A Division of Kathy Thompson Photography

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Winter Tree


Hello Everyone,

Have you ever seen a tree that has an interesting shape but you'd like to dig it up and put it in a more interesting spot to photograph. Well that's how I felt about this tree. Sitting right beside a main road with ugly weeds in front of it made it very hard to photograph it with a pleasing result.

The shape of the tree appealed to me though so I took the photo and had a play with some of the textures in the Winter Warm pack. My goal was to replace the blue sky with warm textures and make the shape of the tree and it's branches the centrepiece without distraction.

The original photo.




I tried many different textures and combinations of blend modes until I got the look I wanted and finally settled on these three, using a combination of soft light and multiply blend modes with varying opacities.



Once I had the tones I wanted and slightly cropped the photo I then added some photoshop filters as well.

Firstly - Filter - stylize - emboss  - changed blend mode to overlay and reduced the opacity.

Secondly - Filter - brush strokes - ink outlines - blend mode overlay and again reduced the opacity until I was happy with it.

The two filters gave the image an almost textural feel as if it's made of cloth and raised.

I then added a radial gradiant layer to lighten the center and darken the edges.

The result is quite dramatic and may not be to everyones liking but I think it achieved my goal of making the bare branches of the tree the definite focal point and eliminating the distracting sky and field by changing the whole tone of the image.


(click to view larger to see the full effect of the textures and filters)

What do you think?  Comments welcome.

Do you have an image of a tree that you have enhanced using textures that you would like to share?  Leave a comment with a link to your image so we can all see it.

Common, break the ice and be the first to show us your creative work.

Cheers
Kathy

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