There’s something about this image that speaks of mysterious emptiness. Uninhabited dwellings, girded in wintery vesture, showcasing nothing more than the antiquated existence of a bygone era. Even the composition itself speaks of vacancy, each component leading the eye into an alleyway that displays nothing but emptiness. The pile of bricks, the sagging deck, the broken wagon wheel; what were once useful elements of every day life are now long forgotten fragments of archaic memories.

But there is one element that might possibly suggest something different. The sun is shining! A sun that will melt transient snow and dispel sheepish gloom. The bricks are not remnants of deterioration, but are simply an unassembled support for a sagging deck. The broken wagon wheel is an unearthed treasure. The empty alleyway is an open conduit for curious historians. This is not the monument of decay, it is the pillar of historical preservation!

There might be more than meets the eye . . . behind what first greets the eye. Though it might not seem like it sometimes, never doubt that he that hath the Son hath life! (I John 5:12)

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All this step takes is a little understanding of the Brush Tool and it’s corresponding Brush Pallet. You can either download a free brush online or make your own (which I recommend, though it is slower). This is what my brush looked like when I was finished tweaking it:

The key is to make the brush very uneven and with various levels of opacity, which is all possible using the incredibly awesome Shape Dynamics, Scattering, and Transfer options.

Next, make yourself a new, transparent layer over all the other layers. With the foreground color set to white, start painting over the entire scene as best suits your preference. You can make it a light snow, like I did, or an extreme blizzard! Remember that the more you add, the more fake it will appear. Here’s an example of what I painted (with a black background added to make the flakes visible):

There are much more realistic (and more complicated) ways of making snow falling, but for my purposes, this was all I needed.

4. Adding snow clinging to branches

This last step I actually ran across by accident. Though I discovered the concept by mistake, I liked it so much that I decided to keep it. It probably wouldn’t work with every picture you edit in Photoshop, but it sure did work nicely with this one.

Remember the mask we made over the sky in Part I? We created it over the Dramatic Clouds image so that the clouds would only show through where there was sky in the Cabin image. Because of the way we created it, the mask was very detailed, covering every branch and twig in the background forest so that the Dramatic Clouds would not cover them up.

Well, I discovered that by moving the mask upward by two pixels, instead of it making only the branches visible, it also makes a two-pixel-thick layer of sky visible above the branches. So you are not actually seeing white; all you’re seeing is a little bit of the normal, Cabin image sky above the branches!

Now this only works with the Blend Mode and Opacity settings that I applied to the Dramatic Clouds image earlier. Otherwise, the mask would be covering up just as much of the branches from below as it is revealing sky from on top. Of course, the professional way of adding clinging snow could be done differently, but I won’t go there because I don’t have to with this image.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading theses posts as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them! I don’t spend an awful lot of time in Photoshop, but when I do, it is always enjoyable and I often learn things I never knew before.

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Last Saturday, my brother Jonathan and I did something we had never done before. With several inches of freshly fallen snow on the ground and predictions for more in the forecast, we jumped into the 4-wheel drive Envoy and headed for Coopers Rock State Forest in the mountains around Bruceton Mills, WV. The chance to get a good workout while doing some West Virginia winter landscape photography was something I had been hoping to do for a long time.

The park was a completely different place than what I remembered it being like in the summer years ago. Instead of driving out to the famous rock outcropping that overlooked the Cheat River, we had to hike 3 miles in and 3 miles out on snow covered trails. What a fun day!

Here are a few things we learned from our memorable afternoon excursion:

• Most park roads are closed during winter. This should be common knowledge, but I don’t go to parks in the winter very often. Just prepare to do a lot of walking.
• Calculate exact distances before you set a timetable. When I was planning the trip, all I read was, “During the winter months, you must park at the entrance parking lot and walk in.” No problem, park entrances are close to the main attraction, right? Well, not really. It wasn’t until I had arrived at the entrance parking lot that I realized it was three miles to our destination. Three miles isn’t far, but it is a long way to walk for an afternoon excursion.
• Plan more time than you expect. Things like what I just describe happen more often than not.
• Dress in layers. This is also common knowledge, but especially when doing photography. While hiking, it’s easy to stay warm, but while composing pictures and waiting for the right lighting, you cool down quickly.
• Drink the water you bring. When it’s cold, you tend to not get as thirsty, but it’s just as important to drink water to keep from getting dehydrated.
• Bring a map and follow it closely. Trails are hard to follow in the snow so check to make sure you are going the right direction at every fork or questionable passage. Though it’s easy to retrace your steps, it’s always more convenient not to have to.
• Hike with a companion! On an adventure such as this, it’s not hard to find volunteers, but the old saying that “two are better than one” is especially true when normal hazards are magnified by cold weather, snow, and ice.
• It gets dark quick in the winter. It was a rare opportunity to shoot a winter sunset at Coopers Rock, so we stayed at the overlook until the sun set. This meant hiking part of the way back in the dark even though it was only 5:30 in the afternoon.

Having learned these pointers in combination with the photography and hiking, our trip was a very positive experience! I can’t wait to do something like it again.

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There is always more than one way to do things in Photoshop, but this is the way that I happened to liven up the windows in this cabin.

First, I made a new, yellow-colored Solid Color Adjustment Layer using something like #c5c46b. This makes my whole picture solid yellow.

Second, I made the yellow color only appear in the places I wanted it. On the Solid Color Layer’s mask, fill it with black and begin painting white over the windows to bring back the yellow color. You can use the Pen or Brush tool to do this, but because the windows were so small, I just did a quick job with the Brush tool. This is what my mask looks like . . .

. . . to make my picture look like this:

Of course this looks fake, so can you guess what I used to fix it? Nothing less than applying the ever-useful Overlay Blend Mode! With the Solid Color Adjustment Layer set to Overlay, it looks a whole lot more realistic.

Now, in my picture, I thought the Overlay Blend Mode by itself was a little flat, so I added another Solid Color Adjustment Layer with the color #f6dd88, copied over the mask I made earlier (click and drag while holding Alt), and set it to Multiply. So, thus far, here’s how it looks.

Sometimes, especially when the scene is darker than this one, it looks nice to add a glow around the light source. I usually achieve this by blurring the mask of the second Color Adjustment Layer.

Now all that needs done is the final touch of snow falling and clinging to the branches in the background forest . . .

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I’m working on designing a calendar for a local heritage site called Fort New Salem. It’s an awesome little town of old buildings! The other day, when it snowed for the first time in a long time, I drove over to the fort to take some pictures for the calendar. As you can see in the raw, unedited image above, it was a pretty regular winter day. Nothing special about it really, and when the sun did pop out every-once-in-a-long-while, it wasn’t bright enough to make anything look pretty. So I went home and popped the pictures into Photoshop. And look at the transformation!

Everything you see here is really quite simple to do. After brightening the picture up a bit in Lightroom, let me show you what I did in Photoshop to add drama to the sky, light in the windows, snow falling outside, and snow clinging to the forest branches.

1. Adding drama to the sky

First, I found a nice picture of dramatic clouds. I took this one back in September 2011 in Michigan. The foreground wasn’t that interesting, the sunset itself wasn’t that interesting, but the clouds were cool!

Second, I selected the sky. This wasn’t hard because it is basically all one light value. In the Channels pallet, I selected the channel that had the greatest contrast, duplicated it, increased contrast using Levels, pained black over all the white areas I didn’t want to be selected (ie. the snow on the cabin roof), and then Ctrl+clicked on the edited channel to load the selection.

Thirdly, back in my Layers pallet, I created a vector mask from my selection over the cloud layer. Though tacky-looking at this stage, you can now see the new dramatic sky over the cabin.

Now, all we have to do is blend the trees back into the sky. After trying various things, I found that setting the cloud layer to 70% Opacity and changing the Blend Mode to Hard Light, made it not look too shabby!

There’s still a lot more to add! In my next post, we’ll add lights in the windows . . .

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1. Beachborough, Ontario, Canada

2. New River Gorge, West Virginia

3. Hinsdale, Illinois

4. Chickadee, South Korea

5. Incheon, South Korea

6. Apple Orchard Falls, Virginia

7. Clingmans Dome, North Carolina

8. Wolf Lake, Michigan

9. Northwoods Conference Center, Michigan

10. Wilkes Wedding, Maryland

11. Rosarito, Mexico

12. Frederick Oberlin Covered Bridge, Connecticut

13. East Rock Ridge State Park, Connecticut

14. New Haven Lighthouse, Connecticut

15. Kent Falls, Connecticut

16. Jaycox Wedding, Indiana

17. Multnoma Falls, Oregon

18. Shore Acres State Park, Oregon

19. Battle rock Beach, Oregon

20. Redwood Forest, California

21. Crystal Lake, California

22. Mammoth Mountain, California

23. Duck Lake, California

24. Crater Lake, Oregon

25. Home Sweet Home, West Virginia

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Happy New Year!

I took this picture a few days ago, knowing that I’d have to take down the Christmas lights soon. No snow came like I was hoping for, but I think pulling away from the house and up the hill a ways helped hide distractions that snow would normally have covered. It wasn’t pitch black yet, so the sky came out very nice and saturated, and I really like the moving clouds made to look the way they do with the multi-second exposure. The tree limbs were accidental, actually, though I think they add a lot. Considering all the above, plus the fact that the camera was balanced on the top of an 8 foot ladder, I would say the picture is nothing short of a marvel!

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A freezing, snowy night + an old, rickety piano + an ancient, homely building = a cozy, fantastic picture! This is what went running through my head as I passed through the deserted Staff Center meeting room at the IBLP Headquarters in Hinsdale, Illinois, that late, wintery night in mid-December 2009. Luckily, I already had my camera equipment with me, tripod and all, after spending time in the dining room shooting Christmas trees, Christmas lights and various other decorations of the season. Though it was nearing midnight, I couldn’t help but arrange a few compositions of the conglomeration of picturesque elements setting in the corner of the room. It wasn’t every day that I had my camera handy, let alone the falling snow outside and evening solitude inside.

To make it a decent, uncluttered picture, I had to remove a lot of books and miscellaneous stuff laying around the piano. However, I didn’t touch the songbook that already lay upon the music rack. It was just fine the way it was. I debated whether or not to take the scraggly little tree draped in Christmas lights out from behind the piano, but I decided that because it harmonized with the overall old-fashioned theme, I would keep it there too.

Though not a landscape image, I feel this picture perfectly captured the nostalgic and anticipative emotions of December enough to include it as one of only 12 images used in Lenspiration’s 2012 Calendar now available online at Lenspiration.com.

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One could hardly have asked for a more marvelous Christmas morning! It was probably the earliest I had ever awoke for a Christmas Day, but what did that matter? On vacation with the family in Sanibel Florida in 2009, we were blessed to follow whatever schedule we pleased. And being in-landers from West Virginia, I supposed it was a unanimous vote to see the sunrise on Christmas morning!

Seriously, if one is up early, and if he happens to be at the beach, and if the clouds are broken up enough to let the sun shine through, than chances are it won’t be too hard to get a jolly good view of the sunrise.

I was all prepared with camera and tripod. I’m sure the salt water wasn’t too healthy for the tripod, but it was better than getting the typical, eye-level seaside picture looking down a sandy coast filled with debris and strollers. Plus, the bubbling ever-churning ocean water felt good on the sand-covered feet. 

I don’t remember much about why I composed the picture the way I did. I suppose the lighthouse made for a good subject and I liked the brilliant sky reflected in the water. It’s beautiful pictures like this that combine pleasant places with fond memories that caused me to choose this picture to be one of only 12 images used in Lenspiration’s 2012 Calendar, now available for purchase online at Lenspiration.com.

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I haven’t spent much time in West Virginia during the fall season over the past few years. This year, I was in California. The three preceding years I was in Chicago. Thus, the last time I had the opportunity to shoot fall colors in West Virginia was back in 2007. And I remember how incredibly wet that year was! The colors never really peaked: as soon as the leaves changed enough to display any color, it would rain again and all the leaves would fall off. And colors aren’t naturally vibrant under cloudy skies.

Under situations like this, one has to change his objective from shooting color to shooting shapes and feelings. And that is why this twisty little road caught my eye. It’s the road that leads down to my family’s home, so I saw it practically every day, and as the leaves slowly changed color, all I had to do was wait until the right trees had turned color. Somehow, the freshly fallen leaves littering the road added to the coziness of the scene, and the fact that the sky was overcast didn’t make much of a difference because no sky was visible in the composition. In fact, the cloudy skies only made the available light very soft.

All these factors, plus the fact that it was one of the only nice pictures taken that fall season, are reasons why I chose this image to be one of only 12 images used in Lenspiration’s 2012 Calendar, now available for purchase online at Lenspiration.com.

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