Digital Experiments by Carolyn

For this weeks challenge we were to create a black and white piece of art.  I started with a beautiful colored photo from Shutterstock of tulips in shades of bright purple and converted the image to black and white and added some brushes from Annika van Holdt.

I'm not into Halloween or Spooky like so many of my friends; however, I did want to do this challenge.  HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The tutorial provided was altered to fit the photos I selected.    The background and the doll were from Sebastian Michaels black and white photos and the bicycle was from Photoshop Artistry files. 

I'm not much in for dark and scary but did create a piece for the challenge as shown below.  Not sure why I added the bunny other than he was cute.

The tutorial for this technique followed a square shaped image.  I changed mine to oblong and used a photo taken this summer, changing the colors just a bit for fall.
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For this challenge, I used an image from the Morgue file and added human-like hair along with a background.  Doesn't he look striking?

The photography challenge this month at Digital Whisper Blog is the letter M.  While working in the yard a week or so ago, I saw these large mushrooms that had sprouted under a rock bench.  I quickly grabbed my camera to take several photos as I had never seen such large mushrooms in our yard.

To create the final piece, I started with a zephyr filter by Flaming Pear followed by a creative filter from Filter Forge.  I added a top layer to dodge and burn for the final results. 

It is fun to experiment and Topaz Labs came out with a new filter, IMPRESSIONS, which I used to change the first challenge to this one.

For this weeks challenge at Digital Whisper Blog, we were provided with a tutorial to follow if desired.  I followed the concept and interpreted it this way using two black and white images as the base.



The floral background was a photo taken by Sebastian Michaels, and the woman was "The Sad Pretty Woman in Black" from PhotoXPress.  The butterfly was from SXC.  I used a blue overlay on the black and white images and as a final touch, added an abstract texture in brown tones and also applied a blue overlay.

I downloaded a photo of an old typewriter from Unsplash and applied a rust texture to really rust it up.  I also tried something new as my final step. Below is how I did it.

Go to 'Select' and 'color range'.  At the top where it reads 'sampled colors' scroll down and select 'highlights'.  You will see marching ants around your selection.  Go to 'layer' new layer and select layer from copy.  You will now have a new layer with the highlighted areas of the photo.  I changed the blending mode to LINEAR BURN and merged the two layers for the final effect.  Hope you digital experts will try this technique.



The bottom image was the original photo.

My husband has this very special Christmas Lamp on his desk which you can view through the window to his office.  I increased the contrast, detail and added a grunge filter by Jerry Jones for the final effect. 

The theme for the Dark Whispers challenge is MISTY MOONLIGHT.  I used two of my own photos, one of the moon behind the trees and the other of stormy clouds for this challenge.  I also added a lantern from public domain and popped in a couple of birds.  Using Topaz filters and playing around with them I came up with my final result.  THE CHALLENGES are learning projects to help perfect my techniques and I welcome critiques.  If you have recommendations or suggestions, please post them in your comments.

The Photography group at Digital Whisper has been using a letter of the alphabet for their challenges, and the letter for September is 'K'.  That was not an easy one for me until I was canning my peaches and realized a KETTLE would work for the challenge.  Thus I took a photo of my canning kettle, used a background photo of the bottled peaches I did back in 2007 and added a tilt shift blur filter to final manipulation.

Digital Whisper is a group of artists who like to create digital art and share techniques with others. Beginning in September, the group will move to a blog and art created for challenges will be linked to our individual blogs.

In the next few months, I will be adding links for members of the Digital Whisper group for you to view their digital creations if desired.  They create incredible art and it will be fun to share it with all of you.

Carolym

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