It Occurred To Me – I Do Not Know How To Draw Outer Space

I was playing around with making another planet hoping for something a little better than my first attempt; when it occurred to me that I do not know how to draw outer space. I guess I have not watched enough sy-fy!

I followed the notes that I took the other day for the WP photo challenge “Distorted” only this time took it a little further.

I left much more sky and feathered the edges of my planet a bit. Then I added a night sky; that’s when I realized I haven’t been watching enough sy-fy or looking at enough NASA photos; I did my best to create a few starry looking spots and something that sort of resembles a sun.

Boy do I need to get some landscape shots other than a flat wheat field!

Planet Kansas [take 2]

original shot

 

WP Weekly Photo Challenge: Distorted

This week’s Word Press Weekly Photo Challenge is Distorted.  It was the perfect excuse for me to try out something that I’ve seen many times; creating a planet. I distorted an old image of a Kansas wheat field into…

Planet Kansas

This was actually a lot easier than I thought it was going to be and now that I have figured out the basics I think I’ll have to try to be a little more creative next time. Maybe change the background into a starry sky or something like that.

Here’s what I did:

1. Select a panorama or wide landscape photo with an aspect ratio of at least 2:1 wide photos work best.  This image was acually a regular old 3:2 ratio but I had cropped it when I took it a couple of summers ago.

It  also works better if the bottom of the image has less detail and the top of the image is a single color such as a clear sky.

Oh and make sure your horizon line is straight and that your left and right ends of the horizon match up.

2. Next reshape your image into a square and flip it upside down.

Click Image-> Image Size, uncheck Constrain Properties and set the height to the same size as the width.

Then rotate the image 180 degrees; you now have an upside down slightly squished square image. It looks kind of funny that way.

3. Now apply the Polar Filter. Click Filter -> Distort-> Polar Coordinate, select Rectangular To Polar. Now do you see why the two ends of the horizon need to match up?

4. The last step is to use your cloning skills to clean up the sem where the two ends met and adjust layers, saturation, colors, or anything your image may need.

That’s where I stopped on this one but I can see more work that could improve on it as I mentioned before. If anybody tries this let me know in the comments; add a link to your planet I’d love to see it!

WP Weekly Photo Challenge: Indulge

Last Friday Sara over at The Daily Post challenged us to “Share a picture that means INDULGE to you!”. She says “ When we think of the word indulge, food often comes to mind, but indulging isn’t always about food. You can indulge in moments, feelings, emotions, places, and more! It can be a private moment rocking on a hammock, watching a movie on a work day, eating that second piece of chocolate cake, reliving a memory, fantasizing about the future, or treating or pampering yourself.”

My picture of indulgence is a quick shot of a little bit of color I’ve been adding to my patio over the winter. Last summer I painted an old wobbly wooden ladder with a coat of white exterior house paint and stood it in an out-of-the-way corner of the patio. I drilled some holes in the rungs, added some hooks, chained it to the wall to keep the Kansas winds from blowing it over on a daily basis and bolted on a few pots. Over the winter I have added more pots, bolting them on through the holes in the rungs, “planted” silk and plastic plants in the pots, tucked in a gnome or two, and collected little odds and ends from thrift stores to add more color. Just a little extra decorative indulgence to an otherwise dull little area.

On this rung of my new ladder shelf you see a colorful stripped ceramic pot and a wooden bird “house” both from a thrift shop for around a dollar or two. The pot is filled with gravel and “planted” full of a silk and plastic vine with a little dollar store gnome resting inside. You can also see a green butterfly hanging from the bolt on the rung above and the top of a windsock (a gift from #4 years ago) hanging from the side of the ladder.

My shelf is filling up -from the ceramic robin wired to the top, the garden gnome couple bolted onto a middle rung, to the giant red plastic pot bolted on the bottom run and “planted” full of silk vines and tall plastic grasses complete with a blue glass watering globe (another thrift store find)- it’s quickly becoming an indulgence in colors, textures, and shapes. Light too as there are two tin flower lanterns hung from hooks and tucked in among the pots and plants.