Good Fences - 7/17/14, Photo-Heart Connection - 8/1/14: "Early Evening Farm"

Good Fences Thursday challenges us to post an image of a fence or gate each week.


I've been experimenting with trying to make my images look like HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. The way HDR is usually done is by using a tripod to take 3 photos, setting one to be slightly overexposed, one underexposed, and one exposed normally. Some cameras can take those three photos and pull the details from the lightest, darkest, and mid-range areas to give you one image with dynamic detail. If your camera can't do that, then some software can do it for you using your 3 photos.

Frankly, I hate carrying a tripod around with me and I just don't have the patience to change settings and take three shots.

Luckily for me, there are ways to "fake" HDR in Photoshop by using only one photo. 
If you want to try it yourself, use the instructions below the photo.
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Photo-Heart Connection: (addendum added 8/3/14) at the beginning of each new month, we are asked to choose one image we worked on during the previous month that has a special meaning for us, something close to our hearts.

I chose the photo below to represent the month of July for several reasons:  
1. I like the photo of the local farm which I pass frequently.  
2. I like farms, especially dairy farms.  I love the concept of a farm house and barn sitting in the middle of land that is worked by it's occupants, even though it's not the life for me. (Being a night-owl, I want nothing to do with pre-dawn chores.) 
3. I like cows.  They are fairly large creatures, yet are non-violent ones.  They seem to be content with chewing their cuds and making milk in a lackadaisical stupor.  Yet they are smart enough to find their way to the milking parlor and go to their own assigned stalls each day. I love cows' large soulful eyes.

However, my chief reason is:
4. This farm is surrounded by what is rapidly becoming "McMansion Heaven." I like that the dairy farmer has ---at least so far ---resisted selling off his land to create more huge, overpriced homes.  

Have you ever noticed that those communities are all named for things that have been destroyed to build them?   "Indian Meadow" hasn't an Indian nor a meadow in sight.  "Treesdale" used to be a huge apple orchard ---no apple trees survive there.  "Washington Farms" was built on farmland owned by someone named Washington, but crops and pastures are gone and all the Washington's have moved from their land. "Shady Creek" has few trees to keep it shady and the creek was diverted to an underground culvert.  

I used to, work in an industrial park called "Cranberry Woods" in Cranberry Township, PA. Three buildings and their parking lots were surrounded by acres and acres of trees.  I often saw deer and other wildlife from the back windows.  In the six years I worked there, the land was cleared for a hotel, three more office buildings, and accompanying parking lots.  Then a huge corporation cleared twice that much land to build a new complex and "For Lease" signs appeared on remaining wooded land.  Instead of "Cranberry Woods," it should now be called "Cranberry Clear-Cut." Besides being more truthful, the alliteration is almost catchy. 
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"Early Evening Farm"
Dairy Farm in Western PA
created by using "fake" HDR
After doing the last step (adding Ink Outlines) I erased them from
the sky (I didn't like the tiny black lines there) and then I slightly lightened the sky.
(click on image for larger view)

I prefer this method for creating fake HDR.
Follow these steps in Photoshop to try it yourself:

Note: the slider levels I used worked well on my photo. You can change those to look best on your image.

•Make your normal enhancements to correct levels, color, etc.
•Make a duplicate of that image
•On the duplicate: Go to Image> Adjustments> Shadows/Highlights
•Make sure Preview is checked so you will be able to see the changes on your screen
•Move the slider bars as follows:
        Shadows, Amount: 100%
        Highlights, Amount: 100%
        Midtone Contrast: between 80 and 100%.
        Tonal Width: 30% on both Shadows and Highlights 

Make adjustments up or down as you see fit.

Note: when you move one slider it will look terrible until you move other sliders.

•Hit OK when satisfied, then make more adjustments (lightness, saturation, etc.) if needed. At this point, you can do the optional step or, if you think the effect is "too much" lower the opacity so the layer below it shows through ---adjust until it looks right to you.

Optional step:

•Make a duplicate of that layer while in full 100% opacity.
•Make sure black is your foreground color and white your background color.
•Go to Filter Gallery
•Choose Brush strokes, then Ink Outlines.
You can play with the settings. I set mine at - Stroke length: 4, Dark intensity: 20, Light intensity: 10

•After hitting OK, change the opacity on that layer (I suggest 40 to 60%) and make other adjustments, if needed.  You can also change the opacity on the previous layer, if you want.

If your photo has a sky, you might want to erase the Ink Outlines from it ---they give the sky a lined texture that I don't like. Anything that is supposed to be smooth and light might need to have the lines erased. Or if you don't like the ink outlines, hide or delete that layer, or make it more transparent,  or click on control Z to undo.

Alternate method: In the latest version (Photoshop CC) you can go to Image> Adjustment> HDR toning and play with the possibilities there. (I'm not sure which was the first Photoshop version with this option. If your version doesn't have it, try using the instructions for the method I prefer, above.)

This is what my image looked like on the
layer where I worked with Shadows/Highlights.
You may chose to leave your image like this,
but I wanted to bring out more details and
make it a bit darker, so I went on to create
a layer using Ink Outlines (the image above)
but erased them from the sky.

This is what my original looked like after
a few enhancements.  I like this normal
photo image, but I'm always trying to
learn new techniques ---and pass them on.

 

COW POETRY

"meMOOries"

mixed media (acrylic painting with photographs on stretched canvas)

(©2001 C.J.Peiffer)

LIFE BEGINS

(©1995 C.J. Peiffer)

                            The new-born calf,
                                 his damp black and white hairs plastered to his hide,
                                 huge brown eyes bewildered in his new-found world,
                                 rests, legs bent under him in the moist straw.
                            He raises his tiny head, is half up on one thin wobbly leg.
                            Unsteady, he falls, slumping to his straw bed, exhausted.
                            Another try and he is up, all trembling legs, scared eyes,
                                 and quivering ears.
                            The cow licks him with her large, rough tongue
                                 and nuzzles him under her belly toward her warm milk
                                 to fill his uncertain emptiness.

THE BOVINE COMEDY

"Jersey" (colored pencil drawing)

          Many people ask how a city dweller ever became interested in cows. I was never quite sure why my life took that turn, but I had a few clues.

          In the 1950’s my family spent a week on a dairy farm. Within thirty minutes of our arrival, I tramped into a fresh cow pie, ruining new sneakers, but after we helped with the milking for an entire week, I had gained respect for the dairy-farming family and the cows they nurtured.
          Before the end of the week, two newborn calves were named after my sister and me. For years, I thought that was the birth of my interest in bovines, although my curiosity was augmented by a two year stint as a teacher in a cattle region in northeastern Brazil. Years later, I read that cows were popular among city folk because we experience a collective guilt for the loss of our agrarian pasts.
          My overt passion for cows came after I purchased a cow item for my home. When friends asked why, I mentioned that I thought cows were rather enigmatic. They were large animals, yet not aggressive predators, they seemed to be thinking about something important while in a state of semiconsciousness. As an artist, I liked the graphic quality of Holsteins, but admitted to a particular fondness for doe-eyed Jerseys.
          With the help of friends and family, soon I was overwhelmed with over 1000 cow items grazing in my home. After moving from the city to a semi-rural area, I passed herds of cattle in every direction within a mile of my home. I was in cow heaven.

"MOOlah" (mixed media, ink, colored pencils, with digital enhancement)

          Soon I was creating cow art ---what I call visual puns. One of my first cow drawings was “MOOlah” a cow created by hand drawing dollar bills, using a magnifying glass to see the details on a real dollar.

"Stampede" (collage made entirely
from postage stamps with
 cow or dairy-related images)

          I created "Jersey," "Stampede," “A Line of Bull,” “COWllage,” “Beautiful Creamer,” “It’s Only a Paper MOO,” “emBOSSIE,” and “Blue MOO"---a total of fifty pieces for a solo exhibit entitled “The Bovine Comedy.” My cow work has been been purchased by Quanta Press in MN, as well as by individual collectors, and has been featured at a national cow-art show in NY State as well as local and regional exhibits.

          I kept asking myself why, if there were magazines like Cat Fancy, no one had published something for cow lovers. Finally I decided to do it myself. In the Fall of 1989, with only six subscribers, I published the first issue of the MOOsletter, the cow lovers’ quarterly ---featuring ‘all the MOOs that’s fit to print!’

          Up to that point, I knew little about cows. On a local dairy tour, a local farmer told me that I stuck out like a ‘rookie.’ “Why?” I asked. It was because I was taking photographs of the cows’ faces, while the real farmers were inspecting the ‘business end’ of the cows.
          I filled the MOOsletter with a mix of serious and humorous articles, making use of every imaginable cow pun. After a year of publication, I was rather knowledgeable about cows ---I could identify dozens of breeds, had learned terms like freshen, fodder, AI, and BGH, and could name the first cow to ever fly in an airplane.
          Over the years, the MOOsletter explored rotation grazing, alternative bedding materials, cow flatulence, miniature Herefords, dairy recipes, “sacred” cows in India, hoof trimmers, free-stall barns, farm museums, bovine diseases, and cattle auctions. We discussed cow postcards, cream separators, milk bottle collecting, cow creamers, cheese labels, and cow cookie jars and published several editions of a Cow-Buying Guide for collectors. We featured COWntests, bovine poetry, and cow fiction. Humorist Dave Barry granted permission to reprint two of his articles and we reproduced an excerpt from Mark Twain’s story in which Eve (of Biblical fame) discovers how milk gets into a cow.
          Best of all, I met ---either in person or through the mail ---hundreds of cow lovers like myself. At one time we had amassed over 500 subscribers in fifty states and a dozen foreign countries. Among subscribers were the Johnsons, long-time NY dairy farmers and Michele and Ed, also from NY, who argued good-naturedly over shelf space to display their cow-creamer and milk-bottle collections. Ruth in MN grew up winning ribbons with her 4-H calves and later claimed to have the world’s largest collection of cow paraphernalia, although Mrs. Moo from AZ, followed close behind. Mrs. Moo’s entire home was decorated in white with black spots and she wore cow clothing everywhere ---even to church. Nancy in MD wrote us often about her pet steer named Baby and a CA woman photographed her cow Pumpkin in wigs, hats, and costumes. An elderly PA woman contributed cow poetry. An IL man kept us up-to-date on Elsie collectibles. Fred from HI admitted the only cow item he had ever owned was a bottle of Elmer’s Glue, yet he sent us hundreds of news items about cows. Our ‘celebrity’ subscribers were Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s and Woody Jackson who designed Ben and Jerry’s cow labels. Eventually we started an organization called C.O.W. ---Cow Observers Worldwide and held a COWnference.
          Throughout the ten years I published the MOOsletter, I was interviewed by reporters from the Pittsburgh Press, the Dallas Morning News, CBS radio in NY City, National Public Radio, radio stations in Japan and Australia. Articles turned up in Stars and Stripes, newspapers from all over the U.S., as well as publications in Japan, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Gulf News in the United Arab Emirates.
          In 1999, after 40 issues, it was time to MOOve on to other things. The MOOsletter had been a labor of love, but was a great deal of work for someone teaching full-time and running a small art-related business and needing to spend more time with an elderly parent. A Boston subscriber offered to take over publication, but after one issue, he gave up the job as well.
          About eight years ago, my interest in digital art had led me down a different artistic path, as well. And when my elderly mother began going downhill, I had to give up on cows for a while.

          On a Thanksgiving weekend several years after I started collecting cow paraphernalia, my mother pulled out old 8 mm home movies. Between the silent images of family reunions, picnics, and vacations, I saw my two-year-old self flickering on the screen. I was being held on the back of a docile cow by my mother and a farmer. Finally I had discovered the real root of my bovimania. The incident must have left a warm, repressed memory that set me on the path that led to my fifteen minutes of notoriety as a cow artist and the founder and editor of the MOOsletter.

(art and text ©C.J.Peiffer)

"AmeriCOW Graffiti" acrylic on stretched canvas

"Cow Pie" watercolor, colored pencils and photographs

"meMOOries" acrylic and photographs on stretched canvas