THE MYSTIC

This was one of my shots for the Bay Area Photo Club of Clear Lake October Honor's Night assignment of "HANDS".  It's a composite of two images that I combined in Photoshop.  The base image is a shot of my hands that I warped slightly using a Topaz Lens Effects filter preset for a fish eye lens effect and then added the colors in Topaz Adjust 5/Stylized/Solarized Dreams preset.  The second image was a shot of the full moon with some fog effect added from Topaz Lens Effects.  The judges awarded the image a Silver award and 153 points, which was the second highest score for the night.

KALE RIDES OUT

Last night's BAPC assignment for the Honor's Program was "Composite."  I put this image together out of 7 or 8 different images, 40 adjustment layers, and about 5 hours of "tweaking."  It ended up drawing only a bronze award from the judges, but when it was all said and done I was happy enough with the image.

"ASCENSION"

This composite recently was awarded "Gold" and high for the night on Bay Area Photo Clubs Honors Night last month and a third place ribbon at the Baytown Photo Clubs recent show.  It's a nine shot composite with the background being a six shot HDR of an alley on Texas Avenue in Baytown.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Stopped by Spookers Halloween Superstore on I-10 the other day and snapped this shot.

Lynchburg Beach Art_3

Last in the Lynchburg beach art series.

Lynchburg Beach Art_4

Another in the series of shots taken near the Lynchburg Ferry this past weekend.

Lynchburg Beach Art_2

Another shot of the beach art near the Monument Inn off Battleground Road.

Lynchburg Beach Art

My wife spotted some beach art yesterday we hadn't noticed before. There are currently three pieces located on the ship channel side of Independence Trail Rd [always Battleground to me] with more to come. I say more to come because there is still a lot of beach junk sorted and staged for future projects.

McKee at Nance, Downtown Houston

An old house in downtown Houston near where I once worked.

Dream Fisher

This shot is a composite of two images taken at the Baytown Nature Center a couple of week ago.

Defiance

My second shot submitted for the BAPC Honor's Night program was "Defiance", a composite made up of 4 individual shots. The judging panel awarded the shot a "Silver".

GENISIS OF A SURREAL PHOTO

In yesterdays post I shared my entry in Tuesday’s nights BAPC “Honors Night” assignment “Surreal Composite.” Several people has asked me about my thought process for developing this shot so today I thought I would summarize a portion of it.

My thinking on the assignment was that the place to start was with an interesting “base” photo. I didn't have any kind of a vision of the finished shot when I started, only this idea that if I could find any kind of a good starting point I would build from there through the required “Composite” portion of the assignment. My original inspiration photo [on Clinton Drive East of Lockwood in Houston] is below...

I certainly thought this scene, with an illogical haggard building perched high on top of a dilapidated old commercial structure in a run down section of town, with the surprise of a distinctly rural grazing horse in front was a surreal shot from the start. But the assignment was for a "Composite" and I could see lot’s of enhancement opportunities through the composite process.

Below is an intermittent version of the shot before I decided a ‘less would be more” approach to the shot was the way to go and cropped away the lower third. This included cropping out the horse which was one of the strongest elements that originally drew me to the subject, a phenomenon which I’ve encountered before.

At the end of the day I was happy with the decision to keep the more interesting [to me] top portion of the photo. I think the final shot [see yesterday's post] ended up conveying the dark sense of mystery that I had hoped for once the base image was selected. And now you know the rest of the story.