This is a project for the Infinity group at B&H Camera store’s Event Space. The assignment was supposed to be a portrait of a character from a well-known book. I am a bird watcher so I chose a book whose main character is a bird.
Photos by Sherry Felix edited in Photoshop. Inspiration: Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.
I went to Central Park yesterday and took some photos in the Ramble near the feeders. It was below freezing. Even so, some birds were singing as if it was Spring. I took the images little into Photoshop to make them into something different.
Housebound while it is too cold to venture out I’m free to play with my images. I took the latest White-throated Sparrow and set him adrift on a sunset sea. Created in Corel Painter 2015.
I am getting cabin fever. I want to be out in the park making photos. I need to get over this winter long bronchitis before I spend long hours outdoors. Today it is 4 degrees Fahrenheit! I must be patient, I’ll be out there soon making more photographs. Being housebound gives me the opportunity to work on my photographs. I took these photographs from January in Central Park, to the next level. Photographic art – composites with brushwork.
I assembled six pictures created recently to show at the meeting tonight. Two bouts of bronchitis has kept me indoors almost all winter which gave me time to create some photographic art. I hope to be out soon making photographs and birding.
On 1/26/2015 I had critique from the Portfolio Review at B&H Camera. I appreciate their honesty and will consider what they said. The review is designed to help prepare us for possible selection by the Gallery. It was pointed out to me that photographs, not Photoshop work on the images, is what they like. Blurs and other tricks done in camera are OK. For example, they like abstract images of trees blurred to look like a pattern and other in camera tricks. But I was told that mine looked like I used Photoshop just because I could. I disagree with their limiting criteria. I feel my interpretations of my photographs is my art. Can’t win them all!
Straight photography is not what I want to do and does not fulfill me as an artist. I think that if I just use my photos unaltered they will be like many other photographs of nature. I to satisfy my need to create art I enhance, draw and painting on my photographs to fulfill my vision. If it cannot hope to please everyone, art is subjective.
My next task is to select only 3 of all images I’ve created since last September I managed to whittle it down to 5.
I received the following votes from social media and email as of 1/25/2015 :
Thanks for your votes. Voting is now over. I will leave out House Sparrows. It was fun seeing which ones you all liked. I’ll show the winning three at B&H on Monday, January 26.
