Da capo! – Exhibition „Red“ by Bildsymphonie.de and friends… continued

The exhibition project „Red“ by Bildsymphonie.de and friends goes into a second round… this time, the venue is a shoe shop (Schuhhaus Schmidt) in Gladenbach.

I will be presenting three images which are playing with illusions, inviting a closer look:

The common concept of these images is to create illusions with everyday items – be it a Lego™️ toy bus replacing its original counterpart in a scene in London or being captured as if it was driving through the vicinity of Herborn, or a red pencil in extreme closeup.

If you missed the first chance, come and see the stunning interpretations of the color Red from October 21 to October 26 at Schuhhaus Schmidt, Marktplatz 2 in 35075 Gladenbach.

Be our guest and look for yourselves!

Perspective, composition, color, focus range

Sometimes a quick „snap“ (here: an image of a sunflower with a bee on my balcony) proves how essential an intuitive selection of the Perspektive, the colors and the focus range are for the quality of an image.

If any of them are „off“, the entire image simply „does not get to you“.

On the other hand, if the situation is right, you have the right perspective and a good combination of depth of field, bokeh, colors and lighting, this can have a stunning effect, pulling you into the image, inviting a second (or third) look.

Exhibition „Red“ by Bildsymphonie.de and friends

On March 19th and 20th, I got a chance to participate in an exhibition on the color „Red“ in Lohra (Hesse, Germany).

I presented three images:

Bildsymphonie & friends „R O T“:
https://www.facebook.com/events/628883404988404

The exhibition took place in a carpenter’s workshop giving me a chance to shoot some impressions of the tools and machinery as well:

The exchange with the co-artists and visitors was great after all this time of being artistically locked-in.

Quickly align (straighten) photos in Photoshop

Don’t we all know this: You quickly take a snapshot on the beach with a perfect situation, beautiful colors and a funny face that you will never be able to reproduce. 🙁

Only later, you see that you did not properly align your camera and the horizon is not really „horizontal“ as it should be.

You can easily check the tilt angle using the added helper lines.

Now, being old-fashioned, you could open the image in photoshop, copy the layer, select the main motive, cut it out, copy it to the clipboard, rotate the background layer, insert the cut out main motive again, adjust the missing parts with the repair brush and save the image again…

However, there is a much easier way: the lens correction filter (German: „Objektivkorrektur“).

  1. Open the lens correction filter from the „Filter“ menu.
Easy solution at hand: the „Lens correction“ filter in the menu

2. Select the „Level“ tool on the left.

3. Draw a line across a truly horizontal part of your image.

The horizon should be actually „horizontal“

4. Click OK.

Note aside: Alternatively, you can also use the Ruler tool with Straighten layer.

Only the blank edges now need to be filled or cut away. I want to fill them using the Repair tool.

5. Select the Repair tool on the left.

Smart aid at hand: The Repair tool
Fill in the gaps with the tool

6. Use the brush to draw in the areas to be repaired.

Photoshop will fill the missing bits with matching content.

The result is stunning… in less than 5 minutes‘ work.

Your holiday snap is perfectly in shape now and you can continue to relax. 😀

Not what you think!!! – An optical illusion from the macro world.

These days I experimented with a new setup using my old analog lens on an adjustable macro extension.

Look again… it’s not what you might think!
Look again… it’s not what you might think!
Look again… it’s not what you might think!

I started to shoot what I had available on my desk and thus picked a red pencil. These pictures were the result.

Your first impression was slightly different, even X-rated, wasn’t it? 😉

Here’s the pencil from another angle. Just to prove my point. 😉

I really liked the optical illusion created by a super closeup of such an everyday item.

What do you think?

By the way, here’s what the retro setup looked like:

Retro setup with analog lens, adjustable macro extension and digital SLR.

Competition entry on the subject „Eyes“

In September, our local photo group „Fotofreunde Herborn aka. DieFotoMafia“ held a photo competition on the subject „Eyes“. As my 6-year-old daughter as my usual favorite model did not show too much motivation this time, I thought of an alternative. As „eyes“ also occur on dice and the German word for the grease drops on a soup etc. is „Fettaugen“ („fat eyes“), I improvised and turned a champagne bowl, some vegetable oil, water, syrup and two dice into my setup for the shot, and lit it with my mobile’s torch.

The result was stunning, I think, and it turned out at position three in the competition. I am quite pleased with this result.

Mush(g)rooming for photos

Mushroom in the woods

These days, my family, some friends and I went exploring the fairy tale hike „Little Roothaar“ near Bad Laasphe. Apart from the lovingly prepared stations for the kids, I encountered some of the minute beauties next to the footpaths. They were please to model for some shots and the outcome was quite pleasant, I think.

Head in(to) the clouds

This month’s topic of my group of co-photographers was „clouds“ so I browsed through my archive to find that I have already shot various images of clouds in all sorts of contexts over the years.

What do you think?