Linda and Minnie thank you both for hosting this subject. I got the infrequent opportunity to explore some Texas back roads one evening last spring. I was still in the very early stages of learning photography (not to say that I have progressed much beyond beginner currently) and came upon this little pond at sunset. I didn't capture what I saw, falling victim to the dynamic light conundrum and I hadn't yet started with either Lightroom or Photoshop so I set it aside.

I came across it recently as I was attempting to learn about how to apply fog in PS and decided to give it a go with this one and see what I could come up with. Not specifically to correct my bad original but because I have so much fun playing in PS. I enjoy doing composites so I decided to add horses coming to the pond for a drink.

I did some minor adjustments in LR then moved to PS. I wanted it to be early morning so I darkened the exposure using an Exposure Adjustment layer and replaced the sky using a Color Range mask as well as adding a few clouds using my free cloud brushes that I download. I then added a Curves adjustment layer and did some dodging for highlights and directional lighting from the sunrise.

Next I added the horses in two different layers from different photos I had also taken. I needed to adjust the contrast and color then used Free Transform to size and place them, finally feathering to blend. I used multiple fog brushes to layer in the fog. Many thanks to Linda From Maine for her coaching on the fog application. The last step was to lightly add a water color filter from the Filter Gallery. I am very happy how it turned out and even sent a copy to my dad. He doesn't hold any punches in his critiques. You guys are a piece of cake in comparison.

Thanks again for hosting and I am looking forward to see and learn from others.

Here is a creation that goes far past the literal. One of the things I do with images is to blend them with other elements besides the photograph, placing the photo against another background and incorporating other items, textures, even text. I made this one as a personalized Christmas card for my little sister and her husband, using a photo I took when we were together in Colorado this fall for their wedding. I chose the background I wanted, then processed the image in Topaz impressions, scaled it, and masked it onto the background layer with various rough brushes. Then I added snippets of text, small splotches and lines, and painted them in at various opacities and blending modes to get the effect I wanted, then added a final texture over the whole of it to help pull it all together into a coherent composition.

I have taken a couple of classes on this kind of artistry, and I'll include a link to the for-sale works by the teachers and students in the course (not me!).https://artboja.com/shop/ It seems most of these folks are enamored of mysterious looking women with wings and hats made of birds or plants, and that is something I have little interest in, but the techniques work well for a variety of subjects that do interest me, including landscapes, wildlife, flowers, and crumbling buildings.

This one might be a little different. Certainly, there was post processing involved, but not my usual stuff. This shot doesn't have an original, because it is a composite shot. I don't even recall how many shots I used, but it was at least ten. Each, individual shot was a long exposure, using a ND filter. The idea in each individual shot was to capture the movement of the clouds. Then, I layered the individual shots in a stack, in Photoshop. The base layer had an opacity of 100, but each succeeding layer had a much lower opacity, so that I could see all the cloud layers, at once. The sky did not look anything like this, that day.

Here is a creation that goes far past the literal. One of the things I do with images is to blend them with other elements besides the photograph, placing the photo against another background and incorporating other items, textures, even text. I made this one as a personalized Christmas card for my little sister and her husband, using a photo I took when we were together in Colorado this fall for their wedding. I chose the background I wanted, then processed the image in Topaz impressions, scaled it, and masked it onto the background layer with various rough brushes. Then I added snippets of text, small splotches and lines, and painted them in at various opacities and blending modes to get the effect I wanted, then added a final texture over the whole of it to help pull it all together into a coherent composition.

I have taken a couple of classes on this kind of artistry, and I'll include a link to the for-sale works by the teachers and students in the course (not me!).https://artboja.com/shop/ It seems most of these folks are enamored of mysterious looking women with wings and hats made of birds or plants, and that is something I have little interest in, but the techniques work well for a variety of subjects that do interest me, including landscapes, wildlife, flowers, and crumbling buildings.

Now, on the extreme side, this one is obviously very heavily processed. I shot the tree knowing I wanted to play with it and experiment with some of the brushes and graphic design elements of PS. I ended up replacing the tree with one generated in PS, adjusting the background color, layering additional background color, texture and blending. I used a combination of spot healing, cloning, and blurring to transform the two smaller bushes into ground under the tree. I had a lot of fun playing with this one.

Thanks for sharing! The horses and fog make a huge difference in the overall interest of the scene. That you would start experimenting with such as this so early in your photo journey means you'll outstrip most of us pretty quickly! Compositing is a neverending quest to incorporate objects into places where they didn't exist, so we are fighting light, shape, perspective, proportion, and a lot of other factors. I am never totally satisfied. Every time I look at one I've put together I find another little nit to pick.