I just can’t leave it alone!

Remember the post about the mixed media piece I did from the book, “Taking Flight” by Kelli Rae Roberts?  I wasn’t thrilled with it because there were too many colors going on and the colors I’d chosen weren’t making me happy either.  I’m definitely a novice when it comes to color mixing.

But still, I couldn’t just leave it as is and move on – I had to try to improve it somehow- that, or completely cover the canvas with gesso.

I attempted to play down some of the colors by adding more blue to it and I was ok with that but still not lovin’ it.  I usually take pictures of the art-making process to help me remember what steps I’d taken along the way and I’d done that with this piece also.

After adding more blue and a couple of highlights and before covering it and starting over I decided to drop the image into Photoshop to see what I could do to change it in that way.

Here are the results.

I know I keep talking about filters but I just think being able to see something in a completely different light can be helpful.  These changes are easy to make and very forgiving – since you’re only working on the digital file while leaving the original art intact.

Check it out…

Before and After…the tip of the iceberg

Even though I haven’t been a photographer that long I did start out shooting film.

It was exciting and a little stressful at the same time.  In addition to worrying over getting the shot, I also fretted a bit about wasting film unnecessarily.

With digital however, I don’t worry at all.  In fact, one thing I’m kinda adamant about is to never trash a shot just because you think it isn’t ‘great’ or maybe you feel you have a better exposure of it and/or you think its taking up valuable real estate on your memory card.

Memory cards are cheapget two (one for a backup) and one that will hold a good bit of images.  (Also have a spare (charged) battery on hand as well.) Download the card often and you’ll always have room for more images.

One of the main reasons I keep every image (and I mean every image) is because you just never know what you might end up doing with it.

Just because you took an image of a landscape doesn’t mean that image has to be printed (or shown) as one.  Cropping is just one (of many) options that you can use to alter your image.

Filters are another.  So much fun!

Here’s an example of what filters can do to change the look of a basic snapshot.

This image was dropped into a couple of Photoshop’s filters to show you some of the different effects you can achieve (using the program’s default settings).

No fine tuning done here…

and this is just the tip of the iceberg!