Today I’m going to discuss the making of this image. I created this abstract image titled “Nothing Is Quite What It Seems” from disparate elements put together to achieve the surreal landscape effect I wanted.
But as the title suggests, nothing is what it seems to be.
Base, Idea
When i saw the thing creating the basic silhouette shapes I knew it needed to be a scene of dead trees in a barren landscape. In reality, though, these shapes are actually cracks in ice on a frozen lake in Colorado.
I framed the scene up to isolate these 2 cracks that looked the most to me like dead trees. The “brush” in the foreground is the near edge of the ice, looking through to some rocks close under the surface.
The processing required some touch-up editing and some dodge and burn and contrast enhancement. There was a little hue-saturation enhancement to bring out more of the yellow rocks.
All of this was done as a smart object in Photoshop. Because I wanted to keep my options open I use smart objects a lot. They give me the freedom to come back and continue editing later. I don’t like to commit permanent changes.
Texture
With the basic form set, I started building texture. Tone adjustments in the smart object of the base layer helped. Bringing up the contrast brought forward more of the texture of the ice. This is the dimples and spots all over the image.
To abstract it a little more I used the oil paint filter in Photoshop to soften the edges and give it a more painterly and abstract look.
Color treatment
I knew I wanted to change the color palette and make it look like it could be in an abandoned homestead on the Colorado plains. But I also wanted to layer on more interesting texture. After trying many overlays I settled on a beautiful rusty truck panel. The image I used is part of a 1948 Coleman Truck. Pretty rare, and it was aging beautifully.
The truck had large rust patterns and also areas of old yellow and green paint. Using this to establish the colors across the image worked for me. This truck overlay is also handled as a smart object. Careful blending achieved the look I wanted without it looking like a rusty truck.
Finishing
The final polishing and tweaking takes a lot of time, even though it doesn’t make sweeping changes. As we used to say in software development, the first 90% of the project takes 100% of the schedule. The last 10% takes the other 100% of the schedule.
There was final dodging and burning to do, bits of masking and retouching. Of course, there was a little bit of final color tweaking to my satisfaction. One of the reasons I use a flexible workflow is that I am prone to tweak things after I have looked at them a while.
Process
A comment on my workflow. Although this is a fairly complex image, nothing is permanently locked down or committed. While writing this I was able to open up all the layers and smart objects and see everything about how they were processed. I could still go in and change or modify anything in the image. And I did make some tweaks. I told you I can’t leave images alone.
And as a very experienced Photoshop user I know new tools will be developed and I will learn new ways of doing things. These will lead to new ways to process images that I will want to take advantage of in the future.
This is the way I choose to work this way on most of my images. It doesn’t take longer and it preserves total flexibility. I need that. I change my mind often!
Summary
I like the finished image. It seems to be a surreal Colorado landscape of dead trees, but it contains no trees or plains or anything else that it appears to be. It is truly not quite what it seems. Is this more interesting than a straight shot of the ice?
Lightroom and Photoshop are powerful and addictive tools. Know when to use them and know when to stop. Otherwise you may never stop. It’s a great time to be doing imaging.