Monochromatic

From the Greek: "mono" meaning "one" and "chroma" meaning "color," monochromatic in reference to photography is the use of one color in a photo. Bam, breakdown. Also, its first use was approximately 1822 in case you were yearning for that tidbit of information. Monochromatic images are relatively easy to create in Photoshop thanks to the ability to isolate colors through fancy keyboard and mouse maneuvers. I chose to do all the colors of the rainbow because they're pretty and you get the idea of how it would look with each color. I could cheat and change the hues of one picture to the color desired, but that would be too simple. Plus, I'm sure you'd get bored of seeing the same object in different colors. One post of the same photo repeated is probably enough. We need some variety in our lives! Oh, and I added a teal color. You could pretend that is "blue" and the dark blue is "indigo" if it makes you happy. It is ROYGBIV after all.

Insects

Many people are scared of bugs. They don't exactly tickle my fancy, but they do provide some great photos. Some are so bizarre you just have to whip out your camera and snap some shots. Because spiders are arachnids and not insects I will not include any in this post, but I must warn you: if you do have arachnophobia, I have a post coming up that you will not enjoy. Be wary. Or face your fears like a champ. You can do it! I'm hoping to get a macro lens soonish so I can take better close-up of these buggers.

Candid Water Shots

Candid pictures of people are fun to take and pictures of water are fun to take. Combine the two and there's an explosion of awesomeness. Now I may one day do actual textbook definition portraits with water, though it would take time and creativity to come up with a fantastic way to accomplish this. These are not textbook definition portraits. No one is looking at the camera, the pictures are not all oriented in the portrait layout, and no one is posing specifically for the photo. Okay, maybe one photo is posed. That's the one of my sister kissing one of our favorite little girls from church. In any case, these shots were more about timing than setting someone up for the perfect picture. Guesswork keeps photography interesting.

Cemetery

Cemeteries are great places for photographs. There's all kinds of history among the headstones. My mother-in-law likes to visit them to read all about the people who once lived among us. I'm sure there are many others like her. I love the weathering on the older headstones and the peaceful feeling that these people no longer have to suffer here on earth. They have moved on, hopefully to better days. This graveyard, Fort George Wright Cemetery, is a military one mainly used for air force veterans, though other branches of the military are represented.

Texture Overlay

Double exposures are fun experiments, and this experiment involved the combining of a regular photograph with a photograph of texture. Yes, I know the title explains this, but that's okay. I'm allowed to overkill my post if I want to. Sometimes the texture takes away from the photo, so select it wisely. On one photo I even deleted parts of one of the textures in Photoshop. While most of the combined image looked great, some portions weren't quite up to par. Therefore I adjusted them until par was reached. Isn't it fabulous how I can use sports analogies in a photography blog?

Old Photo

Many people want to restore their old photos, but some people enjoy making their new photos look like those old ones. I like the character sometimes, but generally I like the quality in new photos. I'm so modern. All of the photos I have changed thus far are photos saved both in their regular format and the edited one. I'd rather keep the original ones around just in case, and I can do that with digital files. Not that you were ignorant of the fact, but I didn't want you to think that maybe I turned a photo that could never go back. I am not the dark side of the force here, but I do have cookies. Some photos handle the change to "old photo" better than others same as black & white and sepia. You simply have to experiment, as usual, to find the best options.

Orton

Do you remember that post from a while ago when I tried an experiment? I put a blurry photo on top of the same in-focus one and it looked really soft and bright. Well, turns out that's a thing. It's called "orton" because the inventor's name is Michael Orton. He experimented with a lot of double exposure and overlay techniques, but this may have been his trademark effect. Too bad I wasn't the first to come up with it, because then it would have been named after me. Oh well. I guess "Parker" is too common to use anyway.