Photo of North Oconee River and variations of same...

The photo in this article was taken at Hurricane Shoals Park near Maysville, Georgia. It is of a small section of the North Oconee River which runs through the park. This was taken behind the grist mill which is also in the park. It is a quiet little river running slowly past this point.

What you see in the twenty nine other variations of this one photo is what I do with my time late at night when I can’t sleep because of pain.

I open a photo in Photoshop not knowing sometimes what I will end up doing with it other than correcting the exposure or contrast. Oh my, does that mean I’m Photoshopping it? Well, it is nothing different from what I used to do in my darkroom all those late nights I spent hiding in there developing film or prints.

I must admit that I do get carried away as you can see from the twenty nine variations of this one photo. To tell the truth these were not all the variations I came up with while I was playing with it.

Under each photo you will find which plugin I used to create the effect you see within that particular variation. I used from The Pluginsite.com Plugin Galaxy 2.0 and Contrast Master 1.0; from FlamingPear.com I used Kyoto Color, India Ink, Boss Emboss and Organic Edges; from Mehdi Plugins Edge Fx.

  I realize that thirty photos with one article is a lot but they show most of what I did with this one photo in one night. Even though I may have used a plugin for a while I find that by playing with it on a new photo type it can be used differently from what I did on the last photo. Most of you know I do a lot of flower photography. They can’t object to me taking their photo nor do they run away or fly out of range suddenly as I am trying to get my fumbling fingers to hit the right button or switch.

I also take a lot of photos of water in one form or another. Rivers are peaceful most of the time. But as with most things in nature if you are not careful they can be deadly. I saved a young boys life one time when I was scuba diving for the police department where I worked. I was in the river searching for parts dumped there from stolen autos. I surfaced and was just treading water when I saw three boys jump into the river. The smallest was the last to jump in and start swimming toward the far shore.

I noticed he was struggling so I swam toward him. Just as I got within about four feet of him he started to go under because he was exhausted. No one else saw what was happening. His mother was facing the opposite direction lounging in a chair on the rocks in the middle of the river. I grabbed him and told him to hold onto my tank and we swam to the rocks so he could climb out. As we were swimming I asked him where his parents were he pointed out his mother who like I said was not looking any where in our direction.

As I helped him out I told his mother that she needed to keep better watch on her son as he almost drowned. She told me to mind my own business, which ticked me off to say the least. I told her it was my business as I was a county police officer and if she didn’t watch her son better I would be arresting her for negligence. Yes, I was on duty even though I was wearing a scuba out fit didn’t mean I couldn’t arrest her, which is what I told her. She gathered up her stuff and left in a hurry. That was fine with me as she didn’t seem to be all that good of a care taker. I may have had four children whom I was raising by myself but I did not let them out of my sight around water or other places where there was a chance of them being hurt. Heck they got into enough other wise.

Hope if you take the time to look at my work you will let me know what you think of it. Yes, I know some of the variations are not all that dissimilar when you look at them but there are differences which in a larger version show up much better.

I have over sixty DVD’s full of art and photography, another hundred CD’s full and most of the hard drives on this computer are close to being full. As you can see I have lots of time on my hands and I can’t stand not to be doing something either taking photos of stuff most people would not think of photographing or drawing when my hands don’t shake so badly. When I’m not doing either of those things I’m on this thing working on photos or for a break I carve wood and read books while the TV drones in the background.

I’ll be posting more of the river later but without all the extra variations. I just thought I would show you what I do with my time since I haven’t been able to work any where in years. As of next month, September 16^th to be exact, it will have been nine years since I have been able to work.