Hidden Features: Part One

Since I'm not a huge fan of how my face looks in pictures, I tend to hide as much of it as possible with whatever I can. My shield of choice? Masks, of course!


Yeah...I like to hide.

Old Timey...

I love, and I do mean LOVE, taking random things and attempting to make them look as though they're from a different era. Using my beloved purple lamp and Macro mode, I'm able to take some pretty neat pictures. Here's some of my most favorite ones.


Oh, and just for those of you who wondered...that butterfly was dead. ;P

Tiger Mask!

Didn't I mention something about some awesome new masks a few posts back? Heck yeah I did! Here's some of the pictures that I took a couple of weeks back with one of the new masks.


Since the mask was of a tiger, I really felt I needed a lot of tall grass and loads of trees to use for a backdrop. I also wanted to try to capture some of the intensity tigers(and cats in general) have. The way cats look around things, pose, move, stare..I tried my best to capture it all. The last picture is really neat in my opinion. I wanted to show how I was viewing the world that day, and it turned out to be a lot of people's favorite picture from the group.

Shadows and Silhouettes: Part Two

I absolutely LOVE naturally fantastic lighting! It's the best!

So one evening I was standing in our kitchen, when I noticed the setting sun was shining right through the window over the sink and making a nice little patch of light on the opposite wall. I made a few shadow puppets to myself, then went to go grab my brothers and make them sit in front of the light.


I then, of course, had to have my own silhouette picture taken. Couldn't be left out of all the fun!

Once we had people down, my mom suggested I take a few of our animals. So with her holding them up, I snapped these...


As you can see from that last picture, the light was already fading away after only about 15 minutes. I planned to be more prepared for tomorrow evening, which is when I would take pictures of inanimate objects.

Shadows and Silhouettes: Part One

I basically love lamps.

Was that random? Eh, probably. But it's also 100% true! I really do love them. Not only do they cast wonderfully pleasant glows on otherwise dull environments, they also makes some wicked awesome shadows, which is what I want to spend the next few posts talking about.

Some of my most favorite pictures are taken with light cast by my everyday-nothing-special desk lamp. It's nothing more than a 40 watt GE bulb, but MAN, can that thing light up a room!

One day, I noticed how absolutely wonderful it was at making shadows of things. After a bit of rummaging through my closet to find a few props and the "perfect" outfit for the planned shoot, I went downstairs to our basement where we have a theater screen set up. After setting my camera on a tripod that was setting on a table, and after adjusting the lamp just right, I was able to get the following pictures.




Of course, the lamp is also good for just creating really good, clear light, which helps the Macro mode on my camera to get better pictures(more on this later.).

Just An Update....

My wonderful mother bought TWO new masks today! What are they? Well, I shan't tell you, because they're simply too good to just tell you about! They're so epic, so amazing, so simply marvelous, that you will need visual so that you can at least try to grasp their immense awesomeness.

I plan on taking pictures with at least one of them tomorrow, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for some new pictures!

Walking On Sunshine

I believe some of you have seen this picture before? Well, I'm here to tell those of you who care how I went about making it! First step: Take some leg pictures!

I don't think most people realize how hard it is to take pictures of your own legs. There's so much bending involved. It's insane! Anyways, I had to get my brother Jesse to take the picture of me in "mid-step".

The reason I'm stepping on the notebook is so that way it will be easier for me to trace my foot with the Lasso Tool without me having to worry about the carpet getting in the way.

After getting the right picture, I had to make a background for my legs to go on. I'd been envisioning the finished project for some time, and I've always seen it with a sort of cartoony/make believe sort of feel. So, I opened up Corel Painter Essentials 3 and used the simple-yet-loved Bucket Tool to cover the image in a sky blue, then I used the Image Hose Tool to lay out grass on the bottom half of the image.

So far, so good! The next thing I thought the picture would need is some detail added into the sky. I didn't want to make the typical white, fluffy clouds, so I decided to take a picture of some tissue paper I had and use that as my cloud shape filler, using the Clone Tool on Photo Impact 8.

The next step was to add in my legs. Do to that, I had to use the Lasso Tool on Photo Impact 8. The Lasso Tool is the best way to create new objects, and it can take anywhere from 3 to 15 minutes to completely trace something. Since the image of my legs was sort of large, it took me about 10 minutes to trace everything I wanted to transfer onto the background I had created. After I moved the newly created object onto the backdrop, I used the Image Hose from Corel Painter Essentials yet again to add a few flowers to the grass.


The picture, though getting close to being done, still wasn't what I had fully imagined. It still didn't come off as cheery and Spring-like as I was wanting. After about 5 minutes of looking and thinking, I finally decided to add in some butterflies. I used some butterfly images found on the Stamp Tool on Photo Impact, and then added in a few more smaller flowers. I used the Pencil Tool to show the flight lines behind the butterflies, and voila! The finished project!


I still think I probably could have thought of a few more things to add or do to this, but I guess it didn't turn out that bad. Not too shabby, I must say. ;]