Brushing up on new tools

Photoshop is continually improving and introducing new tools to achieve really great effects without much effort, all you need is a little bit of creativity and imagination. One such tool is the perspective warp tool that was just introduced in January of 2014. This tool allows you to change the perspective of an object with really great results. Most objects that work well with this tool have a defined edge to them. I decided to try and see what it would look like if I applied it to a object, in this case a face, which didn't have a defined right angle. The results as you see here give you the ability to create an edge thus making the face here seem square. Sometimes it's fun to think "outside the box" and see what happens.

Change of Moods

Not quite feeling it? Try changing the mood. We decided to do just that to this image. By swapping out the background with a night scene, and changing the overall tint to the image, we were able to create a totally different mood. Try this sometime and you may be surprised to see the change from ordinary to extraordinary.  "Mouse over the image to see the original"

Hot Dog!

Some images are just plain fun and quirky. This image was a result of examining the possibilities. It started with the original factory image which made me wonder, what could I do with it that would be outside of the box, or outside of the bun in this case. We had just done a shoot in our studio that included hotdogs. The light went on. Hotdogs!, wouldn't it be awesome if he was assembling hotdogs. Thus the image below was created.  Sometimes it's just plain old fun to suspend reality and create something just  "a little out of the bun".  "Mouse over the image to see the original"

Piercing the Darkness

Inspiration can often come from that which we hold dear.  Being a person of faith, I was really drawn to this image. So I decided to create a dramatic visual that would contrast good and evil with light and darkness.  I added two buildings that I shot on a trip to Nashville along with a sky I shot at sunset.  I then added some dramatic lighting effects and other representations of good and evil to bring it all together into a very powerful image.  The result is an image that is not only visually appealing,  but one that really makes you ponder its implication.   "Mouse over the image to see the original"

Wild Bill!

Sometimes images come through our Post Production Department that just beg for us to do something with them. This image just happened to be one of those. The person in this image is our studio manager Bill or for this shoot, lets call him "Wild Bill". Many of us here in the studio often get wrangled into being test subjects so that the photographer can dial in his lighting and placement before the client arrives. Bill had just such an opportunity a month ago and this is  one of the "test" shots our photographer took. I took the liberty to create a scene out of the  Wild West using a landscape shot from one of our other photographers and added  other elements to complete the scene. Who says work can't be fun? It's all in how you approach it.  "Mouse over the image to see the original"

Let It Snow!

This is the latest creation for our friends at Insight Magazine. The gentleman in the snow globe is Dan Ariens, CEO and President of Ariens Co., a manufacturer of snow removal and lawn-care equipment. Of course he wasn't in a snow globe but we sure thought it would be cool if he was.

Winter Wonderland

I really enjoy photographing winter scenes. It's a time of the year when everything is quiet and still, a time when the tourists have gone and all that is left is you and the canvas before you. The image below, "Luminary Exhibition", was one of those scenes captured on a frozen winter morning. With temperatures below zero I set out to photograph a scene that I had captured years earlier using film. Now with the age of digital photography, I was able to capture it in ways I was unable to previously. By bracketing the scene using multiple exposures, I was able to shoot directly into the sun and combine those exposures using a program called Photomatix. This technique is often referred to as HDR "High Dynamic Range". The result is an image that represents a wide range of detail in the shadows and highlights of an image, giving it that painterly look. The best part of it, is seeing the result once those exposures have been blended together, adding a whole new dimension to photography.