Another orange flower.
-
-
And a white one!
Comment
-
Jishin,
Such lovely flower images!
You've inspired me to share something more colorful as opposed to the grainy B&W work that I usually focus on. Here is a lotus flower from a garden walk that my family and I went on this past weekend.
Gassho,
Rob
-st-
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk聖簡 Seikan (Sacred Simplicity)Comment
-
Beautiful flower Rob!
Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__Comment
-
Jishin,
Nice bouquet in aggregate
Doshin
StComment
-
Yellow.
Comment
-
Diane ArbusA picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.
Going back to this original quote, I took some snaps of our ripostiglio, which I think all Italian homes have in one form or another - anything from a glorified broom cupboard, to a large storage space. We live in a very small apartment so our ripostiglio is of the broom cupboard variety. From the start my husband appropriated the space for his 'stuff' and he has a certain way of storing his tools etc which is very particular to him. Every one of these photos is a narrative, steeped in his story, his character, his creative touches. To me they represent his secret life, his inner self. This tiny space has no window and no lighting, just a bulb rigged up from a source in the corridor, hence the rather muddy tone and slightly out of focus images which I felt contributed to the sense of intimacy,
I would like to thank everyone who is contributing to this thread and making it such a joy to look through.
Gassho
Meitou
sattoday lah
rip 1 photoframe etc.jpg
rip 2 madonna.jpg
rip 3 clock.jpg
rip 4 ichnusa.jpg命 Mei - life
島 Tou - islandComment
-
Great photos Meitou!
Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__Comment
-
Meitou nice black and white, it takes me home for some reason
Jishin I am naive about editing photos besides cropping and adding light. What tool do you use to darken the background but focus on the color of the flower?
Doshin
StComment
-
I like Lightroom but you can get some of the same effects by playing with the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites and black sliders of any free editor available. It also helps if prior to snapping the shot you have a dark background to begin with. The perfect situation would be a studio with a black background. Very little editing would be needed then. One technique is to look for shade and place your subject with the shade as the background and the part of your subject that you want illuminated not in the shade. An example would be to place your subject in the door of a dark room as your background with the light outside the room illuminating your subject (works well with people). Not every photo is a candidate. Only a few are. If you use Lightroom then expect to pay $10 per month. The service is worth it because it also catalogs your photos and changes to photos are reversible unlike Photoshop.
Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__Last edited by Jishin; 08-20-2020, 12:34 PM.Comment
-
Meitou, those images are so evocative. I imagine them shown in a grid. Stunning.
So many good photos here..
Doshin you can download a program called Gimp, it's a free software program that is very similar to photoshop. Can't beat the price. Fun to play around with it.
Gassho
A. ~ST~Comment
-
Got to love flowers.
Fort Worth botanical garden, San Antonio botanical garden and just a flower.
Gassho, Jishin, STComment
-
I second this. It is cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) and is free and open source. I use it nearly every day for work and play.
To darken the background more than what came out of the camera, I would use "layer masks". This essentially takes elements of the scene and puts them into separate "layers" so each can be manipulated individually (this technique can be used in Gimp, Photoshop, etc.).
Here is a contrived example to darken the woods and stream behind my Mattie and then to turn them into an alien planet:
1. Take a photo and duplicate it into background and foreground layers (I always put an invisible "original" layer in too so I can A/B test my changes and make sure they haven't lost the spirit of the original).
2. Hide the foreground layer and manipulate the background layer as needed. Example - using the curves tool to darken the background:
3. Show the foreground layer again, add a "layer mask" to is, and initialize it so that everything in the foreground is transparent. Example - adding a mask to the foreground and initializing it to "full transparency":
4. Now you can use the paintbrush, pencil, and airbrush tools to paint in a "mask" for the foreground layer to make part of it visible. Black will be transparent (allowing the background to show through), white will be opaque (showing only the foreground), and greys will be somewhere in the middle. I usually only use black and white and alter the "opacity" of the brush to mix and match as needed. I start with a large fully white brush and do a rough blobby area that I want to be the foreground. Then I switch back and forth between black and white using ever smaller and more opaque brushes to get the details right. Unless you are doing some radical edits, most of the time you do not need to get too detailed. Example - Mattie has been masked out in the foreground layer, and I turned off the background layer entirely so you can see what is transparent and what is not. The mask is not perfect - I spent about 60 seconds on it. You'll notice that some rocks and other details are still visible. This is OK.:
5. Now you can manipulate the foreground layer too. Example - using the curves too to lighten Mattie a little:
Most of the time, this will be plenty for lightening an area of the scene.
Ok, I said "alien planet", so lets go a step further:
6. Even though my mask is pretty quick and messy for the foreground / Mattie, it is still detailed enough that I can edit the hue and chroma to create pink and purple rocks and yellow foliage but still have a beautiful golden pupper (notice that I did not mask out her leash though -- oops):
I often use a technique like this to darken skies a little and lighten the ground a little. Sky layer, ground layer. Darken the sky, lighten the ground. Put a layer mask on one and use the gradient tool to make a nice transition from one to the other (sort of like using a neutral gradient filter over the lens - except that you can edit the mask a little to make sure foliage, trees, etc. are included in the "ground" layer instead of the sky).
That is prolly way more than anyone wanted to know. But this IS the art-circle afterall. Maybe someone will find it useful!
Gassho,
Sekishi
#sat #layermaskedSekishi | 石志 | He/him | Better with a grain of salt, but best ignored entirely.Comment
-
[emoji2]Comment
-
EXPRESSING CREATIVITY: Media Arts - photography, videography, photo collage, etc.
Here is an example of what I talked about with Lightroom:
When I took this picture I knew I wanted a black background so I tried to find something that was a little dark in the background.
Then I used a paint brush to darken the background (I don’t know how to use Photoshop very well and I never can get the layers right with it so I prefer Lightroom. With Lightroom I can also go back to specific changes made to a photo from the end result not having to recreate the entire photo as in Photoshop).
Pictures 2 and 3 are the end result.
Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__Last edited by Jishin; 08-20-2020, 12:35 PM.Comment
Comment