Photoshop

Portraiture

I have a sort of existential dread and cold sweat that comes over me when I think about telling models (or indeed the poor friends and family) that end up in front of my camera what to do. So when portraiture came up in the course there was a little panic. This is probably the only time the coronavirus has been helpful as I could mostly work with people I knew to get the work done.

Clockwise from top left – With a Precious Object, Through Glass, Without a Face, Self-portrait in the Style of an Artist (Picasso in this case) and With Movement.

My poor mother… She hasn’t quite gotten over the shame of wandering round the building we’ve not long moved to dressed in my Harry Potter cosplay robe. Each of these images had briefs of their own. The self portrait is built of 6 different images and was almost a bit of a cheat. I didn’t want to turn my camera on myself directly, at that time anyway, so built it out of old selfies. The thing is I can take good shots of people if they don’t know it.

Clockwise from top left – Work from my Higher at the Christmas Style Mile Carnival and the SEC Craft Fair, a shot from the night photography workshop in Edinburgh and my personal favourite, The Shoe Seller in Tenerife.

None of these were posed…..And I almost prefer these to formal, posed images. Heck “The Shoe Seller” is a bit of a portfolio fixture at this point. I accept that there’s a definite need for images that are posed. It’s maybe just not my thing just now. Need to work on it though because I’ll need to do a studio shoot or two when I get back into the college buildings.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I’ve been collecting photos of the social distancing floor dots since the first lockdown lifted. Finally collated into one image just in time for another shift to the rules before Christmas. All taken with my phone’s camera. Nothing sums up the current situation than the waiting and distance between people.

South Queensferry

Sitting on the edge of the Firth of Forth is a sweet little town better known for the iron rail bridge that cuts through and dominates the skyline. A place with its own history and teeming with sightseers currently, it’s a great place to visit. It does boast some great views of the 3 Forth bridges – the famous red rail bridge, Forth road bridge, and the new Queensferry Crossing.

All three bridges stacked up, looking west. If you move further to the east beyond the Queensferry Crossing then you can achieve amore startling effect as the grey road bridges stand out out over the red of the Rail Bridge. I didn’t manage to head out that way this time but did walk out from the town further west to get the shots to build a panorama.

As assembled in Photoshop and then reduced….. the original image is over 23,000 pixels long and broke WordPress. I’ll admit it does lose something in the reduction. The colour and vibrancy is kinda kicked out of it.

For more on the science of the iconic Forth Rail Bridge and it’s history check out Wikipedia.

I’ve gone over to the dark side. No, not really, I dont plan on making all my photos look artificial. It’s not my style but it does allow from some editing that I might not have done before. I’ve also been trying my hand at repairing an old family photo.

It was pretty badly damaged when I scanned it in at college nearly a year ago as part of my beginners night course. I managed to do most of the repair work in an evening but didn’t have the confidence then to repair the faces. The image on the left is how I left it after that session and, eventually, with the house move the original went into storage so I can’t even start it again just now. On the right is the best I can do at the moment to bring it back. The faces trouble me but I’ll keep practicing.

It’s not all restoration….. I had a bit of fun while I was practicing. Poor Frankie is the terror of the Tenerife roads.