Altered perceptions

June 12, 12:36 AMChicago Photography ExaminerKen Ilio

Previous Next

2 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Chicago Photography Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Corner Jackson and Wacker. 

Most of the time, I take blah pictures so I have to work on them in Photoshop (TM) to make them pop.  Here are some examples of these blah photographs transformed into something else.  I don't do this a lot, but sometimes when I am bored, I play with the pictures in Photoshop or some other graphic software and get surprising results.  

The photo above was taken on the corner of Jackson and Wacker with a fisheye lens and then rendered into these colors in Photoshop by playing with the hue and saturation sliders until I got this result.  No, I wasn't on reality altering medications ... it's just Photoshop.

Lurie Garden, Millennium Park

This one was 'crossed process' also in Photoshop (or it could have been in Lightroom, another Adobe graphic software designed with the digital photographer in mind).  Cross processing is basically a film photography terminology referring to developing or processing a certain type of film in a chemical solution intended for another type of film (for example, a color negative film processed in chemicals used for color slides).  The process has been replicated digitally resulting to differently tinged (usually greenish in my hands) and quite eerie photographs.

Color negative

The new version of Photoshop has a color negative selection in the curves adjustment layer drop down menu. I really didn't do anything here, except hit that color negative button ... and voila, a different reality is made.   Lake Point Tower, Chicago.

Inversion.

This is cool. I shot these condominiums in Near North from the observation deck of the Sears Tower ... ooops Willis Tower, then inverted the image (like a negative) in Photoshop.  It looks so much better than the original.

Tribune Plaza.

This is another cross-processed fish-eye photograph ... taken at Pioneer Court a few years ago (this sculpture is no longer there).  I love my fish eye!

Dusk

Played around with the hue/saturation slider in Photoshop resulting in a selective desaturation of Chicago's skyline with the orange tinge remaining.  Obviously this was taken many years ago ... no Trump Tower yet.

Red

I sometimes dream in color, but usually there is only one color - red - if ever I dream in color.  I shot this from the median on N. Michigan Ave. about the area of the InterContinental Hotel.  I waited until all the traffic lights went red.   Then in Photoshop, I selectively desaturated for the reds to remain.  The easiest way to do this is to duplicate the photo in another layer, then convert the top layer into grayscale ... then using the eraser tool, erase the areas of the top gray layer to reveal the colors in the original photograph in the bottom layer.

Here's another one of the Lake Point Tower, again, using the color negative effect under curves in Photoshop.

Funky!

And finally, here's one with the Trump International Hoter & Tower (just to show that I do have new photographs) ...

Into the City

This one was rendered in Adobe Lightroom (TM) with the 300 preset by Mike Lao.  The plug-in makes photographs as if shot like the movie 300.  This was taken on S. Wabash Ave. a few blocks south of Roosevelt.  The 300 preset gave the so-so photo a futuristic look.

Enjoy!

More altered perceptions can be found in my Flicker photostream.