Pope Farm Conservancy

Being it snowed today I decided to take a snow day today at Pope Farm Conservancy and take some snow photos at the park in Middleton. A spontaneous decision I made early as the sun rose at the coffee shop today.

As I trudged through the snow for a couple miles taking photos I realized I should have brought my cross-country skis. I didn’t think it had snowed that much, but it would have been great skiing. It know it was pretty lousy walking in the 6 inches of snow. I got back to my car and was temporarily stuck in the snow and then had to help another car that was stuck in the driveway before I could head home.

Layer with Photoshop

Once home I got sucked into trying out my layering techniques on the photos. I thought the snow would probably lend itself well to layering. It’s one of those things that it’s easy to get sucked into and wind up spending the rest of the day on it.  You basically take a bunch of other photographs of various textures and layer them on top of the original photo to get a rustic textured look. I have a folder of photos for this; pictures of concrete, rusty metal and flaking paint.

As a former photojournalist there was a day that I would never have imagined myself doing this much with photoshop. For ethical reasons newspapers strictly prohibit it’s photographers from pretty much any Photoshop altering of photos. But the art world has a different set of rules.

It can be a nice effect for fine art. I’m still not very skilled at this, but it’s fun to play with. I’m not sure if I pulled it off or not? A friend of mine is great at this technique. We got to know each other at art fairs around the Midwest. Jamie Heiden is the master of layering in Photoshop! Her work is certainly part of the reason I changed my mind about Photoshopping images.