"Playing" in Photoshop with Another Photo...

As some of you may have noticed I enjoy "playing" with my photos in Photoshop and using plugins to do variations of one photo. Here I am again "playing" with another of the many photos of Cannas I have taken over the last several years.

This is my therapy for forgetting the pain I live with everyday, also for whiling away the long late night hours when I can't sleep from the pain. I lose myself and the pain for a while by getting so absorbed in the process of creating these variations of each photo. I know some would argue that I have "Photoshopped" the photo, well, yes I have "Photoshopped" the image but it is what I would have done or did attempt to do those many long nights in a dark room experimenting with exposure and developing each print from the negative of what ever it was that I had photographed.

To the "Purist" I have violated the original photo by changing it with Photoshop. I could argue that by using a dark room to print out a photo and correcting the exposure etc. while printing that same photo is in essence the same thing. I used what is called dodging, burning and different papers to achieve the results I wanted while working in the dark room. Now I can do way much more with Photoshop in a whole lot less time than I ever could in a dark room no matter how long I experimented there and it sure took lots of failed prints to find the right combination to achieve what I can do within Photoshop on my computer these days without wasting so much paper or time.

I used a color corrector in the dark room just as I use Colorwasher in Photoshop but with way better results in less time and trouble. And without having to print out my failures to find out that I had not done it right the first time. So I save time, money and can save the results within the plugin so I can achieve the same results on the next photo without having to experiment over and over again to find the right result on each photo.

I can take the photo in color and then convert it to black and white in Photoshop using Black/White Styler, another plugin but still have that photo as a color print if I want it as such. With B/W Styler I can create the look of any photo film I used to be able to buy and the different ASA speeds and the look of the different papers, different developers in the lab. I can do it as monochrome, with a sepia wash which took many tries and experimenting to get the right result. Now I can do it all within one plugin within Photoshop and not waste paper, developer and time to find out that I got it wrong only to have to go back and restart from the beginning.

With Photoshop and the different plugins I have a range I could only dream of way back when I spent my long nights locked in my dark room, which was the bathroom that is why it was locked. Also that is why it was late at night so I could have it without being interrupted by one of my children needing to get in to use the bathroom.

I'm not just a photographer but also an artist. I see the flower not just as a photo but a work of art in and of itself. Is that wrong? Not in my eyes! If I change the contrast is that any different from what I did in the dark room so many years back? Not in my eyes!

Here is the original photo without anything having been done to it to "alter" it.

I used the plugin Colorwasher to achieve this result as one variation.

I used the plugin Contrastmaster to achieve these variations: