Still playing with mimicking the old SX-70 Polaroid camera effect.

The SX-70 came out in 1972 and I found it in the 1990's. I thoroughly enjoyed the effects one could create, as its sandwiched film would slide out of the camera still soft enough to move around the developing fluids - but only for about 15 minutes. The camera was heavy, but thoroughly enjoyable. That film is essentially no longer available ('new' film is being produced, I think, but not sure if it retains the same possibilities) - so I've finally discovered a way to approximate it in Photoshop (liquify....with care). Experiments continue.....

Robber flies stab their victim and injects it with saliva to liquify it. They then suck it up with their proboscis.

I don't know what the other insect is, but it had beautiful wings and really long legs!

Not all sunrises are equal

My friend Jeff and I got up to capture the sunrise and to my surprise it was a moonrise also. I was all setup with a wide angle to capture the stars in the sky as well the sun on the horizon. I worked as quick as I could to readjust to this image. Some of you photographers may have noticed the exposure was 30 seconds and knowing the movement of the moon waits for no one. Thanks to Photoshop and liquify I put the moon pack into proportion as to what the eye was seeing. The mountain range is the La Sal Mountain at Moab, some 40 miles away.

The lens was at a medium telephoto (170mm) @ ISO 80 and f/stop 13 (using the sharpest point of this lens).

Liquified background

Having fun with Topaz Studio 2 and the Liquify Persona in Affinity Photo.

Stay well, everyone! 😊

The Trevor Carpenter Photo Challenge Week 40: B&W in Color

After fiddling with a bunch of stuff that was mostly black/gray/white, most of the images ended up with more colored tones than I felt was acceptable. I finally hit on photographing my piano keys (1950's white Baldwin baby grand), but I thought just the keyboard was a little boring, so I added a rough border and used liquify in PS to make it more fun!

Nikon D7100, 18-300 lens

f/8, 1/60, ISO 640

I watched this spider liquify a Praying Mantis!

for Macro Mondays - ABSTRACT

366/57

I was bored last night heheee...

Her eyes and reflections are real just made them bigger in liquify and added lashes!

Poor baby...she's my only model lol

I was rather at a loss yesterday about what to do for Sliders Sunday this week. Wonderful ideas were notable for their absence. So I thought I would have a play with that good old favourite - a dahlia pic.

There are four endpoints in this set: two are fairly well-travelled approaches and two are sheer experiment.

The first is a fairly straight rendition of the image using the Radiance and Smudge filters of Topaz Studio. The radiance lengthens and strengthens the lines while smudge smoothes surfaces. The result lends a greater sense of physicality, particularly in the petals, that works well with flowers - a bit like an oil painting. The difficulty with this approach is getting the balance right - if you look at the image in detail you can see the filters are having a real party so you need to resist overdoing it. But what is right depends quite a lot on the device and scale that the image is seen at. In other words, you are doomed :(

You can play Spot the Fly with this one ;)

The second is a mirror version created entirely in Affinity Photo. I thought I’d got over my obsession with mirroring flowers, but apparently not. This one is made setting up the adjustment with five mirrors and then searching about a bit with the origin to find an interesting image. Most of the work was in getting rid of the background.

Symmetry in an image has a strange effect on our minds. It increases visual impact but reduces attention span. I call it the ‘wow!... boring’ effect. I still like creating symmetric flower images because it makes me look more closely at the flower and see things that I’d previously missed.

The last two I feel a bit apologetic about as they are not really finished pieces but proofs of concept. They are both made using an approach I stumbled across with my previous Sliders Sunday playtime, that of duplicating the image layer and then changing the blend mode of the top layer to Difference. That just creates a black screen (because there is no difference between the layers). The fun starts when you begin mangling the top layer.

Previously I’d just used Liquify to mangle the layer (this pushes pixels around without smudging). It’s easy to do in Affinity because the Liquify adjustment is just another layer that remains editable. But that was not enough here - having a predominantly white flower doesn’t work as well as the multicoloured one last time. So I dabbled in my diddling with Recolour, Smudge, Gradient Map and Liquify. The textured one is mainly Smudge, and the other is several Difference results blended together in a composite.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of them and that they encourage you to have a bit of fun yourself. I’d love to hear which is your favourite. I’ll post a link to the in-camera version in the first comment so that you can see where we started with this set.

Thanks for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Sliders Sunday :)

Models- Jenny and Kain:)

Ain't they yummy! ^^

This was a chore doing...I'm usually strait forward..nothing fancy in ways of manipulation...Liquify is as exotic as I get and at times...if I'm feeling saucy I'll paint in a couple eyelids if needed...and I'm sure this here would be an easy task for a more seasoned artist...but man..lol..I was all over the place with this. Personally I'm not thrilled with the blur turnout...maybe burned the mirror a little dark...grrr...or I may just be over thinking it..lol but anyway..YAY for my first commission...I usually refuse money..but they won't let me..haha

Reflection of the cross on top of Berlin Cathedral

This fungus starts off egg shaped, grows to a point, turns black at the margins as it gets older, and then liquifies.

Gjende is a long lake in the Jotunheimen moutains, Norway. This picture was taken at Memurubu, a hut at the middle of the lake. The sun had just set behind me. As it was a windy day, there were many waves on the lake, so I took a long exposure (20s) to average them out and get a more flat and textured surface.

Actually, I do not have a neutral density filter, so I could not close enough to use a 20s exposure time. So I took 20 photos in a time lapse and used scikit-image to average them together. This process gave me the nice texture in the sea.

I did additional post-processing in darktable: I did a slight amount of color correction, making the highlight in the center more yellow. I increased the contrast (with a local enhancement filter) in the center and on the rock in the foreground. I tuned a bit a tone curve on the rocks to have more sharp highlights there. And finally, I used a series of "liquify" filters to create motion blur in the clouds. As liquify filters apply a warp but do not create a blur, I piled a stack of 5 of them with different amount of warps and adjusted there opacity to blend everything together. I wanted the motion blur to create lines that directed to the center of the image, enhancing the effects of the horizon line.

Sleep problems are a common complication of Lewy Body Dementia symptoms. This was project in Conditioning for sleep. Used Apple Pencil, ProCreate application and Liquify tools.

Crowfoot Mountain in Banff National Park in Alberta/Canada, with the Crowfoot glacier. This is a composition of 5 photos taken with a wide-angle lens. Thus the horizontal field of view is almost 180 degrees. The horizontal resolution of the original is 10000 pixels. Enjoy the details. Post processing: I styled the grass a little with Photoshop's liquify filter.

A few moments before Midnight, 19/365

Painterly applications to a digital photo image of an orange colored butterfly on a periwinkle colored flower.

My first FGR: Tell me what you're thinking when you play with yourself!

And my first TRP: doctored up photos

For those who asked, this was my workflow:

I darkened out the BG to black.

I then made a selection of my head and copied it into a new layer.

Then selected little pieces of that layer with the lasso tool and moved them away,

repeat this effect (yes this takes time) until you're satisfied. The smaller the pieces the longer it takes.

After that you can use the liquify tool to make the pieces flow more .

Then it's time for some brush action. I used various starfield brushes for the dust effect. Use different layers to paint them and blur so you get a sense of depth and density.

The cracks are just textures placed on top of the rest and using an "overlay" to blend them into the skin. Use layer masks to paint out unwanted parts and paint with different opacity settings.

When finished add some blur to certain parts to add depth and do some colorcorrection on the whole image...and Presto!!!

Textures used by: cgtextures.com

Brushes used : starfield brushes

View On Black

Citroën D Special '72

I found this cute little brown jumping spider in our hallway today. It was not very active, so I thought that it may be molting or dying. I gently placed it in a glass container to rest, then later onto a sheet of white paper. On the first go round of 1-4x magnification, I noticed that its tiny abdomen looked a bit shriveled. It occurred to me that it may be dehydrated, so I saturated a piece of wet tissue paper with water and sure enough the "spidey" immediately crawled onto the wet paper and remained there sucking up the water, much like we would suck through a straw. Yes, spiders drink water, as needed, normally from rain puddles or dew. If spiders are kept as "pets" a small water dish can be placed in the habitat. The mouthparts are located in back of the chelicera (the fangs that inject venom into their prey). Spiders normally get the fluids they need from the liquified bodies of their prey, and it has recently been discovered that some species of spiders will "drink" nectar.

After, I gave the spider the water, it became more active, though I was still able to work with it to get another set of photos before releasing it onto one of our houseplants. This spider was 6mm in length and 2mm in width.

A rippled reflection on a glass-fronted loading dock along Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct.

The most fake thing I have ever done... but I think I like it!

Another angle on "Salish Heron" on her arrival to Victoria on completion of the delivery voyage from Remontowa Shipbuilding S.A. in Gdansk, Poland. Her bow visor in the fully open position. She is fuelled by liquified natural gas (LNG). Fourth ship in this class for the company.

I spotted this guy with the impressive chelicerae on Saturday and was very glad I had my camera. It seems he's a little outside his range, but when I checked iNaturalist, I see a few have been found even farther north.

Someone asked if spiders have teeth. I originally wrote "they don't", but have found the answer is slightly more complicated. Their "mouths" as we think of them are pretty much just an entry hole without other function. Breakdown of prey happens outside of this toothless hole. Similarly to flies, spiders spit digestive fluids out onto their prey so that it is broken down outside. They then use their chelicerae, which in this case are those long protruding dark things, to try to further soften the prey by mashing them together side-to-side.

This is where there is a difference in method among spider types. With hunting spiders that don't use webs, there may be some toothlike serrations on the inner edges of the chelicerae to aid in crushing. Because these spiders are often near a hard surface, such as the ground or a wall, they can apply force between the chelicerae and that surface, and do some effective chewing. Web-spinning spiders, however, don't have this advantage, and must rely more on the enzymes to do all the work.

As the spider slurps up what has become liquified, the prey goes from something recognizable to a dark featureless ball called a "bolus". Once the spider has extracted all it can in this manner, it discards the rest.

I was inspired to write about this on this photo because the chelicerae are so obvious here. All spiders have them, but they are usually less noticeable, and if the spider is fuzzy, sometimes they're hard to see. The fangs are attached to the chelicerae and kept folded up until needed.

25 Arachtober 2021, 1/2

Bagheera prosper

Chester Frost Park, Dallas Island, Hixson, TN

23 October 2021

I was rather at a loss yesterday about what to do for Sliders Sunday this week. Wonderful ideas were notable for their absence. So I thought I would have a play with that good old favourite - a dahlia pic.

There are four endpoints in this set: two are fairly well-travelled approaches and two are sheer experiment.

The first is a fairly straight rendition of the image using the Radiance and Smudge filters of Topaz Studio. The radiance lengthens and strengthens the lines while smudge smoothes surfaces. The result lends a greater sense of physicality, particularly in the petals, that works well with flowers - a bit like an oil painting. The difficulty with this approach is getting the balance right - if you look at the image in detail you can see the filters are having a real party so you need to resist overdoing it. But what is right depends quite a lot on the device and scale that the image is seen at. In other words, you are doomed :(

You can play Spot the Fly with this one ;)

The second is a mirror version created entirely in Affinity Photo. I thought I’d got over my obsession with mirroring flowers, but apparently not. This one is made setting up the adjustment with five mirrors and then searching about a bit with the origin to find an interesting image. Most of the work was in getting rid of the background.

Symmetry in an image has a strange effect on our minds. It increases visual impact but reduces attention span. I call it the ‘wow!... boring’ effect. I still like creating symmetric flower images because it makes me look more closely at the flower and see things that I’d previously missed.

The last two I feel a bit apologetic about as they are not really finished pieces but proofs of concept. They are both made using an approach I stumbled across with my previous Sliders Sunday playtime, that of duplicating the image layer and then changing the blend mode of the top layer to Difference. That just creates a black screen (because there is no difference between the layers). The fun starts when you begin mangling the top layer.

Previously I’d just used Liquify to mangle the layer (this pushes pixels around without smudging). It’s easy to do in Affinity because the Liquify adjustment is just another layer that remains editable. But that was not enough here - having a predominantly white flower doesn’t work as well as the multicoloured one last time. So I dabbled in my diddling with Recolour, Smudge, Gradient Map and Liquify. The textured one is mainly Smudge, and the other is several Difference results together in a composite.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of them and that they encourage you to have a bit of fun yourself. I’d love to hear which is your favourite. I’ll post a link to the in-camera version in the first comment so that you can see where we started with this set.

Thanks for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Sliders Sunday :)

For my "coup de grace" I choose to put my spin on this lovely shot by the most incredible Mr. Sardonicus. Steven, as his parents call him, is one of the funniest Mofacka's out there in the Flickrverse. His bizarre sense of humor is second to none, and his photography goes even further than that. He has the ability to one day make me laugh at Jesus, and the next day make me steal his photos for my wallpaper on my desktop. That doesn't happen too often kids.

For TOTW - Copycats & Testimonials

Using a collaging process similar to the one I used to create my Abstract Collages, I combined a number of pieces from the VIsual Mashups group. Then seriously overprocessed the result using, amongst other tools, Photoshop's Liquefy.

I've been wanting to photograph this dress. I did some heavy Dodge&Burn on just me, blurred the background a tiny bit and fixed my elbows with the Liquify Filter.

marketplace.secondlife.com/p/DEW-Amelia-dress-multi-textu...

Inspired by Beth Conklin.

Faces were created with Photoshop Liquify and Neural filters.

Please visit my Etsy store where many of my art

pieces are available for instant download. All proceeds from

the sales of my work go to the Vista Women's Crisis Center

in California.

www.etsy.com/shop/CathysArtWorld

Girl from Bing Photos.

Background is vintage room stock.

Frames are from Pixabay, itKuPiLLi_DisorderlyFashion,

Chair is from Pixabay.

HE>i

NOTW

Created for Treat This 72 Kreative People Group

Also submitted to CONTEST 14 - GRAFFITI AND STREET ART - Dark Side of The Light Challenge (March 15 - April 14)

Thank you skagitrenee for the use your of lovely crocus photograph. A small copy is posted below

The texture layers PetalsAndLeaves3 and ConcreteBlueGraffiti are my own and are available from My Texture Set

This is my first real and successful attempt at inserting a stock image into an SL pic using the GIMP. I also discovered it's version of the Liquify tool and played around with it a bit and used the Dodge tool to create a few shadows. Overall, I think it's decent for a first real go.

See All Sizes for best detail.

Heart yarn stock from Deviant Art - almasa-stock.deviantart.com/art/heart-yarn-108271547

www.bryntheredonethat.blogspot.com

Model / Photographer - Braunwyn Cleanslate

Eyes - Tekuteku - Eko-eye - Wine Pink - store freebie

Shape - Alady 2009 Perfect Tribute to Jula

Skin - Dulce Secrets - Ammi Champagne Skin - DSN freebie

Hair - Tea Lane - Cindi - silver / tearose w/ Tea Rose Sequined Hat - freebie

Outfit - Thalia - Belted Top (pink) & Pink Pants - freebie

Necklace - Tickled Pink - Hearts Cascade Necklace

Pose - XStreet box of free poses - tablewoman

Photo taken in La Petite Morte Photo Hall - DSN freebie

That is all about.

Light and perspective are the two basic ingredients in studio photography.

In a studio, light must be under complete control so the result must be exactly as the eye of the photographer wanted it to be.

Perspective is also basic. In this picture the subject was slightly lopsided, and combined with a good zoom (better for portraits), it "flats" the image regarding to the plane of camera sensor. Therefore, the model looks better without using the liquify filter in photoshop. Sometimes, a good control of the elements is much better than a good control of photoshop ;)

Ambush Bugs are tiny Assassin Bugs that lie in wait on flowers. When their prey lands on the flower, they use their raptorial forelegs to snatch them. Then they stab them with their beak, paralyze them, liquify their insides, and basically drink their meal.

So after about 15 minutes of following this colourful bug around the sunflower leaf he had alighted on, he decided that he and I were friends and flew directly at my camera. Not knowing what it was at this point, I backed away only to have him now aim for my arm as a landing spot. I swatted him away -- but immediately felt badly about my reaction since I believe he was just trying to make friends with me. Now, after reading what this assassin does to his friends , I'm rather glad I laid down those ground rules about contact from the get go. First time I've ever encountered this bug - he's about the size of a bee. By the looks of those biceps he definitely works out at the gym every day.

Explore - 2009-12-06 #5

The vessel Sea Bird II (IMO Number: 9135559) entering port Georgetown, Sunday December 6 2009 carrying liquified petroleum gas (LPG). Guyana, South America

An experimental image that started life as a capture of a white camelia flower in my back garden. I have been diversing with my photography recently during the lockdown and had taken the image and processed in Photoshop and Lightroom for a bit of fun and this was the result. I am sure with a bit more practice I can do better but for now I think it looks quite nice. Thanks for looking and stay safe.

For more black & white photography, visit www.monochromeframes.com

Pretty little hummer toward dusk last night....it was high ISO and very grainy so I used a little of the liquify tool to smear the grainy background. It helped I think....it was pretty ugly......just love how you can save something with photoshop...at least make it better than it was.... especially if one part is good and one part isnt' so great.

Created using liquify from a sunset shot taken from Los Gigantes on Tenerife.

5xp HDR rendered photo taken handheld of a pier that you can pay to use (along with hundreds of others!) for fishing in Yokohama.

This is just a few hundred meters away from where we decided to fish (for free I might add and without the crowds).

Yokohama, Japan.

Maria Shape:) edited in photoshop for vanity's sake...lol Couldn't get everything right but I think her mouth is pretty damn close...lol *shrug* only liquified it a little to exaggerate out the grin...

Soundtrack to Maria pic-

The Smiths-This Charming Man-- www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGnjrTkv1gs&feature=related

Portishead - Sour Times-- www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuUYZJuzie0

Dir en grey - Dir en grey - Akuro no oka-- www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MfcMn6jwYM&feature=related

**Bass line at 5:30 gives me goosebumps, so fucking good..Toshiya is a god**

Took so long cuz I kept stopping to watch the videos...lol

Some terrifying children came past our home last night and left with substantial amounts of chocolates. At this time of year even our flowers can exhibit behavioural changes. I doubt you were sucked in but take care when you next sniff the roses.

Fantasy Canyon is, well, fantastic. It looks like a baby born to Bisti mother and Little Finland father. One cannot shake off the thought that once, in the past, the rock was liquid, then splashed, and instantly solidified into shapes unlike any rocks I have ever seen. This is a composite with the foreground light painted by bouncing a flashlight from nearby rocks to get a softer illumination of the same color. It took many experiments to find the right angle of the reflected light that would give the two figures engaged in a heated debate the most flattering light. The background is a stack of long high ISO exposures taken with the same lens focused to infinity. It took me about an hour to clean the sky from the dreaded trails left by Elon's garbage up there. Anyone else is majorly annoyed by his swarms?

Nikon Z7, 24-70mm f4

Foreground: Single shot at f11, ISO 800, 30mm, light painted from two directions

Background: Sequator stack of ten 10 sec. exposures at f4, ISO 3200, at 30mm, shot about an hour after sunset to still have some horizon glow for contrast and a shy MW for an added element.

I couldn't be more honored and excited to announce that Ryan Dyar and I have been invited to join Bruce Omori and Tom Kuali'i in offering a once-in-a-lifetime Extreme Exposure Volcano Photography Workshop and Tour. The final polish is being put on the details, but the calendar has been locked in for October 20th-25th. This is going to be a land, air, and sea assault on the incredible spectacle of the ongoing eruption of Kilauea, which recently returned to the ocean for the first time in 3 years creating life-altering photography experiences.

I met Bruce and Tom of Extreme Exposure 7 years ago when I took their Photography Tour photographing the ocean entry for the first time. Not only was it the single most amazing thing I've ever seen, I've been exceptionally fortunate to be able to call Bruce and Tom dear friends since then.

As you can see in this image of Bruddah Tom, the edge of a volcano can be a dangerous place to spend time if you don't know what you're doing. Having the experience of Tom and Bruce at your disposal allows you to get into the absolute best positions to capture images of natures most amazing spectacle because they understand the shifting conditions better than almost anyone. If you've seen their work here on 500px or visited their gallery in Hilo, you know that Bruce and Tom are two of the best lava photographers ever born. I learned the hard way that shooting lava is like trying to speak Swahili. You know it's a language, but you have no idea what's going on. Best to have an interpreter with you to ensure that you have success. Through decades of friendship, kindness, and contribution to the Hilo community, Bruce and Tom have developed connections that will allow us to visit the flow via helicopter and boat to get an even broader perspective of this incredible event.

If you follow me at all, you know that my mentor and dearest friend Ryan Dyar is my inspiration, my rock, my boo. He's one of the best teachers of photography and post processing that has ever been born, and one of my all-time favorite people. We had an immensely good time on our workshop last summer in Glacier National Park, and I can't WAIT to share the memories of this new workshop with him.

So we have Tom, a world class shooter with an incredible eye for lava compositions and a 6th sense for bravely getting into amazing locations while keeping everything safe. Bruce, who understands how the flow works, how to shoot it, and how to show YOU how to shoot it better than anyone I've ever met. And Ryan, who is a creative genius and world class instructor. What, pray tell, do I bring to the table that qualifies me to join the instructor corp for this Extreme Exposure Workshop? Well, I've been wondering the same thing... but I think I finally figured it out. I'm fat and I'm pretty old, so while hiking out across the flow, if I fall in and die a death of liquified bone and skin, you should probably turn and go a slightly different way.

We really hope to see you there. For information and details on the tour, send an email to: info@extremeexposure.com

June 17, 2007 # 90

60051 ‘Mary Somerville’ pulls away from the loop at Marchwood with 6m23, the 1412 Fawley to Longport service.

Remarkably, the pre-grouping semaphore signals (on a modern steel gantry) survive in 2023, much else in this image is consigned to the history books.

The train conveys both liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and bitumen from the refinery at Fawley. The last rail-borne traffic at Fawley ceased in 2016.

The locomotive survives, albeit in scrap condition, not having been used since the early 2000s.

The signalman’s Reliant Robin car may or may not survive: while its fibreglass body will have spared it the indignity of rusting away, in 2023 there are very few of these three-wheelers still on the UK’s roads.