Unlike the original story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, in which many children may have died of the plague, the Pied Piper of Highland Park is the story of a girl who likes to put on a show. And her mother who likes to play with Photoshop.
Her mother took all the background out of the original photo, except for a little on the right, after converting to sepia. Except for the red ribbon and the girl’s face.
A Photoshop brush of a star helped create a vibrant background. No rats were involved in this Highland Park project. And no children died of the plague. Thank goodness!
I love photographing rudbeckia (black-eyed susans); they are like sculptures in the winter snow. To achieve the see-through border, I added a 9px stroke to the Photoshop layer that had the sepia effect. Since the layer had an opacity lower than 100%, the border is also transparent. The default stroke effect is a bright red color; using the eye-dropper tool, I selected a color from within the photograph for the border.
I am studying more about shiva, the Jewish mourning period after a close relative dies, and eggs are the traditional dish eaten by the mourner at the beginning of shiva. Eggs represent the cycle of life.
You can see a full color version of this mosaic wall at Raritan Valley Community College in this post. To put this in sepia, I copied the original photo to a new layer in Photoshop, desaturated the photo, added yellow and red to get sepia, and then set the opacity of the sepia layer to 90% so just a wee bit of color would show through. I wanted to use the sepia effect to emphasize the textures of the mosaic.
This was my favorite dance at my daughter’s ballet recital (not counting the ballet, tap and jazz dances she performed, of course). It seemed like a fitting ballet for this time of year; on Sunday Jews around the world celebrate the holiday of Purim, and dressing up in costume is part of the tradition.
I would greatly enjoying reading which of these images strikes your fancy. Thank you!
Upcoming on Thursday: A Selection of Nature Notes Posts from around the Nature-Loving
Blogosphere. Nature Notes is a meme brought to us by Rambling Woods. Here are some of her favorite images of 2009.
I love the color accent setting on my camera. My daughter’s ballet tutu was in teal, so teal got the accent for these photos. In Photoshop, I just adjusted the magenta and yellow settings a bit to add some sepia.
This photo has sentimental value, as the paintings that are highlighted because of the teal setting are my mother’s landscapes.
If you want to see a funny sepia movie, check out Time Travel Flick.