Look, a photo tip (and you thought I was useless entertainment)

The episode of Castle last night was really good. If you like cop dramadies, or just great TV, then I highly suggest this show. You don't even have to follow it in order, though there are two minor background stories that flow, his book writing/publishing and her mother's death, but for the most part you can jump in anywhere.

This is a photo I call "Split Personality". If you hide either side of her face you can see a different personality. This is my daughter Larissa. She has so many expressions, but as you see here, she can mix 'em. I took this photo during a shoot for Jon and Michelle, but Jon was in the background. My original intent was to blur him out, but it didn't look quite right so I decided to give it a new background, similar to the one I use in my profile here. The fibers filter didn't look right, so I went with difference clouds on a new layer after extracting her and changed the hue to red. I decided to cut part of the background away and create a new layer with a second difference cloud of a different hue. One to represent "good" and the other "evil". I almost stopped there, but I thought it would be cool if the red was more of a fiery explosion. But again, didn't look right. So I added yellow, orange and a bright red with different textured brushes, gave it a motion blur and then a little gaussian blur. The blue side I went with light and bright blue with textured brushes. Then I added white stars with the star brush. I motion blurred it, but not as much to keep the stars visible. I also made sure the blurs were appearing to come from behind her. I started to stop there again, but I thought it needed just something else. So I duplicated the layer with her on it, split it in half via cut. I put outer glows on the two halves to accent the light colors in the backgrounds. Then I went and increased the grey slider in levels on her layer just a tad to boost the shadows. Then I stopped. I may send it to mpix now and get it framed. I think it's pretty cool. Am I awesome or what.

I would love to see what you do with the same photo. Email me and I will send the original file for you to play with. You can email me back the results and I'll post in a future blog. I will not use your email address for anything other then this purpose. Scout's honor.

Readership stats. I have two subscribers in South Korea (나의 아빠는 당신이 그것을 찾아내는 경우에, 저기서 60 년 전에 그것을 후에 우송하는 동안 펜을 잃었다. 10 센트 사례금.) Boy, all of these countries are starting to test my language skills. On the stateside, I welcome Michigan, New York and Oregon. My readership is down about a third since my rant over the anonymous commentor, but still holding around 30. My near future goal is to get more readers then Jon, who is sitting around 150 a day. 

Jon made an excellent meal last night, I had four helpings, and then for some reason worked out on the Wii. He was bragging on facebook about it even before we finished so I give him the big head award...

I gave Michelle a big head, too. It really looked weird otherwise.

I do have a plan on some shots tonight. Hopefully it'll work out. Involves my daughter and she doesn't hold still for photos. Maybe I'll give her a tranquilizer right before (THIS IS A JOKE, STOP WITH THE HATE MAIL). So my numbers are still at 218. I noticed my counter stopped working up top, so I'll have to fix or replace.

Got two weddings, an Atlanta shoot, engagement photos, and movie behind the scene shots, coming up in the near future. BTW the theme for the Atlanta shoot will be Adventure, Indiana Jones Style and will also involve business oriented shots. Already have two models confirmed and one other photographer.

Well, time to go. 레코드의 B면에 당신을 보십시오