photo manipulation » Random Says...

Views of my favorite grave marker (so far)

Oct 292011

Don’t tell me you didn’t see a cemetery post coming from a mile away!

Bayview Cemetery in Bellingham is one of my favorite places. It’s a pleasure to stroll through and large enough to offer plenty of opportunities for exploration.

It’s also home to a grave marker I revisited many times over the years I lived there.

Bayview statue, black & white

I have many photos of this beauty, including a number taken with an infrared filter*. Such photos come out of the camera looking something like this:

Bayview Cemetery, infrared sample

In other words, the image comes out in monochrome. The red tint is easily changed, however.

Bayview statue, infrared

In this picture, you can see another cool grave-marker in the background.

Bayview statue, sepia IR

Finally, here’s an infrared photo layered with a color photo taken from the same spot.

Bayview statue, IR & color

Look for more images from Bayview in the coming weeks.

* The Nikon D50 has the ability to detect infrared wavelengths. I use a Hoya Infrared (R72) filter on my standard lens. Infrared images have the quality of grass and foliage coming out very bright, while sky and water come out dark.

The IR filter blocks out most visible light, so it’s impossible to see through the viewfinder of an SLR camera. That means any framing should be done without the filter first. Because so much light is filtered out, the shutter speeds are very low, so a tripod is practically required.

A look around the web will show you some amazing infrared images — far more beautiful than my pedestrian examples.

Photo manipulation — Haunted houses

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Oct 262011

A few posts ago, I mused on the word haunt. In keeping with that theme, here are some photo manipulations* of houses in Bellingham that were meant to convey a haunting mood. Of course, whether they succeed or not is up to you to decide!

Forest Street Castle This first image is of a house very near where I used to live. Though I didn’t know it when I lived there, the house is the Alfred L. Black house and was built in 1903. The house is huge and looks like one of those old homes that have lots of cool nooks and crannies.

Another, even larger house not far away is called Wardner’s Castle. When I first moved to Bellingham, the place was a Bed & Breakfast, but later it was put up for sale.

Walden Castle from below

Bellingham Daily Photo has some pictures along with links to more information on this interesting house. The house is supposedly haunted. If you follow the link, you can read about the third floor mural that, from the pictures, looks rather spooky, but has since been painted over.

I found a sort of tribute to the mural artist posted by a fellow artist who loved her. And here’s another site about the mural and the artist. (Note: My firewall warned me that the site had been reported as malicious, but I opened it and — so far at least — my computer hasn’t exploded.)

Here is another picture taken from a slightly different spot and, of course, edited differently.
Walden Castle with sky

Finally, we have the Gamwell House. I used to walk by this house often and it is one of my favorites. I was lucky enough to tour the inside and see some of the ornate woodwork. It’s just a really cool-looking house.
Gamwell House b&w

Here’s another version. (Have I mentioned I can be indecisive? That’s a trick question — I know I have!) In this picture, I added the sky and lightning backdrop.

Gamwell House with lightning backdrop

If you have any photos you find haunting, I’d like to see them!

* I talked about photo manipulation in an early post. All of these photos were taken by me, except for the lightning in the last Gamwell photo, which came from mjw on stock.xchng. In case you’re interested, I use a Nikon D50 digital SLR camera, and Photoshop CS4.

Portraits of Random, Is that really ME?

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Sep 022011

Do you ever look at pictures of yourself and wonder if that’s how you really looked?

When I was in grade school, we did this project:

Silhouette picture

I remember nothing of the process, it was too long ago. It looks like I stood in front of black construction paper while someone sprayed fake snow at my head to create an outline.

It seems as if I I would remember being sprayed in my left eye with some toxic goo.

Whatever, even though the origin of this is lost in my memory, I noticed it again the last time I was at Mom’s house and took some pictures of it. Since the picture is behind glass, it wasn’t ideal photo conditions.

For some reason, this silhouette has more impact on me than looking at photos from that same time. Intellectually, I know that’s my silhouette, but I still think it’s amazing to think that the now-me was once the me-who-blocked-toxic-goo-from-hitting-construction-paper.

This image is easier to understand, partly because it was taken only a week ago, but also because the shadow is only a placeholder for me and I can fill in the gaps. Then again, I didn’t realize my legs were so disproportionately long compared to my body.

Maybe this is a more accurate portrait:

It certainly seems to convey the way my mind works sometimes.

What about you? What do you think about when you see old pictures of yourself?

Have you ever found a true portrait of who you are?

A sampling of non-art

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Aug 202011

I think I may have mentioned I have a lot of interests. Over the last ten years, I’ve dabbled in a number of art forms and have saved some of the results of my experimentation. I don’t claim it’s art, but it was fun to do!

One category of these experiments is “photo manipulation.” That’s where I take a photo (or multiple photos) and modify them in Photoshop. The modifications can range from minor to extreme.

Another category is fractals. These were made using Ultra Fractal.
$Spiral fractal$

Yet another type of creative play is called Touch Drawing. It’s an interesting technique using oil paints and was created by Deborah Koff-Chapin who lives on Whidbey Island in Washington.

And, just to show how completely not seriously I take this dabbling, here’s a drawing done using a graphics tablet.

What do you dabble in?