trying something new
Even though I've been doing photography for almost 20 years now, my Photoshop skills are seriously limited. While I do digitally process just about every photograph I take, I generally use what I suspect is less than 1% of the software, repeating the same 3 or 4 steps every time.
Horrified by my ineptitude, recently my friend Maile sent me what is apparently called an "action pack" -- a serious of Photoshop macros, I guess, that run through various steps in Photoshop, thus behaving a lot like the filters on Instagram. (Those of you who are adept at Photoshop are shaking your head at my incompetence right now. I know. I know.) I loaded them on my computer a few weeks ago, and have been staring at them ever since, afraid to even try to figure out how to use them.
Finally, a few days ago, I decided to give them a whirl. The image above is one of my early attempts.
I've always had a pretty light hand when I'm processing, I think, and likely will continue to do so; nonetheless, I'm really starting to see the appeal of these actions. And honestly, it's been really fun feeling like a photography beginner again.
story of the day: we spray painted a shower curtain in this apartment. that probably wasn't healthy from fluidpudding.com
"I moved into this Stewart Road apartment at the beginning of my second senior year. I was 22 years old and had recently met with my advisor to tell her that I STILL didn’t know what I wanted to study in school. (I had already changed my major six times—piano performance, communications, elementary education, industrial psychology, nutrition, and nursing. Sometimes these were official changes in an office. Sometimes they were done in my head just because I was so embarrassed about my desultoriness. So many interests! Impossible to choose just one!)" (read more)