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Study Group 34
Georgianne Giese











 
Steve Estill
Candy Childrey
Phil Coleman
Semi Ayatar
Avis Davidson
Georgianne Giese
Leif Alveen
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July

'Desert Dusk Blooms'

How I did it -

I didn't do much creative in Photoshop this time. Took some pictures of our Botanical Garden and really liked them, so I just played with them a bit.

  1. Used Photomatrix to produce an HDR
  2. Copied layer.
  3. On copied layer, created levels adjustment layer and moved the dark side in to increase contrast and saturation.
  4. Adjusted some of sky color.
  5. Topaz Detail, deep blue sky application.
  6. Put a pale oval vignette around picture and applied an inner glow to the edges of the layer.

COMMENTS:
Steve Estill

You have some interesting plants. I'm afraid the colour balance doesn't look right to me. Particularly the greens look to have too much magenta. There's a bit too much in the image - no specific point of focus to rest my eyes. The vignette is so pale that I can't make it out.

Candy Childrey This is a nice peaceful image. However, it doesn’t seem to have a focal point, unless you mean for the viewer to be totally taken in by the Christmas tree-like plant in the right foreground, however, a nice fanciful landscape.
Phil Coleman

The texture in most of the green foliage is appealing.  Overall, I am not quite sure what the focus is.  Cropping out the rightmost 20% might help.

Semi Ayatar  
Avis Davidson  
Georgianne Giese  
Leif Alveen Nice colors from the HDR, but the image as a whole strikes me as somewhat messy. Not much to focus on - what is the main subject, exactly? In spite of all your work on the sky it comes across as a bit washed out, which puzzles me. That could be due to the low resolution image I have to view, however. Also, I can't spot the vignette, no matter how hard I try???


Member Bio

My interest in photography started in Brownie Scouts back in the 50s! As a teenager, I spent my time sketching nature. As an adult, I only took family and snapshot photos. After 3 children and 9 grandchildren, my family pictures got old!

My husband, Fred, got me interested in the real stuff! I've spent the last eight years using Photoshop to play with my husband's pictures. Photography is his passion. Photoshop was mine.

As a computer scientist, I've pummeled my years at work, saturating my left brain, which is in dire need of defragmentation. I'm still pumping out computer code, of necessity. Can't wait to retire!

For relief, I've dabbled in writing and am a certified spiritual counselor and minister. The latter is relatively recent. It was through my counseling of many artists and writers that the message came through loud and clear that this world is a place for us to extend the love that we are creatively, as a form of intimate communication.

Recently, I've decided that my heart is crying out for a more tangible creative outlet, so I started looking seriously at the Canon Rebel, which I inherited from Fred when he got a better camera. One inspiration is the book "God Is At Eye Level", by Jan Phillips.

Software/Hardware: I now use PhotoMatrix Pro and Photoshop CS4 with the Topaz plug-in. We have a couple of Dell computers (XPS 420 and laptop). However, I've really been bummed by the extremely poor quality of the Dell monitor. It's not a graphics monitor, though it's billed as one. We've calibrated it, but that doesn't help. Have to port my pics over to an old Dell Dimension with an excellent ViewSonic graphics CRT, in order to adjust the color and brightness.

My desire is to capture photos that are fundamentally focused on something artistically appealing, and then to make use of that collection to create works of art. For me, I loose track of time all together when I am in the depths of this passion, and I love that!


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