Griswald Monday

Griswald stopped by the artists' Coop, The Arts Arena Gallery, in Delray Beach, Florida but it was closed. Grizzy loved the ceramic sculptures, paintings, hand- crafted jewelry and photography that he could see on display through the window so he decided to wait a little while just in case one of the artists came by to work in the gallery and wouldn't mind inviting him inside for a visit....

One Hot Tomato

This plant barely survived all of the cold spells that we've had in South Florida this winter; it's weak &  scraggly looking but I guess it's pretty tough because almost overnight, a small, yellowish  on it's way to orangish- red, organic tomato appeared... hurray!!! It didn't get much help from me except for a steady diet of coffee grinds that I'd throw on top of the soil a few times a week...watching it grow as it soaks up the sunshine really is amazing...

Grizwalds' Valentines Day Monday

Do you want me to read it to you? You know it's Valentines Day, right?  It's ok if you didn't get me anything...did you?

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY EVERYONE XOXO

Photoshop Trick

I captured this image of Grizzy running toward me so that I could try a Photoshop trick that simulates "rear-curtain sync". I'd watched an online video lesson by Rick Sammon who said that he always tries to shoot sharp images and then if he wants a certain effect he'll enhance the image later using Photoshop. His technique was easy to learn and I like the results. Here's how I did it in case anyone wants to give it a try.
I opened the image in Photoshop and duplicated the background layer. The first step was to click on FILTER>CONVERT FOR SMART FILTERS>FILTER BLUR>MOTION BLUR; in the MOTION BLUR DIALOGUE BOX, I adjusted the angle to 45 but you can choose whatever gives you the look that's best for your subject and I adjusted the speed just a little. When I closed the MOTION BLUR Dialogue Box, I went to the bottom of the tools panel on the left side of my Photoshop window and made sure that BLACK was selected for my foreground color. Then on the right side of the PS window, in the panel, I clicked on the empty SMART FILTERS BOX. Next, I selected a brush (small,soft) from the tools panel and set the opacity to 100 (opacity is at the top of the screen in the menu bar) Then I started painting Griswalds' eyes and face, working my way from the center of his face outward....as I got further away from his eyes (where the plane of focus would naturally change, I lowered the opacity to increase the blur and continued to do that to the edges of the photo.

So instead of shooting a lot of images at various slow shutter speeds, I took one sharp image and then created the motion blur that I wanted in Photoshop. I know that some photographers like to do as little post- processing as possible but in the process of developing a workflow and learning Lightroom I'm discovering Photoshop and it's a lot of fun.

If anyone tries this out on their photos let me know or if you have any tricks to share I'd love to try them.

Grizwalds' First Visit To The Dog Park

Griswald Monday