Twilight, the series...

I love this photographic digital art series. I've had a number of people ask to see the before photographs as a comparison to the digital art set, so I decided to repost this blog and show you both the before and after photos.  The photos were taken of the woods in front of my house.  It was late in the day just after a lovely snowfall. A fog had settled in so the air had a gray-blue tinge. 

I grabbed my camera knowing I wouldn't have much time to take photos before dark.  I set my camera's automatic setting to landscape/panoramic mode, opened my front door and leaned my arm and shoulder against the door jamb to minimize camera shake and the possibility of blurry photos. Keep this tip in mind when you don't have a tripod handy.  Trees and walls work as well.


Automatic landscape/panoramic mode is designed to capture scenic vistas, city skylines, and other large scale objects.  It’s designed to keep both objects close to the camera and in the distance in sharp focus.  Check your camera's manual for information on setting this mode.

The auto landscape mode does several helpful things when you’re shooting outside.  This mode produces a large area of sharp focus. It boosts colors and contrast slightly.  It also produces rich, bold hues that we want in our landscape photos, unless you're shooting in fog :-).  Greens and blues are emphasized.  I wanted the blue in the fog to "pop" as much as possible.

Twilight Pine (digital art version)

Twilight Pine (original version)

Twilight Woods (digital art version)

 Twilight Woods (original version)

Twilight Aspen (digital art version)

Twilight Aspen (original version)

There's quite a difference between the original photos and the digital art, also called photo manipulated, versions. Any photo, even portraits, are great for manipulating and turning into digital art.  And, if you have a so-so photo that has good composition but lacks pizzazz you have a perfect candidate for digital editing. 

Ok, how did I do this?  There's several options, some free, some quite inexpensive, and some very expensive.  I've tried all but the very expensive and have been happy with the results.

My photos are stored on flickr and I used a photo editing software called Picnik for a couple of years. Both have a nominal yearly fee.  I love flickr and was very pleased with Picnik.  Gimp is a free photo editing software which I also liked and used along with Picnik. Goggle searches will bring up all three.

Currently I use Photo Shop Elements (PSE) with Topaz Lab plug-ins. The photos above were edited using PSE and the plug-ins.  You can Goggle these as well.  

Later blog posts will include basic editing using Picnik, PSE and Topaz.

This digital art series is one of the best sellers at my photo gallery.   

Take a look at this series and some of my other work which also includes 
<a href="http://fine art photography</a>