This is a photo from last year at North Lake taken on October 8. I tried playing with it in CS4 using a technique I learned on the old Radiant Vista website from Mark Johnson (check out his website, he has fabulous Photoshop free tutorials: http://www.msjphotography.com/). You duplicate the layer, change the blending mode to Multiply, blur it, then increase the luminance using curves or levels. It produces this blurry, dreamy kind of look. What do you think? Some days I like it, other days I think it looks kind of cheesy.
Speaking of North Lake, I thought I would share a story with you. I lived in Bishop from 1980 to 1984. One Sunday morning, can't remember when, my wife and I were called into the hospital (we were both medical people) because the North Lake dam had "burst". Nobody knew how bad the flooding would be, so they wanted to prepare for the worst. About an hour or so later, the waters hit Bishop. Nothing much happened....there was some street flooding on the western side of Bishop, and that was about it. Much ado about nothing.
Posted by Anish Desai on October 14, 2009 at 5:07 PM
I've come across a variety of ways to produce this type of glow or "Orton" effect. I like it, but I think discretion has to be used when applying it as it can very easily be taken too far resulting in very unnatural looking images (unless ofcourse that is what you're going for). I personally feel a landscape image should look realistic above all else and I've found that with a little tweaking this effect can be used to add luminance to a scene (that the camera manages to lose) without creating a noticeable blur.
Posted by Robert Dayton on October 14, 2009 at 8:48 PM
A very artistic rendition, Tony! I like this sort of work. Share more of it.
Posted by John W. Wall on October 15, 2009 at 1:18 PM
I think it looks best in the trees on the left side of the frame. I've thought about playing around with the Orton effect, but I never seem to get around to it. It might seem cheesy, but this is America. We love that stuff.
Posted by Eric Good on October 16, 2009 at 2:11 PM
The effect works for me. It gives this image a nice dreamy feel. I'd fix that slight anomaly along the left edge though.
I used to love the old Radiant Vista site. I gleamed lots of valuable PS information from Craig and Mark. By the way, there must have been plenty of free trout for all the residence of Bishop during that day. Nice story and image.
Posted by Paul Duval on October 16, 2009 at 7:56 PM
Cheeto's cheese puffs. Now that's cheesy. This is not. As an abstractly made image, it is unusual and it may have a Jekyll and hyde effect on us, but I do like the blurriness, but then again I'm nearsighted so I guess if it weren't for corrective lenses everything would look like this all the time, maybe that why I'm comfortable with it. I think the vibrant colors and the fact that reflections are often fuzzy one their own, so i think that's why this image works for me IMHO.
Discussion
5 repliesSpeaking of North Lake, I thought I would share a story with you. I lived in Bishop from 1980 to 1984. One Sunday morning, can't remember when, my wife and I were called into the hospital (we were both medical people) because the North Lake dam had "burst". Nobody knew how bad the flooding would be, so they wanted to prepare for the worst. About an hour or so later, the waters hit Bishop. Nothing much happened....there was some street flooding on the western side of Bishop, and that was about it. Much ado about nothing.
I used to love the old Radiant Vista site. I gleamed lots of valuable PS information from Craig and Mark. By the way, there must have been plenty of free trout for all the residence of Bishop during that day.