For all those who are reading the title of this article and thinking to themselves, “What the crap is Cyberpunk?” … Well, according to the dictionary it is, “A genre of science fiction set in a lawless subculture of an oppressive society dominated by computer technology.” Just think “Blade Runner” and you’ve got the gist of it. As much as I love (and will obviously always love) to create stereotypical fantasy art, I’ve recently been super inspired to create artwork that leans on Cyberpunk themes. What’s not to love about neon lights, shiny leather, sunglasses at night, glowing technology, and in-your-face vibrant colors popping out of the dark moodiness of a dystopian futuristic city!?
Read More"Lady of the Light" Featuring Laryssa Fierle
Using Quick Mask Mode To Enhance Depth of Field
Quick Mask Mode. Guys it's pretty awesome. Does anyone ever use this? If you're sitting there like "IDK, what's a Quick Mask," the answer is, "No, it's not when you use a layer mask as fast as you can." Quick Mask is a tool in Photoshop that lets you more precisely edit your selections. You can activate it by pressing the "Q" key or clicking the little rectangle-with-a-dotted-line-circle-in-it at the bottom of your tools palette. Some of you may already know what it is but hardly ever think to use it for anything. Well I'm here to let you know that it can be incredibly handy if you use it correctly.
Read More"The Lieutenant" featuring the costume, armor, and ... face, of Brian Fadrosh
How I Get the "Illustrative" Look
I can't tell you how many times I get comments like "Wow this is so cool; it almost looks like a painting!" Not that I'm complaining about that whatsoever; I take it as a compliment. It's one of my goals when creating a work of art - to make something that isn't quite a photo, but isn't quite a painting. "Yes, but how do you make it look like that!?" Well, since you asked I guess I could explain some of the process. Obviously a LOT goes into making my images look the way they do. Fancy studio lighting and a hefty amount of digital painting play large roles, but one technique that really pushes my work towards that sort of hyper-real-digital-illustration-y-type-look is the use of the "Shadows/Highlights" adjustment.
Read More
"The Retreat" featuring Niall Scanlon
Using Motion Blur to Create Action
A super easy way to add motion to an edit is to apply a motion blur filter. I know it's so obvious it seems silly, but there is definitely more to it than just slapping a filter on top of your image. First of all you have to decide what is in motion and what direction it's going in. For "The Retreat" I knew that he (the dragon ... well subsequently Niall too, I guess) would be charging towards the left side of the frame, so the angle of my motion blur was easy enough to figure out. I was attempting to emulate the look you get when you pan the camera following along with a moving subject. For example, if you were to try to take a picture of a passing motorcycle, you could track it in the center of your frame, then when you snap the photo the motorcycle would be more or less crisp and the background would have the motion blur.
Read More"Memories on the Wind" Featuring Loren Schmidt
7 Tips and Tricks for Expanding Your Frame
One of the techniques I frequently use when shooting on location (by frequently I mean pretty much every time) is to expand my frame. I believe that many of you know of this fancy maneuver and are probably already doing it like total pixel gathering pros. (Well done, friends.) However, we are all at different levels on our journey towards creative greatness, so for those of you who haven't tested out this handy trick yet - allow me to elaborate. ALLOW ME!! K thanks. (And for those that do know this technique, kindly stick around for some tips and tricks that will hopefully take your expanding game to the next level.)
Read MoreThe Armored Angel
Creating Armor in Photoshop
Sooooooo I made some armor. Not tangible armor, though (maybe one day). You see, the site ShiftArt.com does a monthly photo contest where they give you a selection of stock images to edit however you choose, as long you use a certain amount of them. This month the prize was a 13-inch Wacom Cintiq. So yeah, um duh, of course I was going to enter. I came in second place, but I still feel like I won because I ended up putting together this badass image that I never would have made otherwise. :)
Read More"Key To The Unseen Kingdom" Featuring Brooke Shaden
10 Steps To Creating An Indoor Jungle
Being the self-appointed-official-fancy-pants-Photoshop-wizard that I am means one of my favorite pastimes is to take a mostly simple image and add a bunch of elements to make it SPECTACULAR. (Well, hopefully spectacular anyway.) Here, my friends, is basically how that all went down in ten steps ...
Read More"Them" featuring Shelby Robinson and Chris Rivera
Ultimate Guide To Selections: THE MAGIC WAND
I recently started a series of blog posts in which I gab on about the various selection tools of Photoshop. So far I've only gone over the pen tool, my main squeeze when it comes to most selections. It's definitely my go-to selection tool because it's just so dang precise, but let's be real here ... it is NOT always called for. There are going to be many selections that don't require quite the amount of work and attention that goes into penning a path around something. Oftentimes when I know it's going to work quickly and efficiently, I just look no farther than the Magic Wand Tool ... I mean it's got "magic" in the name so it's got to be good for something, am I right?
Read More"Finders Keepers" featuring Amy Wilder and Thomas Willeford
Using Different Colored Lights For Composites
As some of you may recall, one of my very first blog posts (my 4th to be exact), was about compositing. I talk about compositing constantly in many of my posts, because I guess it's sort of my "thing," but I figured it was about time to share another of my handy dandy tricks for pulling off convincing composites. So here goes nothing ... well I mean here goes something ... it's compositing tips and tricks for working with different colored lights! Or just faking the colors later. ;)
Read More"The Oracle" featuring Rowan Elaine
Ultimate Guide to Selections: The Pen Tool
I know there are a lot people out there who want to be better at Photoshop - heck, I've been doing this for almost half of my life and I want to be better! Well, I was really thinking about it and it dawned on me that more often than any other tip, I'm telling people they really should master the pen tool. It is hands down the most advanced and precise selection tool and if you boil Photoshop down to its simplest form, it's a SELECTIVE photo editing software. So I thought to myself, "Hey self, why not really dive deep into selection tools - how to do them, when to use which one, and why they are so dang important?"
Read More"The Intruder" featuring Gillian Woods (aka GillyFace)
One Dress Can Do It All
Dresses. We photographers love dresses. I know I've said it about a gazillion times before, but I'll say it again: Beautiful dresses make for beautiful pictures ... well at least they help a lot. I know that it's such a "thing" nowadays in the fine art photography world - more often than not, images that get a really great response probably have a beautiful girl in a beautiful dress. Sorry (not sorry), it's just the way it is. Obviously there are an unfathomable amount of other things you can have in your images, not have any dresses whatsoever, and still have an amazing outcome. However, I'm willing to guess that at least every once in a while you're going to want to shoot an image of a pretty girl in a pretty dress. I know I do!
Read More"The Portal" featuring Lulu Lovering
9 Steps to Create a Magic Portal With Photoshop
Over the years as my style and visual preferences have evolved, I've noticed that I'm kind of completely and utterly obsessed with any sort of float-y particle/dust/speckle/orb/bokeh/grit. Acceptance is the first step .... to NOT CARING AT ALL! :) I really love the way dust can add so much motion, texture, and interest to the air in my images. Some pictures call for a very clean, sharp, uncluttered feel, but more often than not I get to a stage in my editing process where I want to muck it up a bit with some atmospheric particles. I'm always on the hunt for some great speckled textures to use in my edits.
Read More"An Offering" featuring Simon McCheung
Take the Transform Tools to the Next Level
So obviously almost every Photoshop novice has "transformed" something in Photoshop. As in, "I just dragged this image onto my canvas and it's way too flippin' huge. Let me make it smaller with the transform function." But how many of you have really taken it much further than that? (Yes, I know there are exceptions; we are all at different levels of expertise.) Transforming seems like a pretty simple/straightforward thing to do in Photoshop - you're just re-sizing something, right? Well with a little creativity, not only can you transform the size of something, you can completely transform a handful of random images of, say, lizards into a freakin baby dragon! WHAT!?!?
Read More"The Fire Summoner"
5 Ways to Inspire Yourself
Inspiration is such a strange and sometimes elusive creature, but only if you let it be ... Well that's not exactly true. Getting inspired is always going to be strange - having thoughts materialize into your head out of nowhere is just magical, but it doesn't always have to be elusive. Sure, sometimes we all seem to hit a slump and fall deep into an inspiration dark age. It can be so infuriating when you have the desire to create but no idea what the crap to make or where to start. Luckily for you I have a few handy tips on how to jump start a bit of creative thinking that might just lead to your new favorite work of art!
Read More"Her Majesty Waits"
How to Make Your Subject Stand Out
Odds are if you shoot a subject for an image (as in not just a landscape or abstract or something), you want them to stand out. I know I do. As is with all of my work, I try to tell the story of whatever character I've dreamt up. So obviously I want them to be the main focus, the thing you notice first. JUST LOOK AT THEM, WOULD YOU!
Read MoreStorytelling Through Images
One of my biggest goals when creating artwork is to tell a story. I strive to activate imaginations and spark creative thinking. I want my viewers (that's you) to see my images and begin to ponder what is going on. What happened before this, what's happening now, and what will happen next? All of these questions and desires are precisely why I create, and why I was so excited when the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet came to the studio to create some promotional art for their upcoming ballet, Coppélia.
Read More"The Guardian"
5 Steps for Creating Long Shadows
I had kind of a hard time coming up with an appropriate title for this post ... I'm still not totally sure if it conveys what I'm trying to show you today. As you may hopefully have guessed by looking at my new image, I'm going to be talking about how I made the shadow that the eagle is casting. The problem was I couldn't really call this post, "How to Create Long Shadows Cast By A Subject That Is Suspended In An Epic Beam Of Light." It's just a bit too wordy ... So anyway this is how I did it!
Read MoreI call this beauty "Theia." Theia is the name of a Greek titan/deity/goddess of the moon! I thought it would be cool to create another character from Greek mythology to go along with this image.
5 Reasons You Should Shoot With A Cosplayer
If you follow my work at all, you've probably realized by now that I did a shoot with Lopti of "Some Like it Blue." For those of you who don't already know, she is a cosplay artist/model/awesome person. What is cosplay you ask? (Well ... you ask if you don't know yet.) It's a word that's firmly in my vocabulary, but I say it to some people and they look at me like I have tentacles coming out of my head ...... which ironically is just the sort of thing a cosplayer might do, but anyway ...
Read More"The Storyteller"
How to Create a Magical Forest Scene
Obviously one of the most important pieces you'll need when creating your own gorgeous woodsy wonderland is a top-notch image of a forest (or other natural setting of your choosing). Unfortunately, I have been crazy busy with life, work, vacations, and side projects, so I didn't have the time to shoot my own background image. I thought I would turn to one of my photography friends to see if someone would be willing to donate an image to my cause.
Read More"Some are Born to Endless Night" featuring Lopti of Some Like it Blue
5 Tips And Tricks For Color Editing
Color plays such an important role in my work. As you all know (well some of you might at least), I adore black and white photography but have such a hard time creating anything without color. There is just so much that color can add to an image, so I find it nearly impossible to deny myself that extra layer to my editing process. Below you'll find five tips for achieving fantastic color in your images!
Read More