Photoshopaholic!

Hello, my name is Fermicat, and I am a photoshopaholic.

PDM got me Photoshop Elements 6.0 for Mac as a birthday gift. Here it is just a few days later and I am already addicted to messing with my digital photos. I lusted after this program for months. Digital photography is fun, and I wanted to take it to the next level: creative art (or pure crap, depending on your perspective). Not only do I find lots of stuff in my photos to fix (limitations due to both camera and photographer), I keep seeing really interesting, unnatural special effects on other people's Flickr photos that look very cool. I want!

So much to try... old fashioned hand tinted look, Orton effect, fake HDR, fake LOMO, removing clutter from photos, mixing objects from different shots, or creating a totally unique effect. While experimenting with these special effects, I am also trying to learn how to use Photoshop Elements. I know enough to be dangerous. There are probably better ways to do what I am doing, but learning by trying things is not a bad way to go.

This distraction is not good for my study plans. Another downside is that I am monopolizing PDM's Mac. Oh well. The newness will wear off soon and things will calm down. In the meantime I am having a blast taking ordinary photographs and making them into something special.

The Varsity street scene at the top of this post is my first attempt at the LOMO technique. It took me a couple of hours of adjusting to achieve. The boring photo I started with can be viewed here. The one below combines the Orton effect with fake hand tinting to create a dreamy, ethereal feel. I made a Flickr set to showcase my creations. There are several Orton photos in there, some hand tinted shots, and an attempt to recreate a vintage postcard type of look.

Friday CatBlogging: Andy Warhol Edition

Hey, la, my camera's back!

OK, not the exact same camera. But close. You can expect some fresh Friday CatBlogging, along with many more lame attempts at artistic photography (as shown above).

A Day Off, Sort Of

I took the day off, but it was because I worked on Sunday (so it wasn't a "real" day off). I got lot of stuff done. It is so much easier to get around during a weekday when everyone is at work. Bank, post office, that sort of thing. As soon as traffic started to become a pain in the ass, I made a beeline back home.

I got a 1GB memory card for my new camera, and a wireless network card for my old desktop computer. Wireless cards are cheap, so why not? The memory card was pretty cheap also, after discount and assuming I don't procrastinate away my rebate (which has happened before). Anyone who has seen my Flickr photostream lately knows that I've been having a lot of fun with my camera. Now I can make many more lame attempts at creating 'art' before I have to stop and download because the camera's full.

I also took my notebook computer to the shop. Why is this noteworthy? Because it hasn't worked right in over two years and this was one of my longest-running procratinated tasks, that's why. Maybe they can fix it, and maybe they can't, but after 2+ years I am fairly certain that it ain't gonna fix itself.

I forgot to pick up tax software (oops), decided not to get my oil changed because I didn't bring a book with me (technically it is not due for another two hundred miles or so, and I don't think I have ever in my life taken a car in for service *early*), and left a few other things not done. I didn't want to cause a cosmic rift (or something worse) by emptying my "to do" list in one day. That would be most unnatural! So you can rest easy knowing that my desk still has piles of stuff I need to file, my yard is still full of those sweet gum balls, and my flowerbeds are still buried under dead leaves. The yardwork was the easiest thing to put off for later - it was still below freezing at noon today, so forget that. [Yes, I can hear you westerners, mid-westerners, and yankees laughing at me. Say what you want, but if it isn't at least 55F, the dang yardwork can wait.]