Personal Collection: “Painted Clouds”

If you've been following my recent posts, you know the drill by now. The image above (best viewed at a larger size) was post-processed using Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter X. The actual image is from a trip to Washington D.C. in April of this year. On the flight back from D.C. to San Diego, as we flew into the sunset, a friend of mine told me to take a picture of the clouds out of the window. I usually disregard shots taken out of airplane windows as mere snapshots, but this particular shot caught my eye. I've had the original shot in my Flickr photostream for awhile now, but I decided to re-process it with an abstract vision in mind. The "painted" version obviously has more vibrant color than the plain copy, but in reality, the actual colors out the window were closer to this new version than my old edit. It's also worth noting that I took this photo with an old Pentax lens I got on eBay for ~$30. At the time, I couldn't afford the Pentax-FA f1.4 50mm I have now, so I took the poor man's route. I've since sold it back online, but there's just something special about shooting with an old lens. I'm seriously considering buying an old m42 mount 50mm Industar lens to somewhat make up for the FED-2 I sold awhile back.

Personal Collection: “The Lone Rose”

The image above is from my personal photography collection. The original photograph was taken in downtown San Diego whilst trying to find a way to drive around a stuck freight train while listening to a Swedish radio station. Yeah, it's complicated. Anyway, I rediscovered this photograph the other day, and decided to try a few editing techniques involving Corel Painter X that I had been meaning to experiment with. What you see above is the result. In order to bring more depth into the photograph, I added more bokeh into the background of the image, increased the vignette, and selectively muted and enhanced the colors. I recommend going to the photo's Flickr page and viewing it at a larger size.