Adding a canvas background layer to your photo

This method is a quick and simple way to spice up any photo. The best photo choice to use with this technique is practically any photo you like and want to add a special touch to.
The first thing to do is make a quick painting on canvas, and if this part of the process leaves you feeling intimidated, all I can say is: don’t be. Since all you are doing is creating a background layer for your photo the painting does not need to be a masterpiece, just something that pleases your eye. If it makes you feel better I, myself, had never done any painting on canvas before and had quite a bit of fun experimenting with it.
It’s a good idea to use an unframed canvas panel at
8” X 10” so it will be easy to scan when it’s dry.
You can use any type of paints that work on canvas; I like to use acrylic paints since they
dry quite fast.
Next, scan your work of art at 300dpi and open your photo editor.
Now, open the photo you wish to enhance and make sure your layer palette is visible
(Paintshop Pro: View/Palettes/layers or F8. Photoshop: window/layers or F7).
Place your scanned canvas painting onto a new layer above the photo layer and blend both images by playing with the transparency settings until you like what you see.

You can find this photo process and many others in my new book:
So Much More than Photography – eBook edition is now on sale for $10.
Get it here

Cyanotype sun printing

Sun printing is a method of printing onto a surface using (yep, you guessed it) UV rays from the sun. Most people use sun printing to print various arrangements on paper by creating a design on a sun print paper, such as leaves and flowers, and exposing it to the sun.
But you can also sun print your negatives.
First thing to do is choose a negative with a good contrast, place it on the sun printing paper, set a piece of glass over it to hold it down and keep it flat (make sure your glass is not coated with a UV blocker!) , and expose it to direct sun.
The exposure time depends on your location, season and time of day, so you’ll have to experiment with it a little. The sun printing paper recommends exposure time of 10-15 minutes, but if you are printing in late afternoon you’ll need around 30 minuets and even more.
The print below was exposed around 1PM for less than 4 minutes.
When the sun exposure is complete, you will need to rinse the print under running water until the water runs clear.
For a final touch you can use a blunt object to distress the edges while the print is still wet.
Now if you don’t shoot film and have no negatives, don’t despair.
Create a negative version of your favorite digital photo and print it out on an inkjet transparency. It will work just like a real negative and even better because you can make it any size you want.

I got my watercolor sun printing paper from Freestyle but most art supply stores have some type of sun prints paper as well.

Distressed and modified prints

Altered images can be a unique addition to various projects, such as collages, altered art, or journals.
And since this method is a type of freeform artistic process, you can torment your photo print any way you wish.
Only one thing to keep in mind before you get your tools ready is that most distressing techniques won’t work as well with homemade inkjet prints, and for best results you should use a photographic print that was printed in a photo lab or a high-end printing service.
You can begin modifying your photographic print by scratching lines onto the prints using an artist knife. Next, use sandpaper to get rid of the gloss appearance, bring out the color beneath the top layer of the print, and give it a truly distressed appearance.
If you feel adventurous and are brave enough, try spattering or even rubbing household bleach onto your print. Using a cotton ball or a sponge, you can pat the bleach in purposely to some areas of your print, or you might prefer to randomly squirt it on at random.
Another thing you can do is get a bleach pen and use it to write or draw on your print. If you can’t find a bleach pen, use a skewer or a tooth pick, dip it in the bleach, and use as a pen.
Note that the bleach, which starts yellow, will quickly turn into white.
If you like the yellowish appearance you will need to wash off the bleach in water just a few seconds after applying it to the print.
In addition you can randomly add acrylic paints or markers and, at last, lightly sand the print again in order to blend the paints into the print.

This process works well with color, sepia ,or black and white prints.

Download pdf file : Image Transfer 101

Aging a color photo with coffee

Aging a color photo is obviously more challenging than making a black and white or a sepia tone image look old – difficult, but not impossible.
Especially if you like coffee.
Now on to the details:
The first step is to un-vibrant (is this a word?) the image so it doesn’t look too vivid. You can do this during scanning or in your image editor by reducing the highlights, saturation, and contrast. Or you can just go for one of your unsuccessful washed-out photos (as you see, unsuccessful doesn’t necessarily mean failed).

The next step is to create an aged looking paper, which I did by using the leftovers of my morning coffee. Really! All you need to do is crumble a paper (I used watercolor paper), soak it in coffee, and let it dry in the sun. Now the same watercolor paper looks like it has seen many years of hardship.

Next, scan the stained paper, open your favorite photo editor and blend it on another layer with your washed out image. And just like before, you will need to play around with the blending and transparency settings until you like what you see.

By the way, if you are not a coffee drinker and prefer tea, no worries; you can do the same process using tea instead of coffee. I’m sure there are many other ways to age a paper such as burning, ink stains, distressed ink, antique solutions, or simply use an actual aged paper from an old book. These are just a few methods to choose from, so simply select whatever works best for you.

As a final touch, you can darken the edges of the photo by using the darken or burn tool in your photo editor.

If you don´t have a film scanner then DiY

One thing that I love about film photography is the magic involved with the chemicals to revel what your eyes see against your camera.

I always try to experiment with film, you never know when it is going to end with, last year I created a pinhole panoramic camera I ended with 6 photos from one 120mm film of 6 x 12, a lot of fun. But my problem was in fact that my scanner does not support 120mm film even the new 6×12 frame photo of my pinhole camera.

eBook: So much more than Photography

Creative and extreme scanning, image transfers, texture layering and much more. $10 DOWNLOAD

So I did a little search on flickr and find a cool solution. I did my own film scanner so, my option only to be able to show my experiments was to take a photo from the film. So I created a film scanner using a shoe box I cut the hole and add a 6×6 and 6×12 mask, cut a hole in the top for the flash, and then add some paper to diffuse the light.

Here is the inside of the box, I added 2 layers of wax paper to diffuse the light.

You only need to take a photo of the film and then in Ligtroom or Photoshop invert the colors and have fun. Now  you can get a digital copy of your film experiments. This work for me, I know It may not be the best but to share on flickr works fantastic.

Here is one of my experiments using the DiY film scanner

I hope you enjoy this tip, I originally wrote this post on my blog but its in Spanish so I thought it will be cool sharing here the tip. If you need help you can leave a comment on my blog or on my flickr.

Print on Demand and self publishing 101

24 pages of detailed instructions accompanied by images and related links which will guide you through the world of Print on Demand self publishing, book design and online marketing. $5 DOWNLOAD

First Attempt at Mod Podge Transfer

I was so inspired by this site that I had to try this technique.  This is a picture of my first attempt at image transfer to canvas using Nitsa’s mod podge technique.  I used an image printed from my inkjet (or is it ink jet?) printer on plain copy paper.

Here’s what I did:

I first chose a cool  image from one of my magazines, scanned it and converted it to black and white.  I played with the contrast until the image looked like an ink stamp.

Then I painted a 12″x16″ canvas board with silver and white acrylic paint and let it dry a couple of hours.  I printed out some background clip art and mod podged it to the painted canvas.  I smoothed out the background images as best I could with my fingers since I don’t have a brayer.

After 15 minutes I painted a coat of mod podge over the entire canvas. I waited another 15 minutes and applied another mod podge coat.

I let the mod podge dry about 30 minutes.  Mod podge dries pretty fast which is a plus because I am super impatient.

With my heart beating fast because I didn’t want to mess up, I brushed the ink side of the black and white image of the man and woman making sure I had an even layer.  In hindsight, I think I put too much mod podge.

I carefully held the image over the part of canvas that I wanted to place it.  I set it down gently and smoothed it out with my fingers working from center out.  I made sure there was good contact ink to canvas contact.

After a couple of hours, I sprayed water onto the paper until I saw the image start to appear through the paper. Then I started gently rubbing the layers of paper off.  I think I was rubbing too hard on one small part because some of the ink started to come off.  I panicked so I stopped where I was at.  I left too much paper on the image which made the image look ghostly.

When it dried it was pretty hazy but I thought if I painted mod podge on it it would look more clear.  Well, the image of the couple still looked ghostly.  After looking at it for a while, I started to like the ghostly effect.  I then really liked it when my kids told me it looked cool. 

I am so happy I found this site.  Nitsa’s work is amazing and her techniques are simple and fun to do.   This is the first blog site I have joined and actually submitted something.  Hope you like the piece!  Pat  ^_^

How to revise a photo

A few days ago I discovered at the bottom of my xerox photocopies stash that for some reason I have a bunch of photocopies that are not mirror copies. As I mostly use these photocopies for image transfers I make sure to print a mirrored version, especially if there is text in the photo.
So clearly these photocopies were not good candidates for image transfer.
OK, now, what can I do with them?
I thought about it for a while and decided to try cutting the photocopies and then assemble them back together but just for fun I will put them back together in a slightly different order.
I chose an 8X10 canvas panel and using Mod Podge I covered it with decorated papers, old newspapers and other found objects. I then chose one of the photocopies; a picture I took a few years ago in Greenwich Village, NY. I randomly cut the picture into 8 different pieces, rearranged the pieces, and pasted onto the background layer, again using Mod Podge. I added watered down Gesso to some areas and and waited for the piece to dry before covereing it with Krylon clear UV protection.
And here it is; another way to present a photo:

BUY THIS ARTWORK

Mixed Media Image Transfer Directions

1. Using Mod Podge, paste pieces of textured papers and other found objects (such as ticket stabs, stamps old newspaper etc.) onto an 11”X14” canvas panel.
2. Make sure to cover this layer with the Mod Podge so it doesn’t only adhere the papers to the canvas but also protects this layer to all eternity (or at least a few years)
3. Cover this layer with watered-down gesso. It will mute the layer a bit and also will tie the pieces together.
4. Add a thin layer of acrylic paint of your choice. Don’t over do it so it doesn’t overwhelm the other layers.
5. Now to the transfer part. Spread Gel Medium onto your image which in this case is a Xerox copy of a picture taken at a train station in Long Island, New York in the evening when people get off the train to go back home from a long day of work.
6. Put your photo copy which is now covered with gel medium face-down into the canvas on top of the previous layers. I transferred a few copies of the same image.
7. Let it set for a few hours, preferably over night.
8. Wet your fingers and rub the access paper, revealing the image which is now transferred to the new surface.
9. For the final touch you can add text, letters, gesso and paints.
10. Clean up the mess!

That’s it! Now you’ve got yourself a nice mixed media image transfer thingy which I like to call: mixed transfer.

The many lives of an image

For different reasons some of my photos are closer to my heart than others.
Sadly the main reason I like one picture over the other has no artistic explanation at all. in fact the reason is quite trivial; it has to do with the circumstance under which the photo was taken, mainly how I felt at the time, and hardly ever has anything to do with the actual qualities of the image.

And so I keep going back to these photos and I often pick them out to use them when I experiment with a new image process.

One of such images is this picture to the left which I took in NYC in July 2001.
I believe one of the explanations I grew attached to this photo is that I took it while, for the first time, I was completely alone in NY. It was quite a memorable day.

Same image under my infamous distress process:

This one was aged with a texture layer:

And finally a mixed-media image transfer (on canvas).

By the way the drawing above the image is a transfer of the original empire state building blueprint.

Into the sunset and ever after

One of my favorite things about creative photography is working directly into the photo print. This time I combined two methods that until now I did independently: hand coloring and distressing prints.
As far as the hand coloring goes there are a few ways to color and paint photographs, and they can be divided into two groups: traditional hand coloring using oil paints such as Marshals paints or the way I prefer doing it, free form painting.
Using free form is about mixing different painting approaches and tools, painting rather than coloring, stamping and adding text.
So basically the idea is to have fun with it and experiment with various ideas and methods.
Here I began with sanding the print which was printed on a glossy paper in order to rid of the shiny finish. Next I used an artist knife to outline the lines in the picture. I then painted the photo using acrylic paints to bring out the feel of the charming evening hour when this picture was taken. And finally using acrylic paints I stamped the photo, no special reason, just because.

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Happy Earth Day !
Don’t forget to leave all the lights on when you leave home, drive your over-sized SUV over your neighbor’s stupid organic garden, cut down a couple of trees and dispose of used cans and bottles in the trash can. OK?

Photography or art?

Dear Nitsa,
I love all your work but I am wondering why you are interested in changing or even destroying your pictures? Aren’t you ever happy with your pictures and want to leave them ‘as is’?   Mark

The answer to your question, dear Mark, has something to do with the role of photography. I’m not an expert on the history of art but it seems to me that until photography came around, art was a serious medium that was used to depict portraits and landscapes in a very responsible manner. But once photography assumed this important job, the artists were free to begin doing abstract and other types of visual interpretation. So photography was pretty much left with making portraits, landscapes and documenting events. This is very nice and nothing is wrong with it. But this doesn’t mean photography can’t be used in other ways. Despite its scientific and mechanical nature, it can even be an artistic medium.
Now, you call it “destroying your pictures” but I see it as “presenting my images in a non-traditional form” which is just one step in the process of making photos. This is why I prefer the term “making photos” and not “taking photos”. Photography can be a process of creating something artistic which is shaped by many steps such as: choosing the camera and film, locating the image, selecting the desired settings, making the exposure, developing and printing the photograph and finally presenting the image.
It is never “as is”. I’m not even sure what “as is” really means.
The bottom line is that photography does not have to be confined to a single limited view of its function and it should always be characterized and defined by the individual photographer.
So mark, I tried answering your question seriously, I hope it works for you.
Now, excuse me, I have to go destroy, I mean, distress a print or two.

good day bad memory

When I discovered a printout of this picture, I just couldn’t remember how on earth I achieved this distinctive effect. I suppose I created it about two years or so ago and that’s apparently way too long for someone with a demanding schedule as myself to be able to remember such fine details (and obviously I’d rather not blame it on age). But finally after pondering between inkjet transfer and textured layer I had a moment of rare recollection and I realized this picture was in fact featured in my latest book;
I am not an artist
In the book under the picture it says:
Camera: Holga Film: Kodak 400VC
Place: Downtown San Francisco
Technique: negative scanned through a clear sheet protector.

There you go.

Make earth friendly photo art

After a good deal of experimentation with mixed-media-transfer I cannot but conclude there’s no substitute to using Xerox photocopies instead of inkjet printouts. Not only the Xerox transfer is more stable and therefore you have more control over it (which can also be a bad thing if you like the unexpected) but also the transfer is guarantee to last longer than an inkjet transfer will. The problem with the ink is that it has a shorter life span and sadly it does not handle water very well, so just a little bit of moisture can do great harm to your masterpiece.
Honestly, I’m not that happy about these findings mainly because I very much rather using inkjet printouts as I can print out whatever I want on the fly, and that’s how I prefer working, without extra planning. But it is what it is.
Anyway, the main reason I’m writing about mixed-media-transfer yet again, is that I would like to recommend that if you are interested in doing image transfers, do consider the mixed-media thing. I myself like it very much because of the special appearance of the end result and because it involves the therapeutic process of tearing, assembling and pasting. I often use found objects, meaning movie tickets, used stamps, spam mail, newspapers etc. Actually one of my favorite things to use is the little paper bag they put my sushi in at Whole Foods, it has red stripes and it states “stay cool” so I try to stay cool and I use these paper bags in every mixed media piece I make. The reason I mention it is that not only the mixed-media-transfer has a unique appearance; it is also Earth friendly and a much better way to recycle; no doubt it is the most energy efficient recycling method.
And by the way, before you transfer the image onto these mixed media things, you can scan them and use them as backgrounds with your texture layer technique.

Mixed media with image transfer and photo prints

This mixed media collage is actually a test piece where I was experimenting with different materials.
I chose an 11X14 canvas board and partially covered it with pieces of an old newspaper and different textured papers. I used mod podge to adhere the papers to the canvas. The mod podge also acts a protective finish. In order to add some color to the mix I used acrylic paints which I often favor as they dry quite fast.
I experimented with different type of printed cutouts. I used inkjet and also professional photo prints. No doubt the professional ones worked much better while the inkjet was not as sturdy and water resistant.
I also experimented with two types of image transfer. The inkjet transfer (done with mod podge) was weaker and somewhat faded (the birds are inkjet transfer). The Xerox transfer worked out perfectly and definitely justified the effort of making photocopies and of course the long wait for the transfer to take place. But of course the choice between photocopy transfer and a printer transfer completely depends on the look and feel one is trying to achieve.
I even tried drawing… but soon decided its not really my best talent and I should probably give it up.
Overall I liked using transfers with the mixed media collage over the photo prints mainly for two reasons: 1) using photographic prints didn’t feel like they are going to be long lasting and they might just come off some day in the future. 2) The image transfers simply blend in much better with the other elements of the mixed media artwork.
So here it is. Not yet a masterpiece.

Mixed media transfer

Yesterday I made a couple of mixed media transfers, experimenting with different backgrounds, when I discovered something new.
Usually when I do image transfers from an inkjet printer I make sure to begin separating the transfer from the paper after about 15-30 minutes when I feel the transfer medium is sufficiently dry. I always assumed that if I waited too long the paper will be too difficult to remove and the transfer won’t work. But not so.
As it turned out, after applying the transfer medium yesterday I had to leave home and couldn’t attend to the transfers only a few hours later that night. By then the transfers were completely dry so I had to apply some more water than usual. However, unlike my dark prophecy I found out that the paper comes apart quite easily, and not only that, but the transfer had developed nicely and was pretty resistant to my abuse and turned out rather perfect.
So perfect that I had to use an artist knife to make it look a bit weathered
So there it is. Let it sit for a while and let it do its thing.

coffee stained layer

This is probably one of my favorite coffee stains images. The original photo was taken in Manhattan in 2005 and I coffee stained it sometimes in 2007. The idea behind it was to figure out a way to age a color image without turning it into a black and white or sepia tone photograph.
In this case the print was not directly stained like I’ve done before, but instead I coffee stained watercolor paper, scanned it and placed it in another layer on top of the original image. Now the original photographs looks like it has seen many years of hardship.

modified posetive film

One of the advantages of cleaning up my room other than the obvious improvement in organization and neatness is finding things I forgot I even had.
(just shows you how much stuff we keep even though we don’t really need it)
anyway, one of the things I came across was a folder with lots of cool slides I took around 1998-1999.
It was quite nice to go down memory lane and before you know it I had an itch to modify and alter some of these slides just like I’ve altered negatives in the past.
So this is how it’s done:
First I chose a slide that didn’t come out all that great (and I have plenty of these kind!)
I placed the slide on a light box and I used an artist knife to carve directly into the slide, basically going over the existing lines in the image.
That’s it.

Coffee stains

When People see this picture they often ask me to describe how I photoshoped it.
They think I used some layer texture process or something.
But actually this picture was not processed in Photoshop or any other photo editor.
It is originally a picture taken in Ashbury-Haight (San Francisco) with a cross-processed Fujichrome Provia-F 100 (RHP-III) Color Slide Film.
It was then professionally printed (by dotphoto.com) on a matte finish paper. It is necessary to have the photo professionally printed as the following steps would not work with an inkjet print.
The print was then directly (lightly)sanded and finally coffee stained.
Quite simple.

Rainy day in Texas

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Last
picture
before
the rain
came down
over
San Antonio
Texas
Texas
San Antonio
An identical
city
Reflected
in
The sidewalk

photography & mosaic

Recently I’ve been interested in mosaic, not the traditional kind, but the free-form style. Unlike the traditional mosaic which is assembled into patterns , images and is made with carefully nipped mosaic tiles, the freeform is made from broken crockery, pieces of tiles and found objects (such as buttons, pendants, mirrors, jewelry etc). The freeform mosaic is assembled like a puzzle with the pieces set mostly without any pre-planning.

This whole process obviously has nothing to do with photography, but as you might have guessed, it didn’t take me long to figure out a way to incorporate photography into my work..
Since the pieces in my mosaic come from different sources they are of different thickness which creates an uneven surface. In order to solve this problem when creating, let’s say, a tabletop, I decided to include small tiles (4”X4”) into the mosaic. These tiles will act as coasters. I could of course use colored tiles but this became a golden opportunity to use white tiles and transfer lovely images into them to include in the final piece.

This is a picture of a freeform mosaic covered storage trunk with an image transferred into a 6”X6” black tile. (Picture taken before grouting). The photo used for the image transfer is a painted black and white picture I took in Glastonbury Connecticut in 2006.
In the next post I will describe how to do the tile image transfer (its quite easy!)

Sometimes things are not as hard as they seem.

I find out people think it’s really difficult to make this type of artwork but really it’s quite easy and takes just a few minutes to create.
If you’re not sure how its done look at a previous post about this process.
Sometimes I make one of these at the end of the day, especially if I feel the day went by too fast and I haven’t had a chance to do something worth mentioning.
Sometimes I make one of these when I need a rehab session.
Give it a try.
Everything will be just fine.

The picture used here was taken at the Embarcadero, San Francisco

Turn off

There’s no better way to turn me off and away from a photo blog than a
political rambling. sorry. not interested.
It’s hard enough sometimes to concentrate on the photography.

unrelated photo: wall street, NYC 2006 expired film .textured layer.

Photo in distress / part two

I usually recommend using professional quality prints when distressing a photo print. This is because ink jet prints don’t do well with this technique especially when there’s any moist involved in the process.
But in this case, I decided to use ink-jet prints since they were printed out quite a while ago, and I’m talking about a few years ago, so they obviously had sufficient time to settle.
As you see, though they didn’t fall apart, I still got some greenish hue when the ink got wet but I guess its OK and somehow even works out with the final mood of the process.

Photo in distress

The other day I received email from someone about my distressed photo technique. He argued it is much easier and faster to achieve this weathered look using his computer.
Well, I doubt it.
I know very well that working in a photo editor is not really such a fast and simple process. It might be more accessible and less complicated than working in the darkroom but any serious digital-editing buff will tell you it’s not a speedy and trouble-free process.
On the other hand, distressing a photo print is quite simple and even takes less than a minute.
All you need to do is rub down the photo with sandpaper, wrinkle a bit to create random creases, soak in coffee/tea and let dry in the sun.
There are of course other methods, but this one works quite efficiently.

mixed transfer

One of the main ideas behind my endless quest through the land of experiments is a search for a technique to combine photography with other forms of the visual arts.
Therefore I was quite happy when it occurred to me to try combining mixed media and image transfer; two methods I’ve been doing independently until now.
Unlike most of my past experiments, this one worked well right from the start.
And because I spread plenty of mod podge over the mixed media parts (not only to make sure the different pieces are glued well but also to finish and seal the whole thing), this method creates the perfect surface to transfer an image onto.
If you are not sure how (and why) this method is done check out the Mixing mixed media with image transfer post.
I’m not yet sure what term will best describe this process and the best I could come up with is: mixed transfer… OK, not too clever, but that’s all I’ve got right now.

Image transfer. Rainy day in Westwood Village.

film and texture

The images below were all done with the same texture; it’s the texture I talk about in Create your own texture post.
One thing I have to mention about using textures is that I often prefer using photographs I captured on film over the digital ones. Analog images tend to be; at least MINE are, soft and mysterious, therefore it’s much easier transforming them into vintage and moody images. In fact, I only had to take two steps to create these images: adding the texture layer and changing the transparency to Overlay.

These photos were taken with the Canonet QL17 in Beverly Hills.

mixed media collage art thing

Another lovely mixed media masterpiece.
which by the way I don’t really like calling it “mixed media” even though it incorporates layers of different mediums, but until I come up with a better term, I’ll leave it at that.
So anyway, this piece is simply a canvas board covered (using mod podge) with vintage newspaper and other found stuff (mainly ticket stubs, stamps and textured papers), lots of Gesso and 5 of my favorite photo prints.
As you might have guessed, it was in fact true fun putting it all together, especially the part of splashing Gesso all over the place. Very useful for folks who grew up with an over- tidy and hygienic mother. (like mine)(I think she believed our home was actually a museum of squeaky-clean arts)

Create your own texture / background

What you need:
Any size (but not larger than your scanner) canvas or hardboard panel.
An old newspaper or any textured paper.
Mod Podge.
Acrylic or water paints
Optional: distress ink.

Yes, yes I know, I could make some beautiful textures on my PC and it will probably be an easier, faster and a cleaner process. However, I do like the direct contact with the materials I’m using and messing with glue and paints pretty much serves as a fine therapy session for me.
Besides, my room is packed with paints, art materials and found stuff (in fact if you’ve seen my room you would be fooled to think an artist lives here) so anyway with all this stuff lying around I thought I’d better put it to good use.
Ok, now on to the details:
Cover the canvas panel with an old newspaper or a textured paper adhering it with Mod Podge. Make sure your work is sloppy and not smooth so there are creases and bumps to the newspaper.
Paint one thin layer of paint covering the newspaper. Wait until it’s almost dry, add a drop of water to a different color and paint another layer letting the layer beneath show through in some places.
Cover your work of art with any clear finish; mod podge can be used for this purpose as well.
When it’s dry and ready you can scan it and use it as a background texture for your images. Another great application for this thing is to use it as a background for your photo print which you are going to frame and proudly display by your bed.

How the brain works

Usually when I create a mixed media photography piece (which is simply another way of presenting photos, just like framing or arranging them in an album or a book) I just don’t know what it’s going to be and so it takes shape as I’m making it.
But sometimes when I look at the finished product I can see how it actually developed.
In this case I created the collage over a previously used 11X14 canvas panel which was the receiving surface for an unsuccessful image transfer.
The image transfer was of a line of palm trees on the beach and even though I completely covered it, I wasn’t at all aware of the fact I was actually sticking to the same theme while creating this new piece.

your morning coffee

To achieve this effect I began by soaking a watercolor paper in the leftovers of my morning coffee and let the paper completely dry in the sun. After scanning the paper into my photo editor I layered the original image on top of this coffee stained paper with the transparency set to “overlay”.
Next, a combination of both layers was placed over the original image and the transparency was now set to “hue” (you will need to play around with the amount of transparency.)
And there you have it, a warm coffee kind of day in Dutchess county, upstate New York.

Greatness or success?

To me experimenting with photography means trying to combine some form of creative presentation with street photography. This is far from being an easy challenge as street photography is not at all a type of conventional beauty or fine art.
And though it is by far more gratifying than just keeping at the level of a photo taker, it is in a way less understood or accepted as it is often not as simple to people as a clean shot of everyday images which they had gotten so accustomed to.
But I guess most photographers are interested in more sales rather than evoke an emotion, create an idea, provoke a thought.
It’s the difference between a picture that decorates a living room like another piece of furniture and an exceptional masterwork that you can’t get away from.
It’s true, Greatness does not put bread on the table and surely will not pay for a vacation in Paris, but success can do all that and even more, so maybe it should have been an obvious choice.

Yes, yes, I know; you choose both

Rcommended: Film is not dead it just smells funny

This is one of my very favorite blogs and is high on my list of online places I like to visit.
The idea behind this site, as the name suggests, is to promote film photography. Essentially it’s a place for photographers who use and are interested in analogue photography .
Most pictures are selected for this site from Flickr, and in effect the site is directly connected to the Flickr group with the same name: Film is not dead

Line of palm trees in Santa Monica.
One of my pictures which was featured on the site.

preserving your inkjet photos

As some of my experiments are done with inkjet prints, the issue of preserving these photos was naturally an obvious concern.
So this is what you can do in order to protect and improve the longevity of the photos:
1) Coat your work with UV moisture resistant clear finish. It will protect and double the life of your image.
2) Like with any other photo you should keep your photo in a dark moisture-free place and keeping it in a protective sleeve will help too.
3) Using archival ink and permanent papers will ensure longevity.
4) Its always a good idea to have a high res digital copy.

The above photo, taken in Richmond Virginia, was printed on watercolor paper,
soaked and sun dried.

Saving old photos

One of the things I’m recently interested in is “saving” (or like my friend David calls it “recycling”) my old photos. I kinda feel they are lost and forgotten somewhere there deep in the drawer. So recently I like to excavate through my old photo boxes and dig out these old prints to breath new life into them.
These old photos are the perfect candidates for distressed/altered prints.

Texture layer

One of the techniques I’m quite interested in exploring lately is the texture layer blend.
It’s in fact a pretty basic method. All you need to do is blend your picture (in a photo editor) with some textured layer and let the texture come through your image to enhance it and give it a unique edge. It’s a very effective technique as people’s eye is often attracted to texture; especially when it is unexpectedly found in a two dimensional image.
I find that many of the people who add texture layers to their images simply use found textures they capture as a photograph. I prefer to use homemade and scanned textures such as painted canvas, stained paper, painted watercolors and textured paper. The reason for this is that not only I get the chance to practice some “hands on”, but mainly because I don’t have a camera which is capable of capturing texture at a good enough clarity and sharpness.

Altered prints

Harlem, New York [2000]

I wasn’t sure what title will describe this process best; abused prints? Modified? Battered? Weathered? Distorted? Distressed?
So I decided to go with ‘altered’. It doesn’t sound as violent.

Altered prints, what are they good for? Actually,they can be a unique addition to various projects such as collages, altered art or journals. And since it’s such a free form you can “torture” your photo print any way you wish. However, keep in mind that most techniques won’t work as well with the homemade inkjet print and for best result you should use a photographic print which was printed in a photo lab or on a high end printing service such as dotphoto.com .
In order to achieve this distressed appearance I began with scratching lines onto the prints using an artist knife. Next I used sandpaper to get rid of the gloss appearance and bring out the color beneath the top layer of the print. In addition I randomly added acrylic paints and at last sanded the print again in order to bland the paints into the print.