27 July 2009
07 July 2009
09 June 2009
Sometimes you get a photo that is pretty impressive but just too dense, kinda like a really overdressed movie idol who can't spell.
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The bottom shot was impressive but didn't speak in clear tones. It had a lot of reflection effect, unfortunately, TOO much. To me that was overkill when mated up with text... the picture image would compete with the writing I wanted to do with it. So, I thought, crop out a nice portion that is simpler.
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I uploaded the picture to the Paint program and used the selection feature to "grab" the part which kind of looked like the shore of an island, losing most of the distracting reflection effect of the original shot and gaining a great focus on the colors and the essence of the shot. Your eye could now capture the image more quickly and it made a more concise impression.
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Sometimes less is much more... and I think a lot of modern graphic designers are going back to that as witnessed by the increasing use of simple, almost cartoonish images in many magazine ads and sprinkled iconic colored graphic illustrations in the text areas, too. It's a fresh look, using broad simple colored backgrounds or plain white rather than a lot of cluttered backgrounds.
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Nothing's new, of course.... they did all this stuff back in the early days to illustrate all sorts of periodicals in one to three colors, where the images had to remain relatively simple. If you recall the early black and white Volkwagon ads or the placard ads in restaurants in the fifties for Coca Cola or certain brands of hot dogs or whatever, THEY used the principle of simplicity, never claiming to be high art. And the effect worked fine.
We can put photos in graphic framing or attention-getting backgrounds and mimic the same thing, which is kind of what this posting is all about.
06 June 2009
05 June 2009
Thought for the day
When you have visions of the one you love, why does it hurt? Shouldn't it be totally joyful, not a crazy mixture of joy and longing and remembrance?
31 May 2009
Picassa 3 is a neat program to experiment with. I don't normally use the "retouch" function (which allows for the removal of blemishes, etc). This lady's face did NOT need THAT! However, when I moved the brush width to maximum and disturbed the image slightly on the right portion of her face I noticed that the right side locks of her HAIR jogged to the left at a certain critical location. I'd restyled her hair electronically!COOL! I said to myself, and saved the result. I cropped her face tight and applied sharpening, film grain and messed with virtually all the other effects to get what you see. Note that I definitely altered the color temperature... this allows a lot of surprising color effects to pop out when a picture has been sharpened (which increases contrast and depletes the number of discrete pixels... kind of an Andy Warhol effect.)
Every image is a combination of two things... shape (or form) and color. A photograph is not a single image but thousands of individual images (call these pixels if you want) arranged in some organized way. Our eye captures this organization and our brain compares it with previous experience stored in memory. That's seeing.
Is seeing believing? Maybe, maybe not... but when you see something that strikes a deep chord within you (in the case above: beauty, life, joy) it translates to emotion. You are either attracted or repelled by striking photowork. You are never bored!!
23 May 2009
Siri and Grover Make Friends
Siri made a visit to Gail's place (grandma Gail often looks after Gemma and Siri) and Gail took a couple shots to let me see with my own nearsighted half-retinal eyes how big a hit Sesame Street's Grover had been. "She wouldn't let go when she left," Gail informs me. "They're probably fighting over him right now."
I hadn't intended to cause a sibling battle, figuring there was also Elmo hanging around to even things out, but novelty does strange things to women. Of ANY age...
Photography: Gail Slaughter
Editing: Michael Serafin
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