...Jump so high

Then he lightly touch down"

"Mr. BoJangles" - Jerry Jeff Walker

there was a lot of noise in this photo, as it was underexposed in the process of trying to hold the highlights, and restoring details enhanced noise, as well..

I used Photoshop to blur the background and, upon converting to LAB color mode, I used a technique outlined by Dan Margulis in his book on using the Lab Color mode in Photoshop CS2 to drive the colors to smoother cleaner richer extremes, then pull them back from the brink, creating dramatic rich colors.

LAB color isn't a photoshop exclusive, and it's Quite possible that other programs can pull this off easily.. all that was required was layers and curves, after converting to LAB color mode from RGB mode, to get these colors..

Here's a review of the book:

designorati.com/photoshop/2005/review-dan-margulis-photos...

Both the kaleidoscope and the animation done using GIMP 2.4. Animation consists of 10 layers. View animation here

© Viveca Koh - Please do not use my images without permission.

Website | Blog | Twitter | G+ | Facebook

For MacroMondays theme "Crisp"

Original photo provided by PicArt by Mike

For Kaleidoscope Fun Challenge

This is a composite, and all three of these shots were taken on the same morning in the Corte Madera, CA marsh. The duck (two shots of the same duck) was photographed against a drab background, and those images would have simply been deleted if I hadn't come up with this colorful marsh setting to move them into.

© Viveca Koh - Please do not use my images without permission.

Website | Blog | Twitter | G+ | Facebook

Another relatively simple portrait. Most of the images I've done recently are fairly muted. Because of the red dress I thought I'd give this one a little more 'punch'.

My model Sarah-Jane is shot against a neutral grey background and composited into the scene.

All backgrounds are themselves composites of various elements to create a 'hopefully' dramatic theatrical quality.

Strobist:x1 Einstein640 boomed high just off centre right. x1 AlienBees AB800 camera left and x1 AlienBees AB1600 camera right to provide kicker light.

162/365. The world's worst yo-yo.

Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/verbal_2002

Deep in the West Virginia jungle...

© Viveca Koh - Please do not use my images without permission.

Website | Blog | Twitter | G+ | Facebook

Still very much at the experimentation stage with textures and overlays, so all feedback very welcome.

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120507 This is photo manipulated picture, created for a photoshop contest site.-

.

photoshopfaceoff.com/?module=Contest&action=info&...

.

(BEST VIEWED LARGE)

Excavated from a strata composed entirely of compressed 19th/20th Century public service stationery request forms this exceptional multi-species fossil has proved an epiphany for Bureaucratoligists.

Dr. John Vaaler, interviewed in his Oslo office, commented: "This changes all our views concerning the life cycle of the binder clip. It had hitherto been assumed that the smaller paper clip was the youthful form of the mature binder clip. In fact, the savage scenario played out in this unique fossil reveals that the paper clip is an entirely seperate species that actually preys upon the binder.

It is apparent that the mature 'bulldog' binder clip was being attacked by a pack of hunting paperclips. In a similar fashion to the now famous Pom-PayDay site, where an entire civilization was buried by an eruption of payslips and timecards, it appears that a cataclysmic explosion of an overloaded photocopy tray overwhelmed the struggling combatants in an instantly lethal but ultimately preservative paperclastic flow.

Furthermore, the fossil demonstrates that the gallant Bulldog clip's last battle was not one-sided. To the right of the main conflict grouping can be seen the remains of one imprudent paper clip (designated "Clippy") that fell victim to the Bulldog's cornered wrath. Straightened in death its untwisted body bears witness to the immense power of the Bulldog's formidable jaws. One less Windows Office Assistant to plague the world!

Good Science will always bow to new facts, and we are more than happy to have our wings clipped in such a revelatory manner."

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Um. This all seemed like a sane idea at the time.....think I'll file it with the rest of the truly bewildering ones. Now, where did I put that paperclip...?

Fun Facts With Paperclips! For the unenlightened, John Vaaler, a Norwegian, was one of many people variously credited with inventing the paperclip, in his case in the 1890s. Because the paperclip was (wrongly or rightly) attributed to his country it became a semi-covert symbol of national resistance against the Nazi occupation in World War II, when the little gizmo would be clipped to shirt collars and lapels as a show of solidarity. Who knew?

No wonder that MacGyver would later proudly use it to continue the fight against the forces of naughtiness!

All digital image I created in 1999. The water was created in Bryce 4.0. The sky was created from a photo of the milky way and an astronomy program called "the Sky ". Put together with Photoshop. Makes a nice wallpaper. Blue and orange.

1024x768

"Villainy wears many mask, none so dangerous as the mask of virtue."

Beacon at the Mouth of Changi Creek.

* Novo carro de um amigo!

* A friends new ride!

Playing with paper and light

Fort Macon at sunset, on a Raleigh, NC Flickr Group meetup trip to the nearby NC Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores.

I couldn't help but be reminded of the 'drumbeats of war' we've been hearing for the past few years, and find an image with a hint of horror in it.

Photoshop was used to hold color and detail in this image with an originally wide brightness range. The zooming was done 'in camera'.

Nur wer genau hinsieht sieht den Text. Look out for the newspaper.

Fotografiert auf einer Blumenwiese in den deutschen Alpen bei Berchtesgaden

Otto Baggins - Il Circo a Pedali

www.ottomatto.it/

Ferrara, 11 Maggio 2008

Chris and Yann of the Bonneville Barons.

Chris and Yann are shot against neutral grey paper. The diner background is a Daz 3D creation with 50's car models added. The file is rendered out as a transparent 24bit PNG file so the blank sky area can have a new image dropped in with no cutting out or masking needed.

It's all composited in Photoshop, layered and blended, with use of photo filters to give everything an overall balanced colour cast to help everything sit together.

A full version of the pic is here:

www.flickr.com/photos/bigpicture1966/8166366348/in/photos...

The finished comp is HERE.

Hal 9000: -Ho vinto ancora io, ovviamente-

ma c'è chi ha detto:

La disumanità del computer sta nel fatto che, una volta programmato e messo in funzione, si comporta in maniera perfettamente onesta...

A different take on Vancouver

Sorry, forgot the before and after - here it is.

More wizard action. Our heroine poses for a movie poster moment. Not so much Hogwarts, more like Hogwash :)

You know, now I look at his finished comp, I'm sure I could have shoe-horned more into this composition. It is certainly the most 'movie poster' of the comps I've ever done. Well, I had a blast nailing it together anyhow :)

Thanks to Whitney Scheefer by Shadowelement

www.flickr.com/photos/nationalgalleries/3110937464/

"That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer amid the ruins of Iona."--Samuel Johnson

Martha, ranked 1 in the pop art photoshop contest on photoshoptalent.com (created by azuleus)

Interred.

The full, finished version is HERE

Sarah-Jane is shot against neutral grey to help the compositing process. The background was rendered out of Daz Studio as a transparent PNG - really helpful when dropping a sky in behind it. The car is not quite to scale, I wanted it a bit more dominant.

Lot and lots of photoshopping later... here we are :)

An italian beach during the very very last summer time.

This is the hotel at Mohegan Sun, the native American resort and casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. I was surprised to see the the blue tint of the window turn the reflection from late October to early September.

My commission for Zharmae Publishing Press 2011. This will be the wrap-around cover for the sci-fi novel 'CATERPILLAR' by William Tedford. Available at all major book retailers some time next year. I have permission to post this at my profiles.

Story:

My webshop: www.embrisionarts.com

My profile at Deviantart: embrisionarts.deviantart.com/

My Facebook: www.facebook.com/EmbrisionArts

Used resources:

Background: www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=70904

Girl above part: Purchased Dreamtime

Girl lower part: purchased Dreamstime

Sky 1: nocreditstock.deviantart.com/gallery/11670933#/d2ii6yq

Sky2: nocreditstock.deviantart.com/gallery/11670933#/d2ii759

Sky3: nocreditstock.deviantart.com/gallery/?set=11670933&of...

Sky4: nocreditstock.deviantart.com/gallery/?set=11670933&of...

Sky 5: nocreditstock.deviantart.com/gallery/?set=11670933&of...

Part sky painted

Crater: Purchased at Dreamstime + painted.

Part crater: morguefile.com/archive/display/630271

Smoke/fog: Own resources

Farmland 1: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=farmland&order=9&a...

Farmland 2: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=farmland&order=9&a...

Farmland 3: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=farmland&order=9&a...

Farm1: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=l...

Farm 2: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=l...

Barn1: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=farmland&order=9&a...

Barn2: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=+...

Barn3: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=o...

Barn4: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=+...

Windmill 1: Purchased at Dreamstime

Windmill2: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=w...

Watertower: fairiegoodmother.deviantart.com/gallery/?q=colorado#/d1j063r

Mountains: painted

Stone girl: own resource

Lighting sky + stone: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?qh=&section=&q=g...

Tractor: morguefile.com/archive/display/717555

Some other elements painted; all in all was this a lot of work. Loved creating this though!

---------------------------------------------------------

Copyright ©2011 ~ Gerbren/Brenda M. /Brenvisions/Embrision Arts/Zharmae Publishing.

All rights reserved: All the materials/work contained in my gallery may not be reproduced, copied, tubed, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way.

Legal action will be taken if necessary.

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

Horace Mann [1796-1859]

This image was created/enhanced/interpeted for a challenge created for the Raleigh Flickr meetup group, RSG,

( flickr.com/groups/raleighsocial/discuss/72157594513369898/ )

by member, aperitive. We were given on of Will's favorite poetic passages, the Mann quote, to base the inspiration.

My own thoughts, overlaid as they emerge from this image:

Remembering those minutes, we carry their dust with us in our irrational headlong rush, even as we bemoan their loss...

Click HERE for the finished version.

You can view the finished image HERE

Met up with Sarah-Jane to shoot some new portrait material with the aim of working on my retouch skills and frequency separation techniques.

Strobist:

Einstein 640 in 5' Octabox camera right just above head height as key light.

AB800 and AB1600 in 3' Softboxes to models left and right for fill and hair light.

Photomontage and digital painting.

My Webshop: www.embrisionarts.com

I used Photoshop to create a dreamlike colour palette.

A little tableaux of the boys doing their thing. A few separate components were used for the final effect including the DeviantArt background.

Full version is here:

www.flickr.com/photos/bigpicture1966/8230602532/in/photos...

What if dogs (male, that is) were in charge of the Public Works Dept.? This just might be one outcome.

An oldie pic, from four and a half years ago. Gary Larson-inspired, I suppose.

Three photo-seconds of one of the neighborhood Great Blue Heron in its walk on a Longview Lake diving board

... featuring the particularly dino-lankiness of these magnificent impressive birds.

I hardly ever take the time to make a very extensive work with numerous resources, but I had to create at least one. I just let my imagination run wild and this is the result.

It does have a meaning though...

'Let your worries drown by happy things'

My profile at Deviantart: embrisionarts.deviantart.com/

My Facebook: www.facebook.com/EmbrisionArts

Used about 50 resources;Thank you all!

Background 1: www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/variant-star-zeta-/61998

Sky: browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&global=1&...

Hands: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d1v2dng

Plateau with flowers/plants and hearts: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d3dp2o2

One Road from: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d2v29bi (rest is clonestamp and painting).

Trees 1: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d1f0wta (used all three of them).

Trees 2: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d33bz9x (used two of them).

Plant: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d2cgg0h

Ivy: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d10kfwp

Car 1: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d2v29bi

Car 2: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d1f44i1 (used two times)

Car 3: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d2xrzeo

Car 4: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=car&order=9&of...

Plane: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d1mmz1o

Persons in cars: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=man%20sitting#/d13f0xp (used three times).

Penquin with balloon: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d3dp2o2

People 1: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d10elre

People 2: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d10elre

People3: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d10elre

People 4: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d2zzmc

Boy fishing: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d28t3px

Grass along the road: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d10h4vf

Elephant: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d2xcnik

Little purple balloon: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=balloons#/d24xxnw

Air-balloon: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=balloons#/d24xxnw

Balloons sky: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d1vxx3f

Butterflies: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/d1vnbng

Vector birds: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d2abw1t

Moss at mountain: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d31n7bx

Fish 1: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d31n7bx

Fish 2: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d31n7bx

Turtle: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d31n7bx

Vector birds sky: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d1fw81o

Moon: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/dv6tw4

Heart balloon: browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=balloons#/d24xxnw

Arrows 1: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/dqbowf

Arrows 2: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/dqbowf

Swirls: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/43790150#/dqbapu

Bubbles: gerbren.deviantart.com/favourites/?offset=60#/d1ez5ls

Wave/water: Purchased at Dreamstime.

---------------------------------------------------------

Copyright © 2009-2011 ~ Gerbren/Brenda M. /Brenvisions/Embrision Arts

All rights reserved: All the materials/work contained in my gallery may not be reproduced, copied, tubed, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way.

© Viveca Koh - Please do not use my images without permission.

Website | Blog | Twitter | G+ | Facebook

Thanks to Jerry Jones for the frame used here.

View Large On Black

Persistent changes in the jet stream, perhaps related to faster warming in the arctic than the tropics, are producing strange weather patterns on the shores of the North Atlantic. Here my neighbor clears out his driveway this morning after last night's 13 inches of heavy wet snow, driven by gale-forced winds that have packed the snow against the tree trunks like so much wet cement. Since December the northeast US has had a snow storm like this once or twice a week, with the next one predicted for six days hence. The first one was kind of romantic, as first snows always are, but now its getting tiresome.