I picked this for an upload because there was spontaneity in the act. I admit that I am still working toward photographs that require a lot of advance planning. Really good composites have to "storyboard" what needs to happen in order to produce an image composed from many photos. I have some ideas on the back burner, but that's coming. I've done some, and I will share them, but it's still a technique in progress.
This picture, on the other hand, proceeds from spontaneity and momentary decisions. The picture, for instance was not something I had planned to take. While killing a little time, though, and since I had my camera with me, I knew I'd wish I had taken a few pics if I'd left here without any. So, on a whim, I grabbed some shots. What's more, all the birds in the area were right on the shore until I moved in close. After taking off in a flurry, they began to return, and I caught this one gliding in. Again, an unexpected development created an opportunity.
Then, tonight, I was watching TV and the graphics behind the people being interviewed incorporated some sort of texture, added through Photoshop. I wanted to try to copy what they'd done, what looked like some ink smudges, scratching, and water spots. I knew I could create that by taking a picture (or pictures) of some smudged ink, some ink drops, some scratching of soot from a glass plate held over a white surface, etc. But I wanted something easier, so, on a whim, I grabbed my iPhone and took a picture of the granite in the bathroom. After importing it, I used a b/w negative image of the granite in Overlay mode (layer 1 below) to make one set of textures, then, used it again, slightly stretched, converted to a gradient layer, again using Overlay mode.
I used masks to control the effect of the textures and did a little dodging and burning on the images in layers 1 and 2 as well. Since the bird is flying, I felt that a horizontal crop would emphasize the motion.
Finally, above is the same picture, but flipped. For those of us that read left to right, the left-to-right motion of the bird should now imply moving forward in time. In the movies, such a movement implies positive progress in the narrative arc. Hmm...the bird is just trying to get somewhere it wants to go.
At any rate, the whole thing (the Photoshop part) only took a few minutes. Sometimes I spend an hour, sometimes more, working out effects, but this was the result of a few quick decisions. I like the result, and while its merits can be debated, I think it's interesting and "moody." It may even possess a message, if anyone cares to bestow one. The point is that I think it's okay to be spontaneous. It's also important to know one's medium well enough to be spontaneous. This certainly isn't full of difficult techniques, but familiarity with Photoshop allowed me envision results and pull out the right tools. In other words, I wasn't simply goofing around with effects. I could spontaneously picture the desired effect and then, knowing where to look for it, find and apply the best tool for the job.
