Grunge!!!

Grunge is very trendy and very interesting, it's the in thing in photography right now,  what exactly is grunge photography?

I don't think I have the exact answer, and I don't think that there is an exact answer as grunge like other kind of digital imagery is extremely creative and depends on the artist vision.

Normally these images or creations take a lot of editing, many hours in Photoshop, a lot of frustration and unsuccessful work that end up in the garbage bin, that's part of my experience and like many of other digital art, patience and practice is required.

The grunge effect can be described as dirty, gloomy, dark, old, eerie, using textures and mute color.

 The urban graffiti-like design is often done using one, two, three or more images.

The following images were done using textures, vectors, one to 5 images and hours of Photoshop editing.

City Woman with Tatiana Vladimirovna, done with 2 images, a lot of texture and editing

Miror, only one image using texture, brushes, and vectors.

Help me with Jessy Cortes, using 2 images, textures, vectors, brushes.

Dream with Christina Patterson, using 5 images, textures, brushes.

Bullet Man, using 3 images, texture and brushes.

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Portraiture Point of View

I always like to try different point of view, even when shooting portraiture, during my first session with Jessica, I asked her to go under the staircase and looking up at me, it's a different point of view for portraiture but it worked very well.

I processed one in color and one in black and white.
I added a soft effect a hint of color and texture to the black and white, to add mystery.

Different point of view for portraiture

Adding softness, texture and a hint of color to black and white to add mystery

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Winter Dream

I always liked to work with Corel Painter, lately I upgraded to Painter 2015, and I had problem with my brushes pressure using my Wacom tablet, the problem was haft fixed, some of the brushes still have pressure problem.
My tablet is an old version, I probably be better with the newer version mine is 6 years old and I used it everyday, that will be the first thing on my list to buy when I go back north.

Even with the problem I was able to do a painterly winter scene, from a picture that I took almost a year ago it wasn't a winter scene, using Painter I brush out the background and painted over the horses using different brush, mostly oil.

After I added a texture, light and snow using Alien Skin Exposure 7 to add smaller snow flake I used Akvis Nature Art.

Took me few days to finish it, for me it's a relaxing activity,  it can take weeks before I get my vision on the media, many times I am not successful and my work end up in the garbage, that's fine, even with the best software it's often hard to bring a vision into a 2 dimensions media.

Winter Dream

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Blending Modes for Composite

I love doing composite, it's fun and creative, this time I use a wall texture to blend everything together,

I started by opening a new document in Photoshop about 16' x 24' white background high resolution  300 pixels per inch.

I used this document as my canvas, took 3 photos, 2 from my husband art work and one of my street photography, plus a wall texture to add to the story.

It's a very easy process I copied, pasted and free transformed all the images into the canvas, I turned everything to black and white and flattened the layers after what I copy and paste the wall texture on top of the base layer and blended it using multiply blending mode again flattened the layers, plaid with gradient to get some color back and curve to give more contrast, only took me an hour, and it was an hour of relaxation and creativity,

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Corel Painter 2015

Few months ago, when trying the new Corel Painter 2015, I found out that the new version had a lot of bugs,  brush pressure problems, most of the brush didn't respond to Wacom tablet stylus. I was very frustrated and continued to use my older version.

Corel Painter is an expensive and extensive program and the new version had a lot more creative tools, I sent an email to Corel about the problem and at that time they were working on a patch.

Yesterday I decided to check if the patch was ready and it was.

 The New Particle Brushes and Jitter Smooth tool create organic shape and it's excellent to create texture directly on the canvas.

During the next few months I will experiment with the new tools, a lot of tutorial to watch!!!

Experimenting with Corel Painter 2015,

Original Photo, Canon 5D Markiii and Lensbaby double glass optic.

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Texture

Texture for flower and fine art, Canon 5D Markii, Lensbaby double glass optic at f4, 1/2500sec, ISO200

Using texture is a big trend in post production, depending of what you want to achieve, vintage look, adding mood, fine art, it’s all depend of what you want to communicate.

Texture to add mood and grunge, Canon 5D Markii, Canon 24-105 at 24mm, f8, 1/800sec, ISO200

Texture to add mood and grunge, Canon Rebel Xsi Infra Red, Canon 24-105 at 105mm, f8, 1/80sec, ISO200

 This one is a composite of many images, adding texture to add mood.

Canon 5D Markii, Lensbaby pinhole optik, using Chinese Paper Texture onOne Perfect Effect software

Another composite image, adding texture to add softness to the mood, and to isolate the subject.

First of all you need to get the textures, most program, like onOne already have textures, I also shoot my own, get free one on line and buy from texture provider like Florabella and Flypaper, I also use a texture plug in for Photoshop “Totally Rad” Dirty Pictures, the plug in comes with 21 textures, and it is easy to add to it, I added my favorite textures from Florabella and Flypaper without any problem, I am not sure how many textures that can be input to the program, but right now I probably have around 200 that's quite enough for my needs, I am also using onOne program, they add bonus texture all the time, and it's very easy to use, probably one of the best program on the market that is a plug in and also a stand alone.

Using texture with portrait, to add color uniformity to the scene, Canon 5D Markii, Canon 24-105 at 105mm, f4, 1/125 sec, ISO200

Adding texture to isolate the subject,  Canon 5D Markii, Canon 70-200 at 200mm, f11, 1/25sec, ISO200

Adding bokeh texture to add mood, and isolate the subject, Canon 5D Markiii, Canon 85mm Prime Lens, f1.8, 1/500sec, ISO200

  Texture to add story, and drama, Canon 5D Markii, Canon 24-105 at 40mm, f4, 1/15sec, ISO200

Composite image, using many layers of textures and paint brush, to create a story

To use texture without plug ins, follow this link, http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-use-textures-to-enhance-your-photographs/.

For me there is no good or bad method on applying textures, the only thing that is important is to get the effect or mood that I am looking for, that why I writing this post, to show you different subject and different result using all kind of textures. 

Texture to add contrast and isolate the subject, Canon 5D Markii, Lensbaby double glass optic, f5.6, 1/80sec, ISO200

Texture to add texture, contrast and isolate the subject, Canon 5D Markii, Lensbaby double glass optic, f2.8, 1/320sec, ISO200

 Using texture for vintage, I used onOne perfect BW preset 19th Century Process daguerreotype hand color,  Canon 5D Markii, Canon 50mm prime lens, f9, 1/250sec, ISO200

 Vintage texture using Alien Skin Exposure 5, Canon 5D Markii, Canon 24-105 at 105mm, f10, 1/200sec, ISO200

Texture for painterly, effect Canon 5D Markii, Canon 24-105 at 65mm, f10, 1/80sec, ISO200

Texture for graphic imagery,  Canon Rebel Xsi, Canon17-55 at 55mm, f10, 1/125sec, ISO200

Composite image, adding texture for contrast and to isolate subject

 

Adding texture to change the color for a vintage look, landing in Vancouver, Canon 5D Markii, Canon 50mm prime lens, f11, 1/320sec, ISO320

 

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