It’s Fun Friday…..

Scott Kelby has “It’s Free Stuff Thursday!”, so I thought I might institute, (occasionally), Fun Fridays!  I’ve  often said that I’ve never been more excited about photography than I am today. What excites me the most is how much we an do to “improve” our photographs, post capture.  Now before I get into this, some of you may not be very enthusiastic about making these kinds of changes to an image, if so, you are welcome to leave now and come back on another day.  I certainly don’t want to upset you, If manipulating images with Photoshop, or Nik filters or Topaz is not a part of what you would do, good for you, stick by your convictions, just don’t tell the rest of us that we shouldn’t!  Photography is an art form determined by each individual artist. So if you are into this, or even curious read on!!

While shooting in New Orleans I came upon this young man cleaning the side walk with a hose and water. I was shooting with one of my favorite point and shoot compact cameras.  I’ve found that you an do great street shooting when the camera doesn’t look imposing.  As far as your subjects know, you’re just another tourist snapping pictures!!  So below is the original image before I cleaned it up in Photoshop with Content Aware.

As you can see the image is a little messy and doesn’t have much pop!  The shot at the top is the same image cleaned up, and then with some added saturation, and then with Nik Color Efex 3.0 Tonal Contrast filter applied.  Since, to me, the shot is timeless, what if we created an old photograph with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.0? The shot below is with the Sepia filter.

O.K. let’s take it even further by making an Old Photo with the Nik Color Efex 3.0 “Old Photo” filter!

O.K. this is fun, got it, Fun Friday!!  I couldn’t possibly do this without trying Glamour Glow, one of my favorite digital filters from Nik Color Efex 3.0.  The saturation is increased and it exhibits a nice glow that only Glamour Glow can produce, at least for me!

I love this one and the Tonal Contrast, but since we’ve gone this far why not go into Topaz and see what the gritty filter, Spicify does for us!

I could go on, but I hope I’ve made my point.  You can take a simply, o.k. image that has potential and give it new life with some of these great filters.  Give it a try, you might like it!

Before we go off for the weekend let me share this morning’s devotional on the In Touch Website by Dr. Charles Stanley, this is really good, be blessed!

the pilgrim

Set Apart for God

Romans 12:1-3

When a person places his faith in Jesus Christ, he becomes a new believer, and he is sanctified–that is, set apart for God’s purpose. Unlike salvation, which takes place in a single moment, sanctification is a lifelong process. We who are followers of the Savior should be letting the Holy Spirit control our lives. If that is the case, we are currently being sanctified, regardless of what we may feel or how our actions appear to others. In other words, we are progressively maturing in our faith.

And if we are progressing, we must be working our way toward something. The apostle Paul explained the Christian’s mission: “For those whom [God] foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29). A believer’s character, conduct, and conversation should be reflections of Jesus, who lives within. On our own, we’d place too much emphasis on behavior and get caught up with following rules and rituals that look Christian without truly reflecting Christ. But God has given each believer His Spirit as a teacher and guide. The Spirit works to transform our minds and hearts so that we are markedly different from our unsaved peers. When we allow the Spirit to control us, we speak and act in accordance with our true identity: God’s sons and daughters.

Our Father wants His children to be living examples of who He is. He doesn’t expect perfection–He knows we can’t be totally sinless in our human body. But He shows us how to think and act so we may “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which [we] have been called” (Eph. 4:1).