On The Borderline

The trouble with learning new tricks and techniques is that it takes so long to get anything done. The final result of my initial experimentation here feels to me like its on the borderline somewhere between art (or doodling in this case) and photography. Not somewhere I'm normally comfortable with being found but, hey, who needs comfortable, right?

Having got a tiny app for photo manipulation on the iPhone here, I cut and pasted the photo portrait section and hand (well, alright, finger) drew the background section with an art programme called brushes. With a little layering and lots of transferring back into photo adjustment software I managed to get somewhere near passable. What was supposed to be a quick play around turned into an epic 3-day quest (fitted in 5 minute chunks around work and other activities) to produce a result.

It's at this point that I can see the limitations of working / layering on the iPhone : I've had to use more depth of field blur than I would like in order to cover the pixilation of my hair/background border at the top; the pixilation will show around the nose/lips from the masking I did to get the photo across (a little clumsy first time out); and the flowers were only there as a random doodle rather than a well thought out structuring. What I do like however is the darkening of my scarf (using my newly acquired masking skills to adjust exposure at that part only), and the flowers painted on the skin do look pretty realistic despite being added by hand on the iPhone. At least they do to me on the tiny iPhone screen (apologies to all iPad users - am sure you'll let me know if this just pixelates beyond belief when viewed on large format).

Lots of useful techniques learned though (thank you Blip for making me do this) and will be no doubt using what I now know to better and quicker effect from here on in. For all that I'm still not sure I actually like the result aesthetically. Maybe it's just the kind of uncomfortable I like.

Oh and yes, I've already given myself a good talking to about tidying myself up - honestly what a state to be in. I could have at least shaved. And a haircut wouldn't go amiss either.