Boathouse

This picture is more than one year old. It´s shot with my old Canon Powershot A85. So yesterday I found it on my harddrive while going through some other projects. I had already adjusted the luminance and colours, so basically I just needed to get the frame and the signature added.

The spinning wheels

Here are a few spinning wheels I found in the attic of a really old building. These spinning wheels haven´t been used for about fifty years or so. The HDR consists of three exposures merged in Photomatix PRO, and then some tuning in Photoshop.

Angel

Here is one of the photographs from the project I mentioned earlier. My theme was beauty, serenity and relaxation. The photographs depict an angel that has taken her wings of for a moment, as if she was taking a brake from being an angel (and what ever angels do). In this particular shot, the model is improvising.

Post production include Camera RAW, sharpening, vignetting and softening in Photoshop. The dodge-tool came in handy when I needed to get the dress and the wings even whiter.

Peace

Peace can be a state of harmony or the absence of hostility. "Peace" is used to describe the cessation of violent conflict. ('source')

During the Winter War an iceroad was build between Finland and Sweden so that supplies could be transported to and from Finland. The hand above is a statue in memory of the iceroad that was part of keeping this peace-loving country independent.

This is my response to the challenge I received last week. CP Geek wrote: Mission: "Peace".
Photoshop: Not allowed.
Time to accomplish: Must be presented 4th of july at latest.

Since Photoshop is a well integrated part of my photography-workflow, the challenge was, well, let´s say challenging...

I insisted on that the use of Camera RAW had to be allowed, though.

So, for the artistic part that I missed out on by not being able to use the force of the mighty CS3, I had to do a lot of thinking. I tried different angles and positions. Different f-stops and shutterspeeds. Just like in the good old 'analog' days. Above is the result. I used Camera RAW to adjust the saturation and luminance and to crop the image. The frame is obviously added in Photoshop, but that is all about presenting the photograph (it has nothing to do with "what you shoot is what you get"). So, mr Geek. Your call!

Parthenon II

I´m quite happy with this HDR render. The construction is actually a family grave I found while strolling around in the graveyard this beautiful sunny morning. I really like how the sun casts the distinct shadows of the pillars on the grass.

Angelwings on a wall

Believe it or not, I can do other stuff than just HDR´s. Here´s a pic from my latest project, "Angel". Hopefully I´ll be able to post some of the other (200 +) images from that project later on. I have some contests coming up, so I have to be careful with what I publish.

This would be a great candidate for the peace-challenge I recently received, although I´m afraid it´s a bit too manipulated for my friend, the geek.
RAW-tweaking, vignetting, softing and a few dabs with the dogde-tool. That´s not too much photoshopping according to me. Weird guy, that geek...

"trophy", another HDR

Here is my latest HDR production. To get the colours right, I used a part of the original image and did some serious masking. Finally I added a light vignette-effect and tried some softing techniques I´ve picked up lately.

Even more HDR

I just love the colours in the HDR-pictures, so I´m going to be publishing a few more of them here.

Below are the three original exposures.

HDR - for real this time

I just started a new era in my graphics/photomanipulation career. Yesterday I purchased the Nikon D80. What a magnificent piece of electronics! Above is the result of me testing the bracketing-funktion. I used Photomatix Pro to create the HDR, and I then gave the render the finishing touches in Photoshop. Below are the three exposures I used to create the HDR. As you can see I used the clonestamp on a couple of details. After getting the render from Photomatix PRO, I tweaked the colours in Photoshop using levels and hue/saturation. No colours added :)


A friend of mine is sworne by the principle that "what you shoot, is what you get". I´m not there yet, Photoshop is a much too integrated piece of my workflow. During my day out with the camera experimenting and shooting, I repeatedly caught myself thinking: I´ll fix that later in Photoshop.

Egographia subnormalis levis

Egographia subnormalis gravis

Transition

Egographia

Felt a bit artistic. Enjoy.

HDR (or atleast a good fake)

I´m amazed. Really! I was browsing on Fotosidan and found this tutorial on creating "fake" HDR´s in Photoshop. The tutorial is created by Magnus Rydström, a guy whose blog I read on a daily basis.

This is the image I started with...


... and this is what I ended up with


This is so COOL! I´ve been admiring the images on Ben Willmores blog, and envying his technique. I stay humble and own great respect for mr Willmore - but I´m pretty darn happy with this result :)

Thanks Magnus. This is super.

Operation: Free Koodi

From this

To this

This is a pic by a friend of mine. Her late rabbit, Koodi, is inside the cage. My mission was to remove some disturbing elements such as the cage and the couch. The techniques used are pretty much the same as in "Removing reflection" but for this piece I had to use different techniques to create a lighting so that everything would look realistic. I was also forced to use another image to get the face of the rabbit to look real.

Removing reflections

Above is the original picture of the ATR 42-500, a FinnComm airliner on the runway in Kuopio, Finland. The sunrise is beautiful and the mood is magical with the plane in the mist. Unfortunately the photographer (a friend of mine) is visible as a reflection in the window. So, I was asked to do something about it. I must say the project was challenging. You can see the result below.



How I did it? Well, that´s a long story. For this project, the healingpatch sure came in handy.
-I created a new layer, chose a good color with the colorpicker and painted in the reflections. I was careful not to paint too large areas at once. I then control-clicked the layer, making a selection, merged the two layers by pressing ctrl-e, and changed the tool to the healingpatch by pressing the j-key. I dragged the selection to an area where the structure was similar to the area I was recreating.

The sky was hard to fix. So I ended up making a selection with the magic wand and creating a gradient where I picked the foreground-color with the colorpicker from the darkest part of the sky and the background-color from the light part of the sky. Some serious masking let the sun through while hiding some nasty reflections.

The clonestamp was used on some parts of the fuselage, I used low opacitysettings to avoid sharp edges.

A part of the runway was recreated by painting in the area with a good, dark color, adding noise and changing the opacity to about 30%.

All I want for Christmas is... Photoshop

Here´s what I gave my mom this Christmas. A coffemug with her two newly-adopted cats. Pictures 1 and 2 were taken with the 3 megapixel camera in my Nokia N80. The camera in the phone is a nice toy but that´s all. The quality is crappy and I almost busted my ass off trying to get the cats to look somewhat normal in the pic (number 3) I sent to be burned on the mug (which is also photographed with the Nokia). I also had to recreate a piece of the ear of the B&W cat.

The mug came out pretty good, though. And my mom was happy, and that is ofcourse the most important thing.

Juniperus communis

Inspired by mr Karlsson to try a new filter in Photoshop if a severe lack of inspiration suddenly hits. A copied layer of the pic treated with a dose of the chalk-&-charcole-filter, with the opacity set to about 70% to let the colours through. I find the result pretty good, concidering the minimal amount of work put into it.

Memories

Perhaps you recognize the chair in this image. That's because I posted an image a couple of months ago from the same scene.

The techniques used are very similar to the ones used in my earlier post "silence". I combined some old text that I scanned, a picture and a few techniques where the image is made looking old. This time I got a bit more philosophical in my photoshoping, though. I wanted to present an image where the object (in this case, a chair) is given life. Does this sound corny? Well, perhaps...

This is, however, what I was processing in my mind as I created this collage.
The chair, all destroyed and worn out, has served its purposes. People have been reading, thinking, laughing, arguing and perhaps creating life in it. Is what we see with our eyes all what is left? Or does the object remember? If it does, then what could it tell us?

How about you? Does the pic make you think about this, at all? Please, let me know.

ExLibris 2

Another ex libris created. Guess whose it is :)