On Sep 8, 5:03*pm, tony cooper <tony_cooper...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Sep 2011 13:44:47 -0700 (PDT), David Dyer-Bennet
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> <illegaln...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Sep 8, 1:08*pm, tony cooper <tony_cooper...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> Recently, there was a link in a post to page of abstract or
> >> non-representational treatment of photographs. *No one seemed
> >> particularly enthusiastic about the results, but I liked some.
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> >> I decided to try it, and found it is not as easy as you might think.
> >> At least, it wasn't for me.
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> >> I went out yesterday and shot one photograph for the project. *I had
> >> an idea in mind, but I was determined to work with just one photo.
> >> This is the original shot:http://tonycooper.smugmug.com/Other/...ot/i-fqMGw9d/0...
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> >> Then I used an Adjustment Layer in Photoshop set to Threshold:
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> >>http://tonycooper.smugmug.com/Other/...ot/i-D6SPWLh/0....
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> >> Then, I painted in the sky, the water, and trees in the three colors
> >> leaving the pilings and bird in the threshold version. *I used the
> >> brush on Normal, so I reduced the Opacity of the color layers to get
> >> some of the detail back in.
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> >> First version:
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> >>http://tonycooper.smugmug.com/Other/...ot/i-xmrr3nr/0....
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> >> Second version with the sky not quite so dark:
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> >>http://tonycooper.smugmug.com/Other/...ot/i-8bCNXxx/0....
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> >> I'm not excited about any of the results, but I now have more respect
> >> for people who do this sort of thing and make it come out interesting.
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> >> Comments or your attempt welcome.
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> >With the caveat that I'm not mostly very fond of
> >such things (rather like you, it sounds like; not
> >completely immune and not rejecting the idea
> >on principle), I have some comments.
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> >I like the way the water came out. *I like
> >the way the pilings came out. *The far shore
> >is at worst harmless, the details of it
> >are not very important in the picture.
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> I could have taken the far shore out, but I wanted a division between
> the sky and the water.
I think that's the right choice. My "at worst
harmless" isn't a particularly negative evaluation;
it's just not strongly positive.
> >Actually, I think what's wrong with this version
> >is the colors you chose; especially the sky
> >color and how it relates to the water.
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> I agree about the color. *They don't really work for me either. *I
> picked them out of the standard Photoshop palette. *I don't have a
> good innate sense of color.
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> The lake (this is at a lake, not the ocean) itself is dark green,
> almost black, but people expect some version of blue for water.
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> This is what I was talking about when I said it isn't as easy as you
> might think. *It was easy, but painstaking, to work with layer masks
> to paint in the areas. *I have a Wacom tablet. *That's the mechanical
> part.
I've played around enough to be reasonably
confident from my own experience that it's not
easy, in fact. While it's not my thing, I don't go
to the point of saying that people who do it
aren't doing anything hard or meaningful.
Unlike many, and I know you're addressing
a wider audience than just me.
> The creative part is choosing the colors. *The abstracts that real
> artists do look so damn simple, but there's a knack that I don't have
> to selecting the right colors.
Well, I do think there's a lot more than JUST
the colors. But for me the colors are the hard
part too.
I've studied color theory some, with regard to
choosing color palettes for web site designs,
and I suspect that some of the techniques
described in those books would also be
useful here. Looking at particular angle
relationships on the color wheel, in
particular, has given me some interesting
sets of colors. 60, 90, and 180 degrees seem
to be often interesting. Pick a starting color,
possibly from the original photo, or else
completely synthetically, and build the others
from there.
> Peter likes the straight black and white version done by using a
> straight Threshold adjustment layer, but that's probably because the
> colors don't interfere with what he sees.
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> The other difficult part was in taking the photo to wait until the
> bird opened its wings. *I was determined to make this a one-shot
> project and I wanted a good silhouette. *I wanted a larger bird but
> took what I got.
One-shot is a silly requirement I think. You got lucky,
but having a backup if the bird never DID open its wings
would have been smart. Well, unless that was clearly not
going to be useful.
Figuring out what you want and finding ways to
work towards that is much much better than blasting
away at random and hoping you get lucky, of course.
High-speed shooting is useful for things that happen
faster than you can react to (water patterns sometimes,
for example), and high-volume shooting is useful
for things that happen at random if you can't find a
way to trigger on them, but pure machine-gunning
away without thought is a waste of battery power.
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