The After and Before forum is organised by Stacy Fischer, it is a place where amateurs as well as seasoned photographers explain the wow and how about their photo and editing decision.
You can read more here about how to take part.
To create this week’s picture, for the “After Before Forum”, most of the work was done before I even opened Photoshop. I have had an idea for quite a while of a dandelion clock. As a child I remember being asked what time it was and then blowing on a dandelion to find out; each puff of breath representing 1 hour. To translate this visually I thought about 12 pictures of dandelions slowly being blown out as well as the yellow dandelion flower. All of these images would be laid out like a clock face.
My set up for photographing the dandelions was quite simple; Black Card placed against the wall, a dandelion in a pot of play dough and two Ikea spot lamps to light the dandelion. I took several test shots in manual exposure to get the exposure right. Once all the pictures were taken and I packed everything away it was off to Photoshop.
First I created a new document and filled the background layer black. I needed to create guides for the clock face to know where I would be placing elements of the picture. I used the line tool, drew a line and the duplicated and transformed it with a rotation of 30 degrees. I did this 5 times and I had my guide.
I imported my Dandelion shots from Lightroom as layers. With each layer I had to resize ( as they were a little too big) and rotate them to the right angle for the clock face.
I separated the dandelion flower from its back ground using Select – Focus Area. I resized the image and placed it in the centre.
I turned the group of dandelion spores and flowers into two separate smart objects. Using some basic adjustments with clipping masks toned these elements. I didn’t place them in one smart object because they are two separate groups of elements that if I needed to tweak would be easier to do separately.
I wanted to create a textured background for the image. I imported a french wallpaper and grass texture. I placed these textures above the background image, with the grass above the French wallpaper. I set the grass texture to overlay to make the grass fill in the pattern of the French wall paper. I then added a hue and saturation layer to shift the greens slightly and create a separation between the main composite and the back ground.
I wanted also to create a simple border. Since I had black background layer I decided to add a hard rounded corner mask to the textured background. A simple boarder was added.
I am quite happy with the final image, it is close to my original idea. At first I wasn’t to sure about the background but it has grown on me.
I would love to know your thoughts on this image be it positive or negative.
Also please head over to Stacy’s blog to see the other participant’s entries into this weeks forum
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I have to try this challenge…
Hi Rajiv, I would give it a go. All you need is the picture before and after editing, you don’t have to go through the step by step if you don’t want to. I hope you will contact Stacy and join our group.
Rajiv, we’d love to have you!
Be warned.. You will see me there!
Yes!! 🙂
Excellent post.
Thank you Victor.
Ben, once again, I am blown away by your post (no pun intended!) Truly, your creative projects never cease to amaze me. Even your step of drawing out the guide is awesome. I have to admit that as I first saw the dandelion heads get smaller and smaller around the clock face, I was wondering how you made each look so realistic. Then I realized you actually blew on it. Duh. LOL! Great concept, wonderful execution. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Hi Stacy, I could have made the dandelions but it was more fun and realistic picking and photographing them. I quite like mini projects like this as they don’t have to be long and they are quite creative.
Awesome and very creative! Wow!
Thank you Tiny.
Love this Ben! It really made me smile. Wonderful version of the children’s favourite dandelion clock!
Thank you Katie, it is really a memory stirrer.
Great Project, Ben. Totally out of the box. And thanks for the descriptions of the techniques.
Thank you Robin, out of the box works for me although I can sometimes leave the box take a rocket and leave this world as well with some ideas. Glad you you it.
Fantastic image! Really creative and skilfully done.
Thank you Laura,
Great idea.
It was an interesting idea to have, I also got some strange looks when picking the dandelions.
Great idea Ben! Love the progression and the explanations!
Thank you, it is great when an idea comes together.
Love how you’ve taken your creative idea for the dandelion image through from start to finish Ben !
Sometimes such projects can take some time to come together. This one took a morning but a morning well spent.
A very cool image! I love that you already knew what you wanted to do and then set out to create it–I’m more of the opposite when it comes to photography, but then again I don’t do highly “conceptual” work.
Conceptual work is something I like to do, as the feeling when the image is complete is great. I usually do a few conceptual images a year as some take some time to piece together. This one didn’t take too long though.
I am a big fan of dandelions, so this was a neat photo to begin with. The children’s clock idea is new to me so that was interesting to learn about. Great step-through tutorial, and it looks like it was a fun project to work on. 😀
We used to have a lot of dandelions in my parents garden as a child and I will never forget blowing them, possibly the reason we had so many. Glad you like the final image, and yes it was a fun little project.