Post 8 - Photo experiments...

Blogging my evolution as an artistic art educator - An art-based experiment...

Because I love photography and I am in a position where I need to fill up my photo project bag-o-tricks, I played with an interesting concept from one of the terrific new books I purchased for school called Caffeine for the Creative Mind, by S. Mumaw & W. Oldfield.

One of the curious assignments they offer for picture takers is to try photographing one's self in reflective surfaces, other than mirrors.

So, I tried some shots, and these are the results... Interesting and some I had to push a bit further in Photoshop, because I couldn't help myself. (The last one is just playing around with silouettes, and I finally got to use the "threshold" control in PS!)

Plexiglass case - See my hand in the left side of the photo. (All I did here was to crank up the contrast and drop the brightness.)

Glass case - Faint, but you can see my shoulders and necklace, if you look closely. (I played with desaturating the photo and adding a rendering filter.)

Television screen - Liked the dynamics of putting my hand over my head. (I desaturated again, because I didn't like the yellowish tint of the original, and I cranked the contrast with the addition of a film grain filter.)

Fireplace screen - Thought this was a very cool one, with the Firestart log logo showing up in the picture. (I desaturated again and added an ink outlines filter. It emphasizes the screen pattern and makes me look ghost-like.)

Glass across an artwork - Very ghostly result! (I left the color in here, because I needed it for the contrast, since you could hardly see me over the busy black and white print, by Jay Bolotin. I really forced the contrast up here, so you could see me. Weird how it affected the color, more than the blacks and whites.)

Yes... That's a flamingo in the photo! (We had an Alice in Wonderland party for my daughter recently, and we left the pink yard flamingos stuck in our plant pots. It made for a very cool silouette and decent use of the threshold control on PS!)

Safety, health, happiness, and peace... Pam