Topic: Digital Manipulation

I've looked more into digital painting and manipulations, and it seems like painting digitally is something that would me much harder to blend with photography than I originally thought. One of the biggest setbacks is that I think I would need an expensive touchpad in order to get good results. I'm just not sure I have enough of a feel for computer mouse movements to get detailed linework. What I would like to do though is do more photoshop manipulation in my images. I want to get a clean finished quality along the lines of Simmons, and I think I can do that with the right photoshop and in-camera adjustments.

Another thing I'd like to do is implement elements from multiple photographs into the finished piece. I'm not talking about elements that were shot at an entirely different time or location, but things from the same shoot that are just found in different pictures. Since I shoot a lot of photos from one location, I often get elements that come out much better in one photo but not the other, such as the sky or a passing car for example. I'll want to combine the best of them into one piece for greater effect. I've done some of this in the past, but I want to get cleaner with it as well as be more aware of the fact that I can do this as I'm shooting, giving me more options when compiling.

These are some examples of photoshop edits that I've done in this way.


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In this case, as you can see in the detail, I combined various pictures of different deer together to make it appear more like the actual herd. I was laying down in the field and different deer would approach closer one by one (since I was next to the entrance to that clearing). Because of this, I got fairly close-up images of many individual deer, but not the whole herd, so I combined them. Most of the closest ones are actually the same deer, since she was the most daring of them all.







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This is another case in which I got a separate shot of a deer earlier in the evening and compiled it in with the other photos.









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My newest piece is probably the best example of where I want to take this editing. Here I used differently exposed pictures to bring out detail in the dark, forested foreground, while retaining contrast in the sky and city lights.