Things That Need To Be Mentioned

For those of you who haven't noticed, I wrote a BUNCH today. Not just on this blog, but my other blogs as well. There's a few things left I'd like to say though, and those things are about...

1. Nature.
2. Polls.
3. Royalty.

NUMBER 1- Nature: Sometime this week or the next, I shall post some of my most favorite pictures of plants that I have taken. Since it's Winter and most everything has died by now, I figured spreading some color wouldn't be such a bad idea.

NUMBER 2- Polls: Every week, I will be posting a new poll for my readers to vote on. That wasn't a very important topic to cover, but there it is.

NUMBER 3- Royalty: Within the next few days(or maybe even tonight if i can get the time) I will be making myself look like some out of this world royalty. I may or may not post pictures on here. Depends on how they turn out. If you can guess who I'll be impersonating, you'll win a cyber prize! ;]

Note: Cyber prizes consist of things that can be obtained only through the cyber world. Examples include cyber hugs, cyber pats on the back, cyber high 5s, and cyber cheers. All of the previously listed are copyrighted terms to be used with permission only by the writer herself, LunaPuma©.

Smile and Wave

I'm a HUGE fan of hands. I love how they can be so graceful or clumsy, tender or rough, old or young. I personally have old looking hands and my pinky is slightly deformed in being much smaller than the average pinky. What do YOUR hands look like?

Here's some of my favorite pictures involving hands.

Winner Pick Number 2

Our Winner Pick Picture number 2 goes to Tyler Gammons, who chose this picture...


Ah, such good times I had with this one! The idea basically came from my teenage fan girl mind; Me + Edward Cullen = Good. Any picture I could put myself in and be with Cullen was a good one, as far as I was concerned. I'm pleased to report that I'm not longer THAT obsessed with him OR his family(or his moody flake of a girlfriend), but I do still enjoy this picture and any others I made with him. Anyways, let's get started!

To do this picture, I first took pictures of my action figure(because that's what it is; an action figure. not a doll.), keeping in mind that I was going to place myself somewhere in the picture. So not only was I trying to get a good angle on this, but I also had to visualize myself into the picture.

After I got the right shot, it was time to take a picture of myself. I set my camera up on my bed and a few books(the days before i had a tripod. such memories...), set the timer, and went to go peak around my bookcase which was in my room. That really didn't take all that long. The only problem I had was trying to imagine where my eyes needed to be looking.

After I got all that done and my makeshift tripod put away, I opened up both pictures on Photo Impact 8. This picture was pretty much the easiest thing to do ever; All I had to do was use Lasso Tool to cut me out, size me down, and use the tiniest bit of Soft Edge ever around my body and hand. After I was in place, I noted how you could see some minor reflections in the plastic containing the moody vampire. I simply traced my hand yet again with the Lasso Tool then inverted and flipped it. After doing that, I had to make it almost completely transparent; Just enough to where you could just barely see it.

And there you have it! That's all there was to it. Is that how you thought it was done, Mr Gammons? ;]

The First Winner Post and Some Gratitude

Before I start talking about how I made some of my photo shopped pictures, I'd like to give a big "thanks" to everyone who viewed, shared, followed, and commented on my blog! *ahem* Here it goes...

Thank you!!!

Gah, you wouldn't believe how stoked I was when my page views and followers started going up. I'll admit it; I felt a bit like a mini celebrity. ;]

Now, in a previous post, I posted 5 different photo shopped pictures and asked the readers to comment on the one they were most curious to know how was made. Well, seeing as I only had 2 votes and couldn't really declare a winner in that election, I just decided to write about both of the winners. And so, without further ado, so begins eb_fourside's picture pick!


Ok, so I'm REALLY proud of this one. It's nothing majorly special, but I still really liked how it turned out. The first step in creating this picture was to take a picture of my hand holding some pencils.

After taking pictures from a few different angles, I finally had one that I liked. I uploaded the picture to my computer, then opened it up on Photo Impact 8.

Using the Lasso Tool, I traced the entire outline of my hand and the pencils, then right clicked and turned the entire traced image into an object.

The next step was to find a background for the newly created object to rest on. After a bit of searching, I was able to find this nifty little rainbow background.

Still using Photo Impact, I used the Colorize Pen to turn some of the rainbow color into dull gray. To do that and get the effect that the gray was actually getting colored out, I used my Bamboo Tablet to color in the area I wanted gray, making sure to leave the right edge rough.

After I had the backdrop completed, I placed the image of my hand onto it. Before I could merge the images together, I needed something to complete the picture, and that thing was a shadow.

I've been told that I'm big on shadows and I pay loads of attention to lighting. Well, the people who said that were absolutely right! I use shadows a LOT. They really do complete the picture most of the time.

Anyways, to create a shadow, I made a copy of the hand image/object, then placed it on the rainbow background. After turning it black, making it transparent, and then softening up the edges with Soft Edge, I used the Transform Tool to move the shadow around and to make the shadow more realistic.

After a bit of touching up, I finally completed the image! The whole thing probably took about an hour to do, not including photo taking time.

A Plea For Help

Ok guys, I have a mission. It's not a mission for me though; It's a mission for YOU.

I would LOVE to have some more followers on this blog. I'm thankful for the few that I have, but I see nothing wrong in wanting just a few more. It would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that I had a small group of readers. So, since I like that warm fuzzy feeling, I'll get back to the mission.

Let's get some buzz going, shall we? Share this link with the people you know! Post it on Facebook, mention it to a friend, write a song about it, anything! Any amount of attention is a good thing. Don't want to get lonely, now do we?

Alright troops. Let's get out there and SHARE! =D

Vote!

Why am I posting a bunch of random photo shopped pictures? Because I have decided that YOU(yes you, the one sitting there at the computer reading this) get to vote on which picture I should explain first.

Vote on the picture that you're most curious as to how I made, and I'll explain in detail how the picture came to be and what it took to make it. Start the voting....now!

Tidbits Of Information

It's almost Christmas! YAY! Oh, I can't wait for all the picture opportunities! And the food! AND THE PRESENTS!! Ok, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's get more organized, shall we? There's 3 main topics I want to cover in this blog post, and those 3 topics are...

1. Christmas!
2. Blog posting.
3. Myself.

NUMBER 1- CHRISTMAS: Eep! Man, I suddenly just got REALLY excited for the wonderfully jolly holiday. I cannot WAIT to take some festive pictures. Last year, I sort of slacked in my photographer duties and only got some barely passing pictures. This year, I want to get as many as I can of as MUCH as I can! Lights, ornaments, presents, food, people, decorations, scenes, etc. I'll be sure to post what I get, and I suggest that YOU go out there and take some Christmas pictures as well.

NUMBER 2- BLOG POSTING: I've kind of been a failure at keeping up with my blogs as of late. If I can be frank, I'm not that great of a writer. Only on very rare occasions will I be able to write for hours on end, the words spilling out of me like endless rain into a paper cup(yes, I just went all Beatles on you. Pwned.). I'm going to try to post something at least once a week though, because I feel as though I'm obligated to myself to do so. Maybe if you guys could post some comments to help keep me motivated? ;]

NUMBER 3- MYSELF: Sound conceited? Good, because that's what I wanted to talk about! It has come to my attention that I am my number one model. Is it because I'm conceited and think I'm all that and a bag of chips? Not at all! I use myself as a model because I know how my ideas look in my head, so who better to mold the ideas into images than myself? I can control my body and expressions better than that of someone else. Another reason I use myself more than other people is because the only other people I can use are either my brothers or my friends. My brothers don't really enjoy being in pictures(or putting up with my bossiness), and all of my willing friends live rather far away. So instead of forcing the boys into doing something they don't want to or wasting time making plans with friends that may or may not work out, I just use myself and get it done.

And there they are; The 3 topics I wanted to cover. Adios, amigos!

Emo Love

There is seriously something SO amazing about gloomy brides and forbidden or complicated love. I tried to capture both of these things in the pictures below.


It was really fun taking these pictures, because I had to think out of the box in order to find the right outfit. For the beaded veil and head covering, I used a beaded tank top thing I bought at Goodwill a while back for $0.99. I've been trying to find a good use for it, so I was glad when I was finally able to put it to use.

For the wedding dress and veil in the last picture, I actually used the skirt of a big prom dress I have. It has different layers of fabric in the skirt, so I separated the materials, then wrapped the the layer I wanted all around me.

I'd love to take these again someday, except make myself up a little more and maybe even find a REAL wedding dress to use. In the mean time though, I'm somewhat proud of the results I got with what I had.

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. ;]