with my original photo, and going in another direction, I used Gradient Map, Metal, to get this black and white effect.

Taking the previous image, I used Invert, and Curves, to get a more interesting black and white picture.  This was fun!  I do so love Photoshop....

Texture Tuesday - Natural

Our theme in Texture Tuesday this week is "natural."  I interpreted that to mean something from the natural world.  Believe it or not, the next picture is the original photo!

You can barely see the gull!  I did some serious cropping.

There were square pixels showing around the gull, so I used my clone tool to get rid of them.

Next, I added Kim Klassen's texture, "Deep Sigh," at normal, 50%, and used Contrast +25.

Under "Styles" I selected Sun Faded Photo, at 90% opacity.  I worked with "levels," and I added a Lens Flare to mimic the sun.  I also added the text.  The source of the text was a book cover:

I worked more on transforming my image: 
Find edges, multiply 40% opacity
Posterize 15, 50% opacity
Levels

Close, but I was still finding this a wee bit rough, so my last process was to add another of Kim's textures:  "Awaken" soft light, 25% opacity.  That softened it just a little, and gave me my final image:

English Harbor

This image is for Photo Art Friday.  Our theme this week is architecture.  The original photo was taken at English Harbor, on Antigua, an island in the Caribbean.

Above is the original scanned slide.

British Virgin Islands

Mouse over to see original scanned slide

While we were in Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, we enjoyed the annual BVI Festival.  (This was 1979, and these are additional examples of slides I worked on in Photoshop.)

Mouse over to see original scanned slide

A butterly costume worn by one of the parade participants.

Mouse over to see original scanned slide

Young fellows in bright costumes.

Mouse over to see original scanned slide

West Indian Mocko Jumbi

Please mouse over each of the images to see the original scanned slide.