Swing

I took this picture on holiday of my boy on the swings. It was one of those captured moments that comes along once in a while. I only got one shot and when I looked at it on the camera I realised that the image was slightly blurred. I thought that I had lost the shot but decided that I would try and do something with it anyway because I liked it. I thought that I would enhance the colours and the blur further to see the results and I quite like the final image. If I had taken a picture in perfect focus I would never have thought of exploring further abstract possibilities. Sometimes when you a take a photo, things can go wrong. Exposure, framing, and of course...blur. This is why photoshop is such a useful tool. It can help you to correct mistakes. However sometimes your mistakes can be lucky and give you an image you never would have had in the first place. When you find that your image isn't as perfect as you wanted it to be, look at it again and try to work out if you have inadvertantly created something else that could work just as well. In this way, you might well end up using photoshop to enhance your mistake instead of correcting it.

Flying Baby

In keeping with the whole theme of movement in pictures, this piece is a good example of being able to create something unique with very simple photoshop techniques. The actual shot was a basic picture of the baby lying on a white floor. With some photoshop magic this image was created. The colour scheme was a random choice that I thought looked good, but obviously it could be any colour in the whole spectrum that you can choose. By colouring the whole frame in one colour and then using the framing tools to taint that colour into different tones you will have created quite an interesting background for your subject.

After that I overlaid the figure onto the frame and it was then that I realised that the pattern of the frame looked like vertical movement. The pose of the baby was perfect to make it look like he was freefalling so I decided to put the subject near the top of the frame as if he was dropping through the picture. By using the blurring tool I was able to add to the feeling of movement. I also created a version where the background was yellow, but the purple one was a stronger image.

It is always good to think about how you would like to present your subject in the space of the frame. By playing around with the usual conventions of framing, you can get some original results which give your images a futuristic, quirky feel. The image above could have been a simple picture of a baby lying on the floor, but with a little freethinking, he is now able to fly, and that's much more fun. I always try and give my subject an interesting position within the frame (if it suits the piece) because that is what draws a viewer into the picture and gives them something interesting and individual to look at. But obviously, if the conventional pose suits what you are trying to achieve then don't make a point of framing in a wacky way. Used sparingly, it can be interesting. Over use it and the substance of your work will be lost in favour of something which is annonyingly over-stylised.