Tonight I had planned to attend the monthly meeting of the Exposures group. This is a group of photographers that meets at the West End Dark Room the first Thursday of the month. According to the website, the group often picks a theme, and people bring either slides, digital images, or large prints of photos related to that theme, and these are discussed. What the website did NOT tell me was the meeting time.
After repeated phone calls and e-mails went unanswered, I decided I would show up at 7:45. If the event started at 7:30, I would only be 15 minutes lated, and if it started at 8:00, I would be a bit early. It seemed like a good plan. That is, except for the fact that the meeting actually started at 7:00. I was greeted, but it was apparent that I was unexpected, and somewhat unwelcome. Rather than stand around awkwardly for the remaining few minutes of the meeting, I made my apologies and left. I may give them another shot next month, but they will have to impress me more than they did tonight.
I came home and tried some self-portraiture I’d been wanting to do. The first idea was to hold up a frame around my face, and desaturate everything within that frame. I wound up using a matte instead of a frame, but it mostly worked…
Sometimes even an accident has interesting results. In the photo below, the exposure time was a bit longer than I expected. I got up to adjust the camera for the next shot before the shutter had closed, leaving a ghostly image.
In Photoshop, I copied the base layer, then did a Gaussian blur overlay. I set the opacity to 43%. I think created an adjustment layer to the base layer with a black and white gradient overlay. That desaturated all the color, except what came through the Gaussian layer. It made for an interesting effect, and I think I like it better than the first shot.
