Hi all!  Just a quick post to share last week’s quick effort at our Ricky Tims’ 52-Week Challenge lesson on how to “stitch” together photographs in PhotoShop.   Honestly, the software does all the work.   The photo below was created from five photos taken of the view from our house, then I did a few edits to get the colors captured to equal what it really looked like.

Since this photo was taken we have had wind and rain and wind, so we are no in the bare, brown and gray phase of the year.

The great news is that Ricky has opened sign-ups for a repeat of the 52-Week Challenge for 2016.  I’ll blog about that in a couple days, but since this is my second post today, I want to take a bit of a breather!

To my utter astonishment, our younger son (who at best tolerates grimly my taking photos of him), ASKED me to take a photo–his Senior Yearbook Photo!  Knock me down with a feather!   I had thought he would use his school pictures photo:

So while I was at taking the senior/yearbook photo, I knew it would be a crazy-busy week so I took a series of photos to do an assignment called “High Dynamic Range” where you merge 3-5 (or more) photos to account for the fact that there is strong light and strong shadow in one place.

The above photo is “composed” of these four photos (which despite my attempts to place them are going where they want…sigh):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We decided that as lovely a backdrop as the maple tree was, the light was simply too harsh.  Eli suggested we go down by the arbor/cut-through to the big meadow.  He thought he could lean up against the post and it would look more natural.  Turns out there is too much bittersweet, but the photo turned out great!

Eli selected this shot, which used a fairly shallow depth of field (to blur the background) and was taken from a tripod.  I can confidently say there is NO WAY I could have gotten such a good shot (with minor post-production/editing work) when I began this class in January.   YEAH!  I’m learning!   And Eli is happy.  And will now return to grumbling when I take photos of him.  <<grin!!!!>>>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s it for now!

 

Normally it doesn’t matter if I post my photo a week late, but since the theme was Halloween, and since I’ve actually done this at not-the-last-day, I’m doing week 43 today and I’ll fill in with week 42 next week!    And oh…if you haven’t been around, this is part of the year-long 52-Week Photography Challenge class I’m taking online with Ricky Tims.  This composite image was something that I would NEVER have been able to do at the start of this class! I used four photos (two of the widows, one of my hands, one of the moon).For anyone interested in how I did it, here you go (Long!)

This week’s theme was Halloween.   Apparently Ricky had planned on Hands, then changed it to Halloween.  But the “use hands” didn’t get edited out (until someone asked about it and he said typo!).  By that time I had this hare-brained idea for my weekly submission.  Our challenge was to do something creepy for Halloween (or otherwise Halloween-y) using what we’ve learned.   This may be one of those instances that Ricky refers to as “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”   Oh well!  It was a fun flight of bat-ful fancy!

1. Darken photo of moon. Select to the right of the moon extending area quite a bit to the right. Use content aware fill to “reposition” the moon.

2. Take first of the two willows in the night mist photos (shot on iPhone, which used last and showed those cool streaks in the mist). Since the photo was square, add a layer and paste. Add another layer and paste again, so that the two images overlap. Use soft-edge eraser brush to blend the two photos. Some Dodge and Burn to even out the overlap. Flip horizontally.

3. Take the second of the two willows-in-the-night-mist and repeat the above process in Step 2.

4. Reduce opacity to about 30-35 on both willows layers.
5. Merge down layers so the four willow layers end up as one (or was it two) layer(s).

6. Spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to make assorted masks work to let the moon shine through without overlaying leaves. Give up and use an enormous, soft-edge dodge brush to lighten the layers over the moon.
7. Dragoon hubby into taking shots of my hands as a bat (after google searching). Set up light and tripod/camera etc first.

8. Remove background around hands. Reduce opacity, use burn tool to knock back highlights on my fingers.

Edit out arms using a large hard-edged eraser brush to create wing scallops.

9. Create multiple layers, using “transform” to scale and rotate to edit the “bat.” Mull over whether to have one or three bats. This is seriously one of those “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” moments. Still not sure about one versus three. But after HOURS of edits, I’m going with three!
Time for lunch and other work!

So that’s it!  My Flickr album for November is here, and for the page with all my albums is here.

I’m thrilled to share that I have three works on display in Houston–in the juried show, the Dinner@8 Exhibit, and the National Parks exhibit.

In Miniature art quilts, you’ll find my Pink Lilies (if anyone takes a photo of it…of the entire ‘neighborhood’ not just the quilt, please do share!):

In Dinner@8’s Affinity exhibit, is Descended from the Stars, my most recent major piece:

 

And, SOB, I STILL can’t share a photo of my Snowy Owl quilt for Acadia National Park in the National Parks exhibit.  I’m so sorry about that!   The book won’t be out until next spring and even though the exhibit is on display (with no photographs allowed signage) we’ve still been asked to NOT share pictures.  I’m so sorry–but it is 20×20 and mostly white (as befits a snowy owl in winter).   But here is the photo I took on Clarry Hill ridge in Union that was my main reference photo:

I so miss being in Houston…. enjoy it all of you who are there!  I’ll see you next year!

This week’s photo assignment was decay.   I kept wondering if non-organic items can be said to decay, but decided for my class submission to stick to this image of a hosta leaf right by our front porch. Please note all photographs are (c) Sarah Ann Smith 2015.  To see a photo a bit larger, click on it!

 

 

And that truck I think is so fabulous, just slowly disintegrating near the old stone wall.   I can tell how much I’ve learned in this class:  I was able to get it sharp, deal with the extreme dark/light, bring out the details in the shaded areas, adjust the color so the photo looks like what the eye perceives and not what the camera thinks it is…. really enjoying and learning from the class with Ricky Tims.

And because I simply can’t resist the colors of autumn and those spectacular shades in the blueberry barrens (these are the real, wild, low-growing tiny Maine blueberries–so much better than those big marble-sized things in the grocery stores across America!).  Yes, one of these days there WILL be cloth dyed in the barrens colors….

SWOON: