Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

I had a quick thought and idea on Christmas Eve and I had the perfect background of the fireplace and Christmas tree together. You'll have to excuse the blue painter's tape around the wood work since we are in the process of also painting the house's interior trimwork.

Coloring The Past

You've all seen them in the Hallmark stores. The cutesy black and white photograph cards with the little kids all dressed in grown up clothes doing some quirky adorable pose. Well, I wanted to learn to do that. It seems simple enough, and well it is. You can take literally any color photograph into Adobe photoshop. One step here, another there and all of a sudden you have a black and white photo with splashes of color. I realize that I just over simplified the whole process but this isn't about giving you a photoshop lesson. I just wanted to show you how much fun it can be. The first photo I retouched was of my youngest daughter and her friend at the water's edge of Carolina Beach in North Carolina. The sky was slightly overcast and the water was vibrant at all.



This particular photograph of actress Elisabeth Shue was scanned many years ago from , I think, US Magazine. I felt that the picture would be better served if you focused more on the colors of the flag than the actress herself.







This photograph was more of a chance since I saw the artistic value of a touching scene and wanted to quickly capture it. Unfortunately, those cars were in the frame and I decided to turn it into a black and white photo with contrasting opposite colors on both of the girls. Subjects are of my youngest daughter and of my neighbor's youngest daughter.







This last photograph was taken at the 2009 Airpower of Goldsboro Airshow. It featured the Navy's Blue Angels demo team and vast assorted other aircraft. One of the features was a reenactment of the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th 1941. Using old AT-6 Texans heavily modified to look like Zeros, Kates, and Vals, they put on an impressive show. I was able to be right next to the tarmac as they warmed their engines and taxiid out to the runway. It was an impressive sight. Although, I took countless photos of this event, I chose to turn two photos into black and white with a splash of color. The first is of a Japanese "Zero". Although you can't tell, to give it more of an old time feeling, I photoshopped some elements of "modernism" out of the scenery.



This last photograph doesn't even begin to tell you how giddy with excitement I was. This is a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress medium bomber. It is NOT the original Memphis Belle. However, it was used in the motion picture,"Memphis Belle". What makes this the most exciting thing about all of the airshows I have ever attended, was the fact that I got to go inside it. This was a piece of history and I was so beside myself I couldn't stop grinning and taking pictures. The top ball turret, side guns, radio ops station, cockpit, tailgun and to walk though and feel how this was actually a small aircraft. Wow.

Anyway, that's just a few of the photographs that I have turned into black and whites. I hope that you've enjoyed it. Semper Fi!

Cloning My Ghost Part Two

Here are more cloning images I did in 2009. In the picture to the left I tried to have an “interactive”argument of showing “who” had a bigger muscle and where. I did realize my mistake of “bicep” me looking at “leg” me at the wrong angle, but how do you really correct that?

This was my attempt at “adding” more of me into a framed shot. The biggest difficulty I have faced when “posing” these shots is the lack of depth and space afforded by my stage. Since this is done in my living room, there is only so much of it that I can show that is not cluttered or “busy” with furniture or hanging framed pictures. Yes I “photoshopped” my tummy to give myself a less fat look but hey, who wouldn’t if you know how. I do also realize that the look of one of my clones and the angle makes it look a little “happy” but that was TOTALLY unintentional. I was going for the look of “look at that idiot” but it just didn’t happen.

This cloning happened during the NFL playoffs and I was attempting at a roleplaying shot. I used my AFL Carolina Cobras jersey I won at an auction and my old high school practice jersey to pull this off. Right off the bat, I had problems due to the framing of the stage and the placement of the center’s hand is off. Although everything is to scale, it would “appear” that my center’s rear is way too big and in the Qb’s face

Sometimes when you see my artwork(print stuff), you’ll notice that it is a bit dated. Is it a fault of my own? Sure, I haven’t had a “real” art class since high school, and even then it was my sophmore year in ’89. I did have art classes at the School of Communication Arts, however I don’t think drawing a nude model constitutes enhancing of my art skill. Anyway, not to get off on a sidebar and this first ever blog is not about that, I wanted to show you a new photoshop skill I learned last year and have been trying to improve on since. Ghosting or cloning ; the art of creating several images of one’s self in the same photograph. I was looking up tutorials on photoshop and I stumbled upon this and thought that it would be cool to try.

The first attempt: I was watching a Carolina football game and they were losing at that point so during halftime I put my digital camera on my daughter’s Playskool table and shot this. I tried to use an interactive style shot but the main problem was that I was wearing the same outfit. I just felt that I didn’t get the whole effect of what I was going for in this shot. It did take me 1/2 hour to take and edit this photo though.

The 2nd Attempt: This time I definitly made sure to make it look like I was wearing different clothes (except I saw later that I didn’t change shorts) Same set up on the table as before. I just could not figure out a good pose.

3rd Attempt: One of my better attempts at double cloning with interaction was this playstation bit. I made sure that I had completely different clothes on and used a prop. I don’t remember entirely but I think my wifey asked why all those clothes were in a pile in the living room when she got home.

4th Attempt: This time I wanted to try and up the ante and do some overlapping, this was a little difficult for me since you had to get the depth right or it wouldn’t work. I did a few other double clonings but by far these four examples turned out the best.

SEMPER FI!