The Challenge: Using a particular stock image, and using it to create brushes, textures, and or layers on your own image, to create a work of art.

The Goal: Well, to make the most creative, eye-pleasing work of art, of course!

This was A Photographer’s Craft’s latest challenge. Once again I took the challenge. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds, trust me. Especially since, at the time, I was in my slump.  The stock image we had to use was this:

The Catch: Not only did we have to try and be creative, we had to remember and share our processes in creating our pieces! Almost sounds like school huh? You can find the forum thread with these details here.

Being in a slump as I was, I didn’t have any new photography to play with, nor was I in the mood to take any. So, I dug through a bunch of “junk” images, old photographs I had no intention on using, but haven’t deleted them yet, you know the type. I came acrossed a photo I took this past summer of one of my miniture roses. Here’s what I started with:

And since I’m too lazy to go through all the steps I did again, I will just copy and paste what I wrote in the forum 🙂

Let’s see if I can fully remember this.

1. Overlayed a different texture over my original image. (Hey, there was no rule stating I couldn’t use additional textures!)
2. Did a layer mask and erased the textures from the actual flowers.
3. Played with the channel mixer.
4. Brought the stock image onto my image, free transformed it much larger than my image.
5. Flipped the stock image horizontally, moved it to where I wanted it.
6. Decreased the Red channel’s saturation on the stock image, almost all the way down.
7. “Overlayed” the stock image onto my image.
8. Did another layer mask to clean up over the flowers, so the stock image was behind the flowers.
9. Did a little dodge and burn (baby).
10. Went back to the stock image and did a select color rage on the background (the blue sky) Copied it, and pasted it on my image.
11. Set the new layer over as “Pin light”
12. Flattened image
13. Decreased saturation a little, upped the brightness, decreased contrast.
14. Did a little more burning.
15. Added a sepia photo filter.
16. Created a new layer, used a faux text paintbrush for the writing, switched that layer to “Overlay”
17. Adjusted the brightness/contrast again, this time increasing contrast a tad.

And Done!

And my final image, and entry was:

A Semblance of Yearning

I didn’t win, but I did take 3rd place!

The piece that took 1st place was:

Ode to Banksy by Adrian Rachele

The rest of then entries were:

A Year of Novembers by Dana DiPasquale

afraid of the light by andreasphoto

autumn collage by Adriana Glackin

in the mist by Aaron Schwartz

Autumn by Debbie Black

Ghosts of the New Desert by smallfox

Breath in Deeply Autumn Wind by Freelancer

Memories of Autumn by Misti Hymas

 

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