I'd hate to be a judge. Partly because I wouldn't feel
confident or competent at judging other peoples' photos, but mainly because I
couldn't stand the silence of it. It's not considered PC to interrupt a judge.
After all, the reason we invite external judges is to get an impartial
assessment and it would not be right to say anything that might bias their
opinion (although I own to unbuttoning my little rosebud when I've
thought a comment was completely off track).
But giving a talk to club members is different. If nobody in
the audience says anything, either you have failed to engage their interest, or
you have covered the topic so comprehensively that no one can think of anything
to ask. Fortunately, that didn't happen and there were so many questions and
comments that it was a struggle for both of us to get what we had planned to
say into the time available.
There is little point in revisiting here the two topics I
talked about (Image File Types, and Actions in PhotoShop) because all you need
to remind you is a copy of the PhotoCraft Photography Basics disc. This
has been updated to Version 5 which now includes the slide-show for Image File
Types, plus a detailed information sheet on how to use and write Actions. It
also has copies of Actions files that you can import into PhotoShop or Elements
and use to prepare your images for the club's PDI competitions.
I don't have Elements so was not able to test the Action
files written for this software. If you use Elements, please could you try
loading the Action files and let me know whether they work OK?
Dave S demonstrated how to add a vignette to a picture and
recommended having it on a layer so that you can adjust its density using the
Opacity slider. He also demonstrated how to use the Cloning tool to get rid of
unwanted picture elements or to take emphasis off parts of an image by cloning
from the vignette.
Original
He also showed how adding a subtle vignette to a picture of
Banstead Woods gave the picture depth and magically brought it alive. For
larger unwanted patches, we saw how to make a feathered copy from one part of
the image and drag it onto the offending area.
I find the Healing tool generally more useful than the
Cloning tool but it depends on what you are trying to do. The Cloning tool
simply copies pixels from the sampled area to the target area. The Healing tool
does the same except it also samples from around the target area and matches
the texture, lighting, transparency and shading of the sampled pixels to the
pixels being healed. It only goes wrong if you try to heal something too close
to a picture element that differs a lot from the patch you want to heal. Both
tools take practice to use effectively.
Dave concluded by showing us one of his photographic
collages. It must have had about 30 layers that transformed a shot of a horse
and carriage taken on a wet day in Bruges to a picture of a tram moving through
the night on a foggy day in London. The driver started life as a portly 're-enactment'
policeman who had to be slimmed down, his helmet replaced with a soldier's hat
and his buttons replaced from a military tunic. Even the tramlines were drawn
in. The resulting picture was totally convincing. But is it photography? Or
art? Search me!
No comments:
Post a Comment