Creative Photography Judge
Sometimes I am compelled to take a photo only to find that the photo is sub-standard. This is when I start thinking about why the shot is so compelling and how could I capture that essence on the camera. I keep thinking and experimenting until I get an image that works.
I came upon this boardwalk while walking around a nature reserve near my house. I really liked the look of this boardwalk cutting across this grassy/swampy area. After taking many photos, none really capture the essence of what I was seeing. I kept looking at it and then realised what intrigued me most was the line of the curve plus the muted contrast between boards and grass. I started experimenting with zoom and tilting my camera until I hit upon this image. This is what stopped me at this spot in the first place. Just tiliting my camera gave me that perfect perspective to show off the contrast and the curve.
EXIF Data
- Camera: Cannon EOS400D
- Exposure: 1/1600
- Aperture: f/5.6
- Focal Length: 18mm
- ISO Speed: 200
- Exposure Program: Aperture Priority
- Flash: Did not fire
Editing
I participate in Second Shotz, a great Flickr group that promotes creative editing with each other’s photos. Each week one member is chosen to submit a photo for editing by the other group members. Last week, I submitted a photo of my little Willow basking on a grassy knoll.
There were ten published edits of Willow on the knoll. They were all great and we (Willow and I) had a blast looking to see what each had done to ‘Willow’
Here are my top three Willow edits from the week:
My number three choice was Broken Perfection’s edit of Willow’s photo. I liked the addition of the vibrant sky. It added some color and energy to the shot.
My second favorite was from BenSpark. I thought this was down right creative and very very cute. Great shot of the sunflowers too.
And Numero Uno goes to _peteej_ who came up with this amazing edit. I’m not sure if I’d like Willow pitched out of a plane over the ocean but I know she’d have a blast. I actually showed her this photo and she got a big kick out of it. The next question she asked was when could she go jump outta theplane!
As you can see, we have a lot of fun participating in this group. If you’d like to see more and join in the fun, jump on over to Second Shotz.
I have started experimenting with combining my love of art, especially indigenous art, with my photography. Using the GIMP, I edited one of my old photos of a butterfly garden decoration. I removed the background to the butterfly and tweeks the image curves to produce an image with nice stark contrasting lines and no background.
Using a multitude of layers, I slowly experimented with various paint brushes and tools to produce the effects I wanted. The final image background was produced by painting a green, blue and dab of white background. I then used the filter>artistic>cubism selection to create the chunky effect,
The rest was a slow and patient application of dots with the paint brush tool.
This was a test run to see what types of effects I could create. All in all, I like the concept and have a few other ideas up my sleeve. If you have any ideas or want to share your work … give me a comment below.
