texture overlay

Florida Fine Art Photography - Pelican Texture Composite

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This is a composite of two images, with a texture abstract photo blended over a pelican photo.I have a folder of abstract and texture photographs I keep for when I want to make composite images like the one above.  It is fun sometimes to spice up an image by combining two (or more) photographs in a complementary way.  

A blurry photo of a bookshelf was overlayed onto the photo of the pelican in Photoshop.  I just adjusted the opacity of the book case photo down a little and set the blending mode to Overlay.  Then I layer masked a little of the bookshelf image off of the pelican to make the pelican look cleaner.  Digital Photography School has a good tutorial on how to do this if you would like to try it yourself!

Psychedelic Pelican of St. Petersburg Florida

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A psychedelic pelican composite image made using a layer mask in PhotoshopI had two images lying around in my random folder for months.  One was a graffiti wall I photographed knowing someday I would use it as a texture background.  Then I had this kind of wide-eyed pelican photo.  This afternoon I thought to combine them for a psychedelic looking fine art photograph.  In Photoshop I placed the graffiti wall image right over the pelican photo.  Then using a layer mask I was able to brush away the wall to reveal the pelican underneath, as well as choosing the blend mode for the overall look.  This is actually a fairly simple Photoshop skill.  To get more of an idea of how the combo process works, check out this blog post.

What does love equal? free brick wall texture

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What does love equal for you? Click to download full resolution textureWhile walking around downtown St. Petersburg with camera and tripod in tow, I came across the above chalk drawing on the side of a brick wall of a church.  I stopped and paused as it really caught my attention.  To me it meant, "what does love equal to you?"  I was glad to have the proper photo gear with me to make the best high resolution texture of the drawing I could.  You can download the same full res texture here.

Beloved puppy Kiki used with brick wall heart textureI used some Photoshop skills to create the above composite image using the brick wall chalk heart texture.  What would you put in front of the equal sign?

There was more, a + sign! Click to download the full resolution textureThen I realized the artist had not just drawn an equal sign and a heart, there was a + sign also so that two things could be put together to show what creates love.  Due to wall space constraints the space before and after the + sign were not equal so I photographed them the best I could.

Might Jason + a Porsche 911 = love?Using the same Photoshop skills I made a quick mockup of what yours truly might add with to create love!  Anyone who knows me knows my love for proper sports cars, and nothing is better than a Porsche 911!

Put a link in the comments below to the composite images you create with the brick wall chalk heart textures. 

Philosophy of observing or acting - Izu Japan Surfer

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Nikon D80 Nikkor AF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G with texture overlay of original image

  • Tutorial for how to make a textured overlay image at dPS

 

Observe or act?  One cannot do both.  If one has great surfing skills, would one ever set them aside for even one day to be a great surfing photographer?  The surfer above was by far the best surfer in the water the two days I spent at a beach on the Izu peninsula in Japan a few years back.  I have very limited surfing skills, so on that occasion I was content with only observing.  

I find myself wondering, why would one choose to only observe?  Is it entirely due to not being able to perform the act under observation?  Therefore . . . if one can, one does; if one cannot, one observes.  Is that a rigid truth?  

Perhaps one could categorize photography as a powerful act of observation.  If so, then maybe one can both act and observe.  I feel very strong instincts to observe as well as to act depending on the situation.  Perhaps then observation leads to action?  Certainly many people see photographs made via strong observation of a photographer that in turn inspire them to take action, and vice versa.  A strong act inspires observation and thus photography.  This seems to be yet another example of the duality of all existence.