Sunday, September 30, 2007

Picture Post, Sunday September 30, 2007

(Y'all will have to enlarge these photos to get a good view so that you can see what I talk about in the text below.)

Straight photo of afternoon sun and clouds over the Indian River Lagoon, from the Melbourne Causeway, Melbourne, Florida.

Same exact photo as just above, after using the Orton process on it.

Straight photo of the Indian River Lagoon as seen from Rykman Park in Melbourne Beach, Florida.

Same exact photo as just above, after using the Orton process on it.

Orton process done on a photo of one of Lovely Wife's ixora plants.

The Orton process is a photography technique created by photographer Michael Orton.

He would use 35mm slide film, camera set on a tripod to allow several identical scenes to be photographed, and take, say, two photos of the same scene, both overexposed (too bright), one in sharp focus, and one way out of focus as to be pretty blurry.

After processing, he would take the two slide images, sandwich them on top of one another and make a print.

The sharp one, juxtaposed with the blurry one, ends up creating a gorgeous, glowing, soft quality in the resulting photo.

With the magic of digital editing via Photoshop Elements, I've finally, after much trial and (mostly) error over the past year to try to replicate this look in digital photos, come pretty darn close.

Here are two photos of the Indian River Lagoon, here in this area, with the Orton process look worked on them.

I have put the straight photo and the Orton process version of each on here.

The final photo, of some of Lovely Wife's ixora, has the Orton process worked on it as well.

This seems to have a much more pleasing and dramatic effect on photos with lots of sunlight in them. The ixora photo looks really nice, but it doesn't knock my socks off like the first two.

Which do you like best?

I'm totally loving the second one in the post, with the orangey sky and the Orton process' dreamy addition to it.


I posted a new panorama today over at John's Daily Digital Images if you want to go over there and take a gander at it.

6 comments:

Meg said...

Oh, my, the clouds!

Travis Cody said...

That's very interesting, and makes for some stunning images.

Charley said...

Love the sky photos!!!

Carina said...

I'd never heard of it, (the process) but I know I've seen it done, because that process looks familiar. I think you did a great job with it. I like all the pictures, but the flower is my favorite.

Sharon Lynne said...

About the Melbourne Causeway sky shots:

The first one looks amazing.

The second one (with the process) looks beautiful.

The first one looks amazing because it looks like there is a hole in the sky. So I rather like it.

Norma said...

Hmm. I think I like it without Orton better.