Vamedia photos being used by band

Shots from a photoshoot we recently did for a local band have begun to appear in their advertising materials. Here is a link to their MySpace page, on which you can find some of the shots. Click on the 'pics' link to see more of their selections. A few have been posted to the flickr page here.

For Kurt

Here is the sequence of events for the one photo, but I used the same technique and texture for the others. The original image is actually very interesting, with the instruments shown. But the composition bothered me. I think it was the perspective of both window frames, as well as the large amount of white space in the window on the left. So I cropped a little, but still I was not satisfied, so I decided to make the image in the mirror the focal point instead of the banjo. Besides, that image in the mirror is just spectacular, in my opinion. So I cropped in very close to put the emphasis there. Then I just used successive layers to adjust the relative tone of the different sections of the photo, and I finally put a texture layer over it (multiply blending with adjustments to the brightness, contrast and opacity of the texture layer). Somewhere along the line I applied some sharpening. That's it.

another before and after art conversion

Here I added a different background to the painted image because the original background from the photo was distracting. After simplifying the image and using brushes to make the painting emulation, I added a blotchy background using a special watercolor brush and a sampled color from the image, underneath the painting. Of course, a texture was added using various blending modes to finish off the effect.

More art from photography

Accidentally posted this one on the wrong blog, so reposting it here. This is another art conversion using art brushes on a photograph I took at a wedding rehearsal. First had to simplify the image some to remove a bit of the detail, then used several layers and brushes to create the watercolor effect before adding a texture and a border. The final version with a border is on the flickr site.

Photos become art

Here is another photo to art conversion. Original photo on the left, converted on the right. Here I had to lighten the background quite a bit before doing the painting. Also, had to do a little freehand touch up after using the art brushes to get better plane separation in a couple of places. Fun

Textures

Some interesting effects can be constructed by pulling parts of images out of photos and then layering them with various textures. In this case, I found a photo of an old sheet music booklet on flickr and decided to construct something reminiscent of an old photo card with it. I grabbed the image of a pretty girl from a wedding shot I took last summer, converted both the texture and the girl to B&W, colored it sepia, then layered them together with the appropriate blending. I think it still needs some work, but it showed me the concept was workable.

Wedding Art

Sometimes a shot can be saved by converting it to another format. In this case, I was shooting with available light under mixed incandescent and fluorescent conditions, and I had kept the ISO down to minimize noise. The lens was at f/2.8 so the depth of field was also minimal. In the photo, the bride's face was not really in sharp focus, so I decided to convert the photo to digital art. See the result on the flickr page.