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sliding rock on The Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California'just ran across this and liked how svelte my shadow looked and after the biggest rainstorm in the history of recordkeeping in these parts, the desert looks inviting. Peace Tags: -print available-, abstract, california, death valley, desert, nature events, pattern, people pics, phot expd, rock, self portraits, surreal
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I met and photographed lots of folks on the trails this past weekend. As I get time, I'll post images I made of these skiers, snowshoers, and hikers... but here's a teaser, heh, This photo was made by Noah Tratt. I met Noah a couple years ago when his group skied to High Hut... that's where I saw them again this weekend. Good snow conditions... good grooming (*pats self on back*) and I got onto my skis a few times along the way to test the trail... I skied mostly uphill... I do better going uphill--I'm not in a panic like when my skis go by themselves. If I photographed you and you don't see your photo here soon, please email me. ed at edbookphoto dot com Noah caught me near High Hut and was surprised to see me actually on skis... (please note that, yes, the Ed guy is fat but that fact is exaggerated in this image because I had two hats, a pair of gloves, and a water bottle stuffed into the front of my jacket--the red vest actually does zip shut)  Peace Tags: about me, mount tahoma trails, mountains, self portraits, snow, trail, winter
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mrbad commented that he liked my "without manipulations" images better than those that I do tweak. Frankly, I do too... but sometimes there's an emotional pull to an image that unmanipulated is really lacking like bright sunshine and dark shade on water. I want to do something with the image but the best thing to do is throw it away and come back on a cloudy day to get a better image. But... sometimes, I want to play with the image to get something else... not necessarily better but something different. So, I manipulate... Then, sometimes the image calls for fixing and manipulations are the only recourse. Here is an example. I was up at Mt Rainier sleepy because I didn't get a restful sleep during a very windy night which kept waking me and something I ate talking to me all night. I didn't feel like making images but was sitting by Edith Creek being inspired but unmotivated. I was holding the digital camera and waiting for the sun to find a cloud so I decided to try a self portrait. Baggy eyes from lack of sleep and squinty because they are very sensitive to light-especially sun shining in them. Red face from sitting in the cold as it was in the high twenties that morning. The resulting image showed all that and it looked like I'd left breakfast on my beard for later (I hadn't, but, it wasn't out of the realm of logic for me) Sooo...   What did I do? First, I cropped the image to the size I wanted to work with. I then adjusted levels so the image wouldn't be so dark and set neutral on one of the rocks that was supposed to be gray but was slightly tinted blue from the blue sky. (Mac and PC users will see this differently because of differences in monitor gamma)Then, because the image was lighter overall, my hat was too light. I selected it and adjusted levels so it wouldn't be the lightest thing in the image. My face still showed some blotchy reddish areas so I used "hue and saturation" and selected red and desaturated a little. My beard need touched up just under my lip so I used the clone tool to fill it in evenly. (It shows slightly blurry now) Now, the baggy eyes... I added a duplicate layer and blurred it till the dark areas were minimized and then erased everything in that layer but the minimized bags. How about that eye that's always so squinty and more so when I smile. (notice that my smile is one of those not quite a smile because when I do my eyes go almost all the way shut.)Well... When I adjusted levels at the beginning, my right eye was almost ok but needed a highlight. I picked a brush that had a natural pattern and added it the highlight... (In final review here, the eye highlight looks a little too overdone. No, I think, way overdone.) Then the other eye... no fixing that or was there a way? The right eye looked ok so I selected it and duplicated it and pasted it in a new layer over the left eye. Then, I transformed (flopped) it horzontally so it didn't look like I had two right eyes. That made my eyes look like they were looking in different directions so I selected only the center of left eye and transformed it back. Almost ok... but... my eyes still looked a little squinty so I used the liquify tool and made a circle larger than my eye and clicked it a few times to swell the eye and then did the same to the other one. One more thing... as I was using a camera held at arm's length, it was zoomed to wide angle. Portrait photographers know that using a wide angle lens makes the subject flatter or wider... I selected the whole image and used the transform tool to make the whole image just a little narrower (skinnier). Final review- the face looks a little too pale and the eye highlights are too bright... uhhh yeah, I should have brushed my hair and beard first. (anything else? class? class?)Now, was I overdoing it a bit for making an icon? No, I was practicing with my photoshop skills to perfect my trade. (autumn dark late evening sitting in the van wishing Ilene was with me.)Peace Tags: self portraits
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