original foreground tree photograph

original sunset photograph

original water and sky reflection photograph

 

original tree line photograph

 




"A Fisherman's Dream"
final project picture with the foreground grained

 



"A Fisherman's Dream"
final project picture with background grained







       When getting this landscape project assigned to me, I immediately pictured a peaceful scene with water, trees and either a sunset or sunrise. I found inspiration by looking at pictures of lakes, beaches and trees to combine my thoughts into one. Once I had a number of pictures saved, I went through them all and picked out my favorites. I ended up using four main images that seemed to be easy to combine. The first step that I took was to set up the background forest and the sky. To make my picture seem to be distant and somewhat foggy, I cut out the trees and erased the edges to blend them well into the sky. The one part that was difficult, was when I had to hide the dark ships that were included in the sky picture that I was using. After filling in the space that they left, I was able to focus on the sky.
      As I recently learned, you can adjust the hue and saturation to make the sky change its colour from the original photograph. This procedure made it possible for me to control the colours that I incorporated into my piece. Since there was such a large gap in between the two sides of the forest, I thought that it would be a perfect place to put in a sun. I found this brilliant orange sun from a different picture that went well with the orange in the reflection of the water. This step was very frustrating because I had to ensure that the sky, water and sun all blended together. Without a doubt, the most time consuming part of my project was when I had to cut out the foreground tree.
     Since I wanted to make it look as though you were looking through trees to the background where the water and sky is, I had to specifically cut around all of the tree and grass (with the magic wand tool ) so that colour was able to show through the leaves. During this process I realized that where the grass ended, and where the water began, there was a large space that I needed to fill. Once I contemplated a few options, I decided that the best thing to do was to just use the paint tool and fill in the water myself. After finishing all of these steps, I felt as though my picture was missing a specific focal point. That is why I decided to place a canoeist into the middle of the lake. This added an overall reason for the lake and scenery. It really brought together the many peaceful aspects into one picture.



      Now that I am finally finished working on this project, I am able to look at it and decide if I truly enjoy my work and if I correctly enterpreted the right feel that I was aiming for. I really admire the colours that I based the picture around and how the entire image represents a peacful and beautiful atmosphere. The very last change that I made to my picture, was to add some texture to create some depth and contrast between the forground and background. I felt that by adding grain (in one of the pictures) to the water and sky areas, it was creating a foggy aspect where the black tree in front, was very clear while the backgound feels far away. In my second version of my final picture, I switched the technique around so that I have the backfound crisp and clear, while the black tree seems to blurring and non distict. personally I prefere the the picture where the water and sky are grained becuase it emphasises the fact that it is a sunset image where everything is blurred together.