Magic in the Ordinary

This little dress form graced an armchair in a local bed and breakfast inn. Headless, yet resplendent in sumptuous fabric, the scene gives a sense of unease. Where is the head? I hate yet love the incompleteness. The disassociation seems a bit unworldly, so that is how I decided to treat the image.

First, I aggressively processed the image as an HDR ( seven originals, widely bracketed and then composited) in Photoshop and Photomatix. Then I duplicated the layer, ran a Topaz Adjust filter (one of the sketch filters) on the new layer. I then lowered opacity and added a few touches of color with a layer mask.

A Woman of Mystery

Actually, this young woman is anything but mysterious. She is a lovely young student in one of my classes and on this day a couple of weeks ago several of the students were posing with various capes and costumes at the new Palladio shopping center in Folsom. The place has a Renaissance feel with its wonderful arches and columns and so we followed the mood. The cape reminds me of the opening scene of the old film, French Lieutenant's Woman, starring Meryl Streep, based on the memorable novel by John Fowler.

Although our subject is intrinsically lovely, I couldn't resist adding a few Photoshop touches: I duplicated the layer, running a strong Gaussian blur on the second layer, then aggressively dialing back the opacity, using a layer mask for finishing touches to bring back details in the facial features. This gives that slight glow. I then duplicated this layer, dialed down the saturation. I then added a black and white adjustment layer, using a layer mask to bring back the half- saturated image beneath. Finally I added a new layer, darkened the edges by using using the gradient tool (black foreground gradient color to transparent, pulling in from the sides) and then lowering opacity slightly to make the effect more subtle.

Gold Miner

This park docent pretends to scribble in a journal in the so-called "Mormon Cabin" in Marshall Gold State Historic Park. The cabin is next to a replica of Sutter's Mill; perhaps a hundred yards from here on the South Fork of the American River, James Marshall—later in life a troubled soul—found a fateful gold nugget in January, 1848, setting off the great California Gold Rush. He was inspecting the tailrace of a water powered sawmill he was building for Sacramento land baron John Sutter. The gold glittered, the mill was forgotten, and California (and world) history changed with this small discovery. I live only a few miles from this important spot and have been immersed in the often bizarre history of the Gold Rush all my life.

The photo was made under extremely low light conditions. Even shooting a Nikon D700 at ISO 4000, there were misses because of subject movement. The camera (of course) was on a tripod/with cable release. Later I processed the RAW image in Photoshop using the Nik filter "Monday Morning," adjusting the shadow/highlights, which can be problematic with this filter. I tried all sorts of variations with this image, including Topaz, but I liked this one the best.