Life's necessities

Saturday saw the arrival of  my new longtime pal: Photoshop. I have absolutely no idea whether it was love or hate at first sight, but we've spent some serious time together. Luckily for me I have had the opportunity to watch Heidi use Photoshop, so I already knew it. Or of it. I had also been told that you can do anything in Photoshop so naturally I 1. believe that anything can be done in Photoshop, 2. search desperately for the right way to do it in Photoshop and/or 3. look for another way to get it done. Usually I end up at number 3. Old habit, been doing that most of my life.

Of course I had to try and do something that made sense. I failed.

"Jedi"

Sunday gave me the opportunity to learn a thing or five about portraits and lights. Heidi again helped me and Minna was kind enough to do the modelling. I had kind of an idea of what I wanted to try and do, but not a very good idea about how to get there. So, I used a lifeline and asked a friend. Yes, you guessed it: Heidi. Pretty obvious, huh?

Heidi helped me set up the lights, explained what we were doing and thus helped me get the effect I was looking for, but the finishing had to be done in Photoshop. I've had some trouble with that whole concept, it feels like cheating. I'm old school, I grew up with cameras you had to change film in, where you had to choose what to capture since you only had 12 or 24 photos on one film. 36 if you where lucky enough to find one of those and even luckier enough, you had the money for it, but then you were concerned about the quality, was the camera powerful enough to wind and rewind the film without damaging it? Those days. Today I have a 16GB memory card with room for 500+ raw images, in the thousands if I choose jpegs. Wow! I feel like I'm five years old!

I got a really nice picture of Minna. Do you like it? (Yes, she is that pretty for real. You can do a lot in Photoshop, but only if you're experienced, and I'm not good enough for that yet.)

"Minna"

And, of course, I had had a stupid idea on my mind since I bought that camera. I tried it out in GIMP (a free-ware GNU Image Manipulation Program), but couldn't quite get it together. Guess who ended up guinea pigs for that one? Correct again, Heidi, this time together with Poni. No, I wont show you that one. Later, when I get it looking like I want to. I know what you're thinking, I don't have any reputation to talk about anyway so I might just as well. No. I wont. Somebody bribe me!

But I did something else instead. Sort of same idea, but a little different. I think it turned out alright.

"Ghost House"

Conclusion: I really, really, really, REALLY like Photoshop. And yes, you CAN do anything you want in Photoshop. I soooo feel like a five-year-old. Please don't tell my bank.