Thursday, January 20, 2011

Lions, Ghosts and Photoshop

Here's a photo of the Stone Lion in Tomori Okinawa, Japan. Around this time last year my shooting sidekick, Doc, and I were working together on an article for Apogee Photo Magazine.

In order to put the story together, the way we wanted, a few things had to be done differently than any story we had ever done in the past. I don't like going to jail and Doc is a man of character.  So, I figured I'd better do everything sort of legally, this time around.

There was a snag we hit trying to get the US Library of Congress to let us publish a photo of theirs along with the article.

I heard somewhere, if you work for a living and irritate the US Congress you can get into big trouble.

They can make you pay more taxes and pay for other people's insurance policies, as well. Hah !

So, one of the tricks we used to keep things legal was had some SKETCHES made to simulate the original photo of the Tomori Stone Lion with Army guys hanging around while bullets were chipping away at it during the war.

Doc did all the keyboard banging and we sent the photos and sample sketches in to Apogee Photo.

Then, the editor at Apogee came up with an even better idea. Throw some GHOSTS in the photo with Photoshop and make it look exactly like it did 65 years ago. Yeah, baby. Let's do it.  Hah !



Now, I ain't sayin I believe in ghosts or anything like that but this image makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

I bet if I took you to see the Stone Lion in Tomori and handed you a copy of this photo, you'd be real careful walking over there to pet the lion because you might trip over a GHOST !

If you want to know more about the story and see a picture of me actually working check out THE TOMORI LION. If you like what you see over there hit it with a ThumbsUp for me.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Photoshop. I always tell people to learn how to shoot a camera right and you'll never need to Photoshop your pictures. If you want to be a digital artist that's cool.  Just buy Photoshop and all the trimmings and you won't have to waste all your money on camera stuff.

This was one of those rare exceptions because I can't think of any other way to get ghosts to sit next to a lion and pose for a photo without using Photoshop. Can you?

SEE THE PHOTO OF THE DAY HERE

No comments: