Victor W.
Inspired
Every so often in life we come across something or someone that inspires us to do better. It can be ever so subtle or completely hits us in the face, a realisation if you will. In this instance I had a real 'face-plant' moment.
I came across the exemplary work of Regina Pagles recently, better known here on flickr as Shineylewis. Her work is in my humble opinion simply stunning. By her own admission she lives, eats, breathes, sleeps and even dreams about Photoshop, her work shows the mastery she possesses with such a marvellous piece of software.
But it doesn't end there, in fact it doesn't even start there either.
Peruse her photography as you would rushing through any others photostream and you'll miss one heck of a lot, the Photoshop skills are clearly evident but there is also much more to her imagery. For me there is a life force in her images, the hard work, dedication, artistry and connectivity clearly shows in each and every picture. Her writings and comments tell of her struggles, the hours spent learning lighting, honing her retouching skills and then to top it all she shares the resources she's found. Bloody marvellous I think.
The inspiring bit?
Her humbleness, the slight embarrassment at receiving praise, the simple shrug of the shoulders when someone condones her work, her persistence in doing what she does and a lot more besides. Above all her fantastic work!
Just like her if anyone wanted a 'tutorial' for the 'process' I used you'd be hard pushed. This was in GIMP rather than Photoshop but I fiddled, played, made layers, deleted some, made more, fiddled, fiddled some more, almost gave up and then finally something started to come together I liked. Luck? Maybe, but I took notes so the 'luck' will be a bit easier to come across next time ;-)
Put it this way, it wasn't a one-click plug-in process, it took flipping hours.
An artist friend of mine when asked how he paints such exquisite pictures always replies with, "Oh, it's easy really, I spend days pushing paint around a canvas". Couldn't be better said.
Boring bits following that seem to be a posting requirement here on flickr, as about as important as to whether I scratched my bum or picked my nose whilst taking the image........
Lighting - 23" beauty dish made from the crud coated lid of an old Weber barbecue lid, sand paper used to remove said crud and then painted with white satin radiator enamel...poorly. Bolted onto a home made boom arm, diffused with an old pillow case. Weighs a ton.
Vivitar flash, old crap one. No, not the crap 283 but the crappier 550FD, about half power.
All lit rather poorly, (or well?), to ensure that I didn't lose the shadows or blow the highlights for later fiddling with GIMP.
Shot with a camera........the Olympus one, the 'old' one,(e410), with my old slide film strip DIY IR filter on the pop-up just to trigger the Vivitar optically via a home made micro-controller optical slave.
Kit lens, about halfway, hooded and sat at the bottom of the 'beauty dish' just touching, dish tilted, didn't have a protractor handy so it was just tilted down to about where my head would be.
EXIF data, really? No EXIF data, couldn't be bothered to bolt it back onto the image which is manipulated so much it doesn't really matter.
Think that's enough......oh yeah, bum scratching - must have been twice, nose picking - zero.
(Look at the size of my nose, one pick and you'd get lost in that big old hooter and fold inside out! Only the big ears would stop that happening.)
Inspired
Every so often in life we come across something or someone that inspires us to do better. It can be ever so subtle or completely hits us in the face, a realisation if you will. In this instance I had a real 'face-plant' moment.
I came across the exemplary work of Regina Pagles recently, better known here on flickr as Shineylewis. Her work is in my humble opinion simply stunning. By her own admission she lives, eats, breathes, sleeps and even dreams about Photoshop, her work shows the mastery she possesses with such a marvellous piece of software.
But it doesn't end there, in fact it doesn't even start there either.
Peruse her photography as you would rushing through any others photostream and you'll miss one heck of a lot, the Photoshop skills are clearly evident but there is also much more to her imagery. For me there is a life force in her images, the hard work, dedication, artistry and connectivity clearly shows in each and every picture. Her writings and comments tell of her struggles, the hours spent learning lighting, honing her retouching skills and then to top it all she shares the resources she's found. Bloody marvellous I think.
The inspiring bit?
Her humbleness, the slight embarrassment at receiving praise, the simple shrug of the shoulders when someone condones her work, her persistence in doing what she does and a lot more besides. Above all her fantastic work!
Just like her if anyone wanted a 'tutorial' for the 'process' I used you'd be hard pushed. This was in GIMP rather than Photoshop but I fiddled, played, made layers, deleted some, made more, fiddled, fiddled some more, almost gave up and then finally something started to come together I liked. Luck? Maybe, but I took notes so the 'luck' will be a bit easier to come across next time ;-)
Put it this way, it wasn't a one-click plug-in process, it took flipping hours.
An artist friend of mine when asked how he paints such exquisite pictures always replies with, "Oh, it's easy really, I spend days pushing paint around a canvas". Couldn't be better said.
Boring bits following that seem to be a posting requirement here on flickr, as about as important as to whether I scratched my bum or picked my nose whilst taking the image........
Lighting - 23" beauty dish made from the crud coated lid of an old Weber barbecue lid, sand paper used to remove said crud and then painted with white satin radiator enamel...poorly. Bolted onto a home made boom arm, diffused with an old pillow case. Weighs a ton.
Vivitar flash, old crap one. No, not the crap 283 but the crappier 550FD, about half power.
All lit rather poorly, (or well?), to ensure that I didn't lose the shadows or blow the highlights for later fiddling with GIMP.
Shot with a camera........the Olympus one, the 'old' one,(e410), with my old slide film strip DIY IR filter on the pop-up just to trigger the Vivitar optically via a home made micro-controller optical slave.
Kit lens, about halfway, hooded and sat at the bottom of the 'beauty dish' just touching, dish tilted, didn't have a protractor handy so it was just tilted down to about where my head would be.
EXIF data, really? No EXIF data, couldn't be bothered to bolt it back onto the image which is manipulated so much it doesn't really matter.
Think that's enough......oh yeah, bum scratching - must have been twice, nose picking - zero.
(Look at the size of my nose, one pick and you'd get lost in that big old hooter and fold inside out! Only the big ears would stop that happening.)