Artistic Photography – The Basics

Hey guys, in this post I’m going to talk to you about Artistic Photography,
Artistic Photography is where you take pictures of stuff at different angles, in different light, from different distances, with different colours, and you don’t have to take the picture so that you can tell what the item/thing is, but more, its more for the effect that the picture brings.

Today we are going to look at few simple ways of getting an artistic photo.

 So here’s one of my photos, mind the small ad thing.

There are a few techniques at play here.

The first is that it’s being taken looking across the ground, instead of being taken from above in a birds eye view its been taken from directly behind the pine cone so that the view in the picture skims along the ground.

The second technique is the off centering, notice the pine cone isn’t placed dead-center in the middle of the picture, it’s placed to the side, not only does this give a nice view of the landscape behind it, basically if you want something to be focused on, stick it to the side of the photo.
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Example Tip 1
Let’s take a picture using the same centering technique but without the close up or across the ground look. 
To the right is a picture of a tree and the landscape, in this case a field, behind it.
As you can see, even though the tree isn’t in the center of the picture it’s what you’ll look at, you focus on the tree. 
But what would happen if there was a more detailed landscape behind it?
Let’s say you edited in a volcano on the field behind the tree . . .

Now there’s a volcano in the field behind it, as you can see the tree still seems to be the focus of the picture, despite the volcano in the background.
But what do you think? Is the volcano taking the spotlight? 

Want to see how to add a volcano into your own pictures? Its free I’ll show you how.
Click here!______________________________________________________________
The third technique is the time of day it was taken, beginner photographers may not think of this when starting out, taking pictures at the right time of day gives the picture a different effect.
This was taken late afternoon while it was overcast to give it a gloomy grey effect, with no shadows, you can imagine that if this photo was taken during the middle of the day in the sun, it would have a shadow, it would be bright and cheerful.
It depends on you and what emotions you want viewers of your pictures to absorb, I personally took this without the light so it gives a questionable appearance, and it would put less attention on the shadows and more attention on the pine cone.

The last technique is that the picture is taken close up using the ‘flower’ feature on the camera, this gives great detail to the pine cone and the grass, but adds this nice blurred effect to the mountains and trees in the distance.
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Example Tip 2 
However, if you are doing something close up, without a landscape or something behind it then centering it the middle can actually give the photo a good effect, look at the photo to the right, notice a few things.
1. The whole object (leaf of grass) isn’t completely in the middle, but it crosses through the middle.
2. The picture focus isn’t focused in the center, but focused on the water drops in the top left corner. 
3. Mellow lighting suggests the picture was taken during overcast. 
This picture works because this picture doesn’t have a large background behind it to give it depth, instead it has more of an enclosed feel to it, because of the view.
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So hope that gives you a good idea on how to take some artistic photos using simple techniques.

Go take some photos!

If you’d like me to check out your photo’s, or even post them on this blog just contact me.

Until next time,

Cya

Adding a volcano to your pictures – Free, using Gimp

Hey guys, I’m going to show you how to edit a volcano into your pictures.
This is done using the free program Gimp 

So basically if you haven’t got Gimp already download it here. It’s an awesome FREE photo shop program that’s capable of a lot of stuff, if you have Adobe Photoshop, then you can add volcanoes too! But this tutorial will only show you how to add a volcano using GIMP.

1. First off lets open our picture up in Gimp.

2. Open up your web browser and do an image search for ‘Volcano’ select a picture that looks clear and easy to work with and save it to your pictures folder.

I used this one!

  
3. Go back into Gimp, click File, and Open as Layers… then find the volcano image that you saved.

4. Now the picture is on as a layer, click the scale button in the tools and resize it to your liking, you can even move it around using the circle in the middle of the picture.

 5. Now you’ve positioned and resized, select the eraser from the tool sidebar, and down the bottom set the Scale to 10 by sliding the bar and set the Brush to Circle Fuzzy (17)
Go through erasing the sky and the ground of the volcano picture, remember to change the Opacity in the tool sidebar now and then to add extra effect. 

6. On the context menu, (bar along the top of the window) click Filter then Light and Shadow… and lastly Drop Shadow
A window will come up, just click OK.

7. On the top bar click Windows then Dockable Dialogs and then Layers, the layer window will pop up showing you the layers. (The layer window may already be open, so you may not have to do this step)

8. Select the Background from the Layers Window, then select the eraser from the tool sidebar, select Scale 10, and then use the eraser to make a black shadow behind the volcano. Where this shadow goes depends on where the sunlight is coming from in your picture.

 9. Click on the volcano picture in the Layer Window.
Now select the AirBrush tool from the tool sidebar, select Scale 10, Brush Circle Fuzzy (17) and the Opacity about halfway, about 57%.
Now use the airbrush tool to add the shadow onto the volcano picture.

 10. Select the Background from the Layers Window, then click Colors and Color Balance… from the top menu.
The “Color Balance” menu will appear.


 11. In the Colour Balance window change the colour level as the picture to the right shows, or you give your picture some individuality and change the colour levels to your own liking.

Then click OK 

 
12. Now select the Volcano picture from the layers window and change the Colour Level of Red to 26, or if you picked your colour levels, make the volcano image 1 level higher on your colour than your custom scheme.

 
 13. Looking good?
Now select the AirBrush tool, change the colour to red, (Or a colour of your choice) with an opacity of about 75%
Then use the airbrush tool to go over the tree, the grass, basically colour anything you want to give it a glowing red effect.

14. Last but not least change the airbrush colour to white and go over the tree a bit, it makes the tree whiter, but still obtains a reddish glow. 
Then just touch up a bit with the eraser and the airbrush if you need to, then you have the end result:

What-ch-ya think? Don’t forget to leave a comment, not a spam one, don’t like them.

Did this work out for you? If it didn’t feel free to contact me

If it did then why don’t you send it to me so that I can have a look!

Until next time!

Cya later guys!