2016 PhotoChallenge Week 43: Little Planets

Over the past 2 years now, I've been taking part in the PhotoChallenge.org weekly photo challenges.  The goal of these challenges is to get people taking pictures every week, gain inspiration, and to try new techniques.  I've done pretty well keeping up (except those portrait challenges) and have tried a lot of new things.  In these blog posts I'm going to post my response to this week's challenge, as well as some of my older pictures that fit the criteria... Oh, and feel free to take part, this is a free and open challenge for all budding photographers!

Week 43: Little Planets

This week's challenge was a cool one.  Take a panoramic photo and manipulate it into a little planet.  There were some phone apps that did this, but I tried it out in Photoshop.  I actually didn't get a chance to go out this past week to take a good picture for it, so I used some older shots to practice the technique.

The steps:

1)Either take a panoramic shot or crop a landscape into a panoramic shape.  Ideally there should be some empty sky since it will be easier to meld together in the final product, but clouds can be cool too.

2) Change the size of the shot to a square (use the same height and width dimension) which will oddly elongate everything and look crazy.  Make sure to uncheck the constrain dimensions box or chain icon or this won't work.

3) Flip the shop upside down.

4) Use the Filter-->Distort-->Polar Coordinates to turn this into a circle.

5) The hardest part: Do your best to blend, clone stamp, and healing brush the edges and line where the photo touches upon itself.

An option that is a little more difficult has you copy and flip the photo so you get a mirror image on each side of the shot--this makes it line up well on the final product but does duplicate the resulting photo so it can look odd.  I did this with the below shots since my edges were not lining up well.

Sunrise!  I like this shot a lot and the silhouette makes it easier to blend the middle.  You can tell this was duplicated, which I don't love, but the other method left a huge line in the center that was near impossible to blend due to the complicated cloud patterns.  In a blue sky shot the odd streaking at the 4 corners is minimal and easy to blend away.

Wind.  This one was an odd long shutter speed shot I did last fall during some high wind.  To get this outside-in look all I did was skip step #3 above and this was the result.  I like the duplicated cloud pattern that looks like a dragonfly!  I wish the original had had less tree movement so only the foreground was blurred.

Inspired By Reading Book Club: Vampires in the Lemon Grove

A friend of ours, Andrew Thornton, started up a virtual book club a few years back called Inspired By Reading.  Like most book clubs, each month a new book is read, but instead of just talking about the book the members of the group are challenged to create something inspired by the book.  Most of the members are artists--especially jewelry designers--so this is a very visual take on the classic book club.  I've taken part sporadically, but my wife pretty much gets every month's challenge done.

This month's book was a short story collection by Karen Russell named after the title story Vampires in the Lemon Grove.  I didn't read the whole collection--I'm in the middle of two short story collections already--but did read the title story since I like vampires.  The story was strange, somewhat haunting and wistful.  I liked it and didn't like it at the same time.  I like the imagery of two vampires finding each other and falling in love for centuries, but just didn't really "get" the whole thing.

Regardless, here's my artistic inspiration from the story:  I struggled with this a bit, but eventually got it looking OK.  I took a macro shot of a handy lemon--destined to be used in a cocktail--for the background.  Then I discovered a shot of a fruit bat that I took on our summer trip to visit Andrew and William in Ligonier, Pennsylvania from the wonderful Pittsburgh Aviary (where the Lorakeets pooped on my).  I manipulated the picture to fit over the lemon.  The tough part was getting the edges to look right and it still isn't perfect, but I learned some new Photoshop techniques in the process.

2016 PhotoChallenge Week 41: B&W Wealth

Over the past 2 years now, I've been taking part in the PhotoChallenge.org weekly photo challenges.  The goal of these challenges is to get people taking pictures every week, gain inspiration, and to try new techniques.  I've done pretty well keeping up (except those portrait challenges) and have tried a lot of new things.  In these blog posts I'm going to post my response to this week's challenge, as well as some of my older pictures that fit the criteria... Oh, and feel free to take part, this is a free and open challenge for all budding photographers!

Week 42: B&W Wealth

Last week we were tasked with getting a picture that personifies "Wealth" in black and white.  It was interesting to see people's takes on this one.  Lots of fancy cars and houses, but some more intangible ones like love and natural resources as well.  I went pretty literal on this one and broke out my old childhood coin collection to set up for a macro shot or two.  I used coins from 1800's to the 1980's since coinage hasn't changed a whole lot over that time, other than the actual worth of the coins themselves.

2016 PhotoChallenge Week 40: Graffiti

Over the past 2 years now, I've been taking part in the PhotoChallenge.org weekly photo challenges.  The goal of these challenges is to get people taking pictures every week, gain inspiration, and to try new techniques.  I've done pretty well keeping up (except those portrait challenges) and have tried a lot of new things.  In these blog posts I'm going to post my response to this week's challenge, as well as some of my older pictures that fit the criteria... Oh, and feel free to take part, this is a free and open challenge for all budding photographers!

2016 PhotoChallenge Week 40: Graffiti

This week we look at graffiti as art.  I've been intrigued by street art for ages, especially at the fine line between this being art versus vandalism.  I'm certainly more partial to the graffiti that shows some artistic talent instead of just putting you tag on some piece of turf...

1) Crash:  This week, I've been mostly out in Waconia (a far Western suburb of the Twin Cities) with a dearth of urban street art.  We did get a brief sojourn into downtown Minneapolis on Sunday for the wedding of some friends at Day Block Brewing, and I discovered this little shot on the way in.  Not thrilling, but I kind of like the crashed out car in the background...

2) Lurking Cat: This is a cool spot in Asheville, NC with graffiti style murals and several bronze cats scattered about.

3) The Wrong Side of the Tracks:  This is another shot of Asheville...

4) What?  Me Worry?  This one is from Portland, which is just coated in graffiti.  Just about every building, street sign, and open area in certain parts of town are tagged with the stuff.  Some are silly, some beautiful, some just messed up.  You judge which this one is...

Disney Resorts and Restaurants: Drinking Around Disney Part 3

HERE is the link to my Beerploma blogpost as part of my Drinking Around Disney series!