Monday, December 10, 2007

Icy Pine Needles (Posterized Photo)

Icy Pine Needles (Posterized Photo) Originally uploaded by randubnick

Last night we had freezing rain and this morning everything was coated with ice. I didn't take any pictures while I was out chipping ice off the stairs, sidewalk, and car because I was too busy trying not to slip and slide. But tonight I found some photos that I took in 2005 during a late December ice storm. At that point, I still had my first phonecam, and it took soft, low resolution images. I remember taking this photo and thinking that the pine needles looked like blown glass. When I saw this picture tonight, I decided that I still liked the composition, but the photo needed some help. First, I fiddled with the contrast and resized the image to make everything more visible. Then I posterized the image in Painter IX. But there was an orange leaf stuck in the branches, in the middle of the composition, and although I liked the colors, I thought the leaf was a distraction. So I went back to Painter IX and used digital pastel to draw over the leaf, replacing it with background colors and shadows. But I left a little bit of the red and orange from the leaf because I thought they added some zip to the image. When I was satisfied with the drawing, I posterized the area to make it blend in to the photo.

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