I'm a meat-and-potatoes kind of Photoshop user. Most of my photography is 'straight' and I use Photoshop in the way I used my darkroom, to enhance images in terms of cropping, contrast, colour balance, luminosity, touch-ups such as dodging and burning, and some sharpening. But occasionally I like to mess around with special effects. In my darkroom days, this was a lot of work, but Photoshop makes it easy to play with an image, taking it beyond the traditional.
With a bit of alteration, this mundane shot of a small corner coffee shop in Toronto becomes a different kind of image, symbolic of the coffee shops on every street corner in every city.
Coffee Shop, Pearl St
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)Special effects sometimes help me get out of a rut. I'd been taking photos of far too many benches that were similar to each other. A bit of swooping around in PS took this pleasant but boring B&W image of a bench and turned it into something other than a study in B&W tonality.
Park Bench
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)I have a lingering childhood phobia about bees. I actually like bees (yellowjackets excepted) but it takes nerve for me, even to this day, to take macro shots of them. I shot this bumblebee last Canadian Thanksgiving, and was quite happy with it as a straight shot. But in a moment of whimsy, I started messing around with the image in Photoshop, and came up with something that, for me, expressed "bumblebee-ness" better than the straight image. Bees don't see the same way we do, and this, in my imagination, is more what the world looks like to them.
Bumblebee World
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)I'm not above using PS special effects to turn a 'failed' image into something interesting. I caught a shot of a gull in flight just as it flew off the ice in the harbour. The image was too blurred to make a good traditional photo, but I liked the shape, the motion in the wings, the contrast with the background, and the symbolic "gull-ness" of the image. After severe changes in PS, it came out resembling a gritty rock-art painting.
Gull in Flight
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)Another failed image -- autumn leaves on our serviceberry bush. The wind was so strong it kept blurring the leaves even though my camera was mounted on a tripod. It seemed to me that the blur itself could become the theme of the image with some special effects. I called this one "dancing leaves".
Dancing Leaves
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)Last week I took a shot downtown in a walkway between two tall buildings. There were some nice looking lamps and building texture and the image made a pleasing sepia-toned B&W. But I couldn't resist looking for something that went beyond the straight photo and ended up with this more artistic rendition.
Lamps & Pillars
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)The nicest special effects image I ever created was this shot of "high tea" that Marion put together and served to her sister Helen who was terminally ill with cancer. It brings back warm memories of this lovely, intelligent, refined lady who passed away last year having reached only her 60th year.
Helen's Tea
(click on image for a larger, sharper view)To see my complete Special Effects Gallery, visit www.pbase.com/gwilburn/misc_special
(30-Mar-2004, Revised 17-June-2004)
www.NorthernJourney.com -- gene@wilburn.ca