Opposites Attract

[See the Project Details] [See it at Flickr]
This photo is a joint effort between myself and Phill Price. He's running an “Edit My Photo” project (see details here) and I decided to jump in. Over the last year or two, several of these projects have been hosted by various photography bloggers, including myself. If you want to view the results of these projects (all three of which I also participated in) you can visit: Brian Auer, Rich Legg, and Ryan Goodman. I think it would be cool if another blogger picked up the project in a few months!
OK, so on with the photo… I really struggled with this one. The original image is a bit on the minimalist side of things, so it was hard to get creative at first. Not a ton of colors to tweak, strong simple shapes and lines — I ended up getting quite frustrated that I couldn't come up with something more unique. So I dug a little deeper and for some reason I had the notion to do a faked-in double-exposure type of thing. Now, this isn't something I typically do (actually, I don't know that I've ever done it with my photos), so I fumbled around with it for a while until I got something that looked interesting to me. Read below for more on my post processing.
- UNPROCESSED RAW
So here's what I started with. - PROCESSED RAW
I tried all sorts of things in Adobe Camera Raw, but I ended up settling on a toned black and white version of the image. I was fairly happy with the photo at this point, but I wanted to experiment a bit more. - FINAL IMAGE
After getting the idea to create a double exposure I had to choose a photo… what a painful experience that was. I landed on one of my cross processed film photos from Venice Beach shot with my Diana+. From there, I just transformed the layer to fit the layout I wanted, set the opacity to about 40% and the blend mode to Overlay.
And the title? It seemed suiting considering that the two images used were about as opposite as humanly possible. Phill's was simple, clean, geometric, shot in London, and with a digital camera equipped with nice glass. Mine was busy, messy, organic (that's a hemp bikini for crying out loud!), shot in California's Venice Beach, and with a film camera equipped with a crappy plastic lens. But hey, they look good together!
Daniela
March 12, 2009I really like your edit, thinking of incorporating something like this into my business as a creative next step for clients….love the incorporated image and colour….reminds me of really old picture I have of my mother on a beach in Rome!
Ed Z
March 12, 2009Very cool, I love your edit. Been thinking about doing something like this myself as well!
Chica
March 12, 2009Wow, I really like that. Great job. 🙂
Brian Auer
March 13, 2009Thanks guys (and gals)! It’s good to hear some feedback. I’m still kind of on the fence with this one, so it’s nice to hear some opinions.
Bryan Villarin
March 13, 2009The outlandishness does it for me. Such a funky edit, but I love it.
Maureen Bond
March 13, 2009Brain, you did very well here. I was so stumped on his original photo I gave up quite quickly. It definitely was a tough picture to begin with to change. I really do like what you landed up with.
These are fun challenges.
Elaphotography
April 13, 2009This is great and so inspiring. I love how the final image went. Good work!
patty
April 14, 2009Brian, I was searching for some royalty free photos and chanced upon your blog. Though yours aren’t really royalty free, I can’t help but be impressed at your talent. I like the thoughts that are inspired through your pics… very empowering 🙂
Tkaniny Obiciowe
May 7, 2009I really love the final effect. It really brings out the shapes.
Nadezda
May 23, 2009I like the final image, it looks really interesting and nice.
pitbike
June 13, 2009Brian do you find that you use photoshop more than gimp? or have you tried Gimp. I am stuck on it as photoshop costs too much. The editing you did turned out super above. Thanks for all the tips, (been lurking for awhile)
Brian Auer
June 13, 2009never tried the gimp, just photoshop and ACR. Lightroom is a good inexpensive alternative to photoshop.