Monochrome and Photoshop experimentation

As you can see just a few posts down, I reedited some old portrait photos of a friend. Now, for some reason, I really like the look of long hair partially covering the face/eye of people because I think it adds a dramatic, mysterious, edgy look to the person. And when I think "dramatic, mysterious, edgy" look, a lot of times I also think of black-and-white images that just look "gritty", sort of like an action comic/manga. I decided to give some of the photos a monochrome conversion, and then the handdrawn effect that I previously used with another friend's pictures. For both pictures I used the same process: I edited the picture in Lightroom, converted the picture to black and white in Lightroom, adjusted the picture some more to have more contrast between blacks and whites, loaded the picture into Photoshop, added the handdrawn effect, and messed with the curves to add more contrast. I have to say, I absolutely love the results, see for yourself:

While I love the handdrawn effect's results, I still love the original black and white conversions I made that were the base images for the handdrawn effect images. Take a look here, I think you'll see why I love them so much, too:

Also, this was from a little further back, but I played around with black and white conversions with the subject facing away. For these images, I feel that facing away provokes ideas of reflection and thinking. I added the black and white conversion and softened the image to make this reflection and thinking appear to be about the past, locked in memories but distant and untouchable.

Scenery Around Coronado Island

While I love the desert landscape, with our mountains and sunsets, a change of scenery every once in a while is nice. Coronado Island/ San Diego Bay provided a perfect change for me. While I still think desert sunsets are amazing, there's something just as amazing as a sunset looking towards the ocean from a bay, as well as being able to see the evening light reflect off of the city skyline with glimmering water in front of it. The flowers that were around were also nice to look at, better than the usual creosote or weed flowers around here. And the ambiance from the island walkways filled with families and friends having fun just created a wonderful atmosphere that was peaceful and serene.

Now that I knew what I had to work with, on the second evening of our stay I took some more pictures. While for the first evening I tried capturing the nature/landscape and skyline of the city in the evening, on the second evening I tried to capture the mood of the place by photographing the people and areas around the ferry landing and bike trails- the carefree, happy, joyous atmosphere basking in the glowing evening rays of the sunset. 

The following day, the day before we had to leave, I decided I wanted to bike around the island. So, I rented a bike and followed the bike trails, as well as the roads to the beaches, to capture some of the daily-life scenes in the afternoon. It was great not having triple digit temperatures and a broiling sun constantly bombarding me like I would have encountered in Arizona if I did the same thing.

On the plane ride home, I intended to sleep the entire way since even though I was on vacation I was still not sleeping until close to 1am while waking up at 7:30-8am. However, just like on the ride to San Diego, I was woken up around 30 minutes before landing. I've always loved flying and being able to see the landscapes below and the clouds above. This time, I was sitting slightly forwards of the wing and the engine, giving me a partially-unobstructed view out the window (although I actually like sitting by the wings to watch the ailerons and flaps move, as well as watching the contrails form on the wings, so I was actually kind of bummed with where I was sitting). But, when I looked at the view below, I forgot about that disappointment and took some photos. It's amazing seeing the clouds at eye-level or below you. And, I could see the familiar desert landscape waiting for me below. 

Three years has been too long. I forgot why Coronado Island is such a nice place to visit. The weather, the atmosphere, the sights, it's a great place. But, my last sentence contains a key word: visit. After all, all the places I went to were really just tourist areas, places where people like me go to relax and escape. As much as I love Coronado Island, I wouldn't live there. While the heat wasn't so welcoming, it was still nice returning to my desert home.

Artsy, processed pics:

More pics:

Messing Around with Photoshop

While I was going through photos from our hikes, to annoy my friend I took random pictures of her. Some of them actually came out pretty well, although dark and noisy. But, I thought they would look good in black and white, and after adjusting everything and converting to monochrome, I realized I wanted the pictures to have a hand-drawn effect/look. 

For the first picture, I wanted a more delicate, "angelic" photo, so I maxed out the value of Lightroom's Noise Reduction tool so the image was completely smoothed over. I then softened it before plugging it into Photoshop to create the handdrawn effect. The first image is the final product, the second image is what I started with.

For the second image, I decided to go with a more "gritty" appearance, so rather than reducing the noise in the picture, I amplified it by hardening all the lines in the image using Lightroom's clarity tool. I then plugged the photo into Photoshop to create the handdrawn effect. Again, the first image (third in the series) is the final product, and the second image (fourth in the series) is what I started with.