June Image - A Grim Vision in My Magic Crystal Ball

How I did it -

This is the most ambitious (outrageous?) effort for me so far in Group 24 and I am anxious to get your feedback. I took both of the source pictures one-handed with a Sony point and shoot pocket camera. The final image then resulted from numerous applications of Photoshop compatible plug-ins. The white background was replaced using a “Special FX” choice in RAYflect Four Seasons. That was then further modified via blending modes using the Asian Fan and Warm Sunflare effects from Knoll Light Factory. The crystal ball was made with 3D Sphere Pro, software that generates spheres that have fully customizable object, surface, lighting, transparency and masking properties. It is extremely complex to learn and use. Before “spherizing” my picture I flipped it and modified it using Redfield Fractalius, software I learned about from Stan Ashbrook in Group 13. As you can see in the source picture, I’m pretty beat up anyway but Fractalius turned me into a wizened old grotesque (I couldn‘t possibly use someone else‘s photo for this project!) Once I had my head in the ball, I selectively modified that part of the whole. I made a separate medium gray picture > used Digital Film Tools Light!v3 to make and size a window reflection > used Photoshop Distort Spherize twice to round it > and brought it into the ball via Overlay blending mode. Finally, I ran the Warm Sunflare filter again on just the ball at the upper left to complement the one on the main background. There was more to the production than this of course but those are the basics. What do you think? 

COMMENTS:
 

Jim's post-comment space	June 23rd -- Thank you all so much for your comments on this piece. Each of you has given me something to notice or think about in my future development of the image. I can't incorporate every idea (like changing the head in the ball) but, using your feedback, I will modify the picture before I try it in competition. After posting it here in Group 24 I showed it as a print at club. It took First Place in Creative Prints and generated a lot of interest. It will be a few weeks before I find out how it fares at the Council level.
Frank Crommelin	I admire the work that went into making this image and your extensive use of programs other than Photoshop. It is well done and the creative effects all work well together. I would like to see this done with some kind of a Wizard or Rose Bud in the globe, My only suggestion would have been to put Five dollars in some homeless mans cup and take his picture instead of yourself, It's going to be hard to explain when one of your Grand children takes this to school for show and tell
Elli Kraizberg	This is definitely your boldest piece, and the most creative and artistic one and that is why I like it very much. This Escher type image is almost perfect technically – just few smoothing of the outlines such as right side of the hand are needed. You emphasize the description of the creation of the ball but to me the uniqueness of this piece is the face.
Ian Ledgard	I just read a jokey e-mail which said 'you know you are getting older when the face in the mirror when your shaving looks like you Dad!'  Perhaps that was what you were trying to achieve? A lot of work involved but a very impressive result and all form a little compact camera. You mention a lot of software which is unknown to me and I wonder if I could cope with much more than CS3 and my BuZZ plug in.  Good bit of work.
Nancy Parker	Great job!  It is a very imaginative use of a variety of techniques to produce an image with real impact.  What amazes me most is your mastery of the variety of techniques required to produce the image and how you had any idea what to use to produce this result.  I did think that it was a little too bright in the upper left hand corner.  It tended to draw my eye and that brightness continuing into the crystal ball was also somewhat distracting.
Stephan Funke	Everything is extremely well done in this exercise, but as Jim asks us:"....what you think...?" I think it is an image which does not please me and it does not convey any message to me. Or said in an other way: I am looking for beauty and harmony in imaging and this example does not support that. A very personal approach, I know..........
Andrés Canepa	Simply extraordinary, full of creativity, you create something absolutely new (and very very good) from two good shot, it is CREATIVITY!!!.  You named a lot of different program that make me feel small because I only use the Photoshop. Congratulation on this great work, superb!!. When you present this work in an exhibition, retouch the white little line at the bottom of the ball and in the bottom-right of the hand to be the image perfect.

Jim Hawkins - Biography I am a retired Professor who lives in San Jose California.  Photography has been part of my life since I was 12.  I can remember taking pictures as a kid from a DC-3 airplane and also shooting flood waters from a moving train traveling through the Midwest.  At 21 I moved up to a 35mm camera and Kodachrome slides.  Some of the slides taken back then have placed in more recent competitions.  I stayed with the 35mm format throughout my academic years (though I did shoot Polaroid snapshots as well).  Then, just before my retirement in 1996, I got a Kodak DC-50 digital camera, a Microtek flatbed scanner, and Photoshop version 3.0.5.  Thus, I was an "early adopter" of digital imaging. Recently I stopped shooting slide film altogether, and while I continue to show prints, digital imaging has become my focus. "My Halloween Alter Ego" is a scanner image of myself (appropriately edited in Photoshop ;-).