"A Dance of Color"

"A Dance of Color"
© David A. Ziser

I photographed this image while traveling the Big Island of Hawaii a few years ago. This is one on my drive-by shooting images.  LaDawn was driving which means we were flying down the road at a pretty fast clip about 41 miles from Hilo just leaving from Waimea.

The original scene was not much to look at – kind of a weeded lot with some construction going on.  Still I liked the cascade of bright red flowers meandering through the scene.  Could I grab the shot in time?  I raised the camera to my eye while trying to frame up the scene at the same time. Panning to the right with the car moving quickly past the scene, I managed to capture the image.

OK, the image I shot was a far cry from what you see above.  The original shot was a good beginning. With some cropping and a little judicious pixel bending I thought the original image held some potential.  I headed over to Photoshop, this was a pre-Lightroom image, and worked the colors, contrasts till I had manipulated the image close to what I was looking for.

Still the image was not quite there.  I was looking for a more “impressionistic” rendering of the scene. More Monet if you will, like you see in his painting, Woman In A Garden [link]. In that painting the reds just danced through the canvas. I wanted my reds to look the same way.

I added the painterly effect by hitting Filter -> Brush Strokes –> Angled Strokes and finally had the result I wanted.  I love it. I plan to eventually print this image on canvass and frame it for a nice wall display.

Camera specs: Canon 5D (Mk I) fitted with 24-105mm IS lens at 90mm, F11 @1/160 second, ISO 800. Enjoy! –David

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Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  This is our first day back and I’ve got to catch up on a few things around the studio.  How about I see everybody bright and early on Monday with another scintillating collection of links for your enjoyment.

And remember, in this heat, don’t let your pixels run around outside without at least an SPF 80 sunscreen lathered on them ;~)

See ya’ on Monday everybody,

-David

p.s. Hit the “Read More…” link below to see the “Before” image from today’s post. You might be surprised.

Here is what the original scene looked like as we flew by at about 50 mph – not much before a little Photoshop magic was applied.  Don’t you just love our digital world? Heck yeah!