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Photo: A different look at my Big Dipper image thanks to a cropping suggestion from Andy Beal.

What can I say, there may not be such a think as a “finished” image. After a great tip from Andy in yesterday’s Before and After post, I went back into the darkroom and spun this image out of Photoshop.  Many thanks to Andy for not only identifying the potential for a new look for the original image, but also for taking the time to leave a comment.

Moving Heaven and Earth

Okay, maybe just heaven.

My first attempt at this cropped version was a little off.  If you check the original image, you’ll notice that the right-most star in the Big Dipper constellation was actually captured to the right of the two chairs in the foreground. Now look at this image again.

Bet you wouldn’t have noticed it if I didn’t point it out, eh?

It was pretty easy to do, actually, by just duplicating the layer, moving it to the left and adding a gradient mask to blend it in.

Why Stop There?

I’m leaving this image as-is for now, since I like the simplicity of the scene and they well recognized Big Dipper – which was the reason I shot the scene in the first place.

At some point, I could take it a step further, and instead of the Big Dipper, I could swap it out for this image of the Milky Way I shot on Maui last September. The possibilities – like the universe in this case – truly are endless.

– Kris

Photo: Blackhawks defensemen Duncan Keith releases a blast from far boards.

Thinking of starting another hockey week by going through photos from old games and either retouching them or giving them a little creative adjustment like you see here.

It’s February already, and I have two Wolves games coming up near the end of the month with similar seats to those we had last time – nice and close. More details on that coming soon.

– Kris

As the latest edition of their Heritage Night series, the Chicago Blackhawks chose to honor fan favorite Jeremy Roenick in tonight’s game against the Sharks.  Since I grew up admiring JR during my playing days, I thought I’d dig up an old photo from the Hawks/Sharks match back in ‘08 and share it on the blog tonight.

By the way, Hawks won 4-3 in OT.

In my ever continuing quest for learning more about photography and the digital darkroom, I subscribe to my fair share of photography blogs (of which I probably should post a list someday). With so many great posts to read each day, it never really takes that much to find inspiration to try a few new things in my own work.  In reality, it happens a lot more often than me finding time to try any of them.

My latest such inspiration that was lucky enough to find a few late, late night hours to play around with came from this post from the very stunning photo blog, The Windy Pixel.

Here are a few of my early, not-as-stunning-as-theirs, creations.

As with anything in photography that involves good composition and exposures with strong skills in post-production, the sky is the limit, and for me it will be something I will only get better at as my skills in both areas improve.

Here are the source images that were used for the my creative works above.

Nicolet Beach in Peninsula State Park, WI

Stars over Ka’anapali Beach

Haleakala Sunrise Fans

Be sure to look for more of these from me in the coming months as I continue to practice with HDR and Topaz Adjust, too.

Not only have my “get it right in camera” skills come a long way in the last year or so, but I continue to get creative and pick up new skills here and there in Photoshop.

The above image is a creative work of the source image down below. It was taken early in the morning on the grounds of the Hyatt Regency Maui during our stay there for the Maui Photo Festival last month.

Honestly, I can’t say that I pre-visualized the above result when I took the source image, which was one of the keynote sessions from Scott Bourne at Photo Focus at the festival. It is a case, however, of not settling for or ignoring an otherwise mundane shot and being a little creative with it. Not something I do all the time, since I typically try to “get it right” first, but it’s still fun from time to time.

Source Image