It’s Spring – and almost officially, so I got inspired to work on an image of a blue poppy that I photographed at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania back in early March. This was made inside the conservatory. I had heard so much about these blue poppies, but my vision and the reality were at odds on that day. There were just a few in a large planter, two planters actually, and most of them were already spent. This one was in great shape, though, and the light came softly through it’s petals as it gracefully nodded its head. I made a good, clean image of it, but it needed something else in my mind. So I took it into Photoshop, combined it with an out of focus layer that I had exposed while there, using overlay as the blending mode; that made it a lot better but I decided to take it a step further, and made a copy of the layer, and ran it through Topaz Simplify using the watercolor preset. I made no adjustments to that preset, but instead went back to Photoshop and reduced opacity to 70% to blend the water color effect and the real but dreamy soft montage I had just made. I like the results. Painterly, but not an obvious preset look. If I had more time, I’d continue, but I have to post this before I head off to teach a workshop in the morning; oh wait, it IS morning already!!
Yes! Good you have them – we’ll play on the boat ‘in between’ other stuff this way! see you soon, Wendy.
love the flower
from longwood gardens
and the tin pitcher and flower too
thanks for sharing how you worked on them
glad i already have topaz and all the nik filters
otherwise i would be downloading them tonight
see you in alaska
wendy
I love this photo and all the things we can do with layers and blending modes and software such as Topaz. We just all need to think outside the box. (that is the hard part!)
yes, thinking outside the box IS hard – which is ironic since we’re photographic artists! But having time to play and experiment is so important. I knew I wanted to do something else beside ‘just a pretty poppy image’ but wasn’t sure what until I experimented.
Oh, and by the way, all – the original background was a printed image of out-of-focus foliage/grasses.
i love poppies. they have so much ‘personality’
Gorgeous digital art, and a good example of how powerful Topaz can be. Lovely creation, beginning with a simple composition.
Thank you Bob!