Erotic Photoshopping

..

..

By Louis Cypher

..

..

Read all of VISIONS

Travel’s Travels

..

One of my favorite photographers on Flickr is Laura Travels. Not only are her photographs wonderfully gorgeous, they were take all over the world: From Thailand to Ecuador, from Alabama to Italy. Her favorites are exquisite…

While it may not be politically correct, Laura is not only an accomplished photographer, judging from photos of her, she’s also one beautiful woman.

FLICKR GROUPS

Alabama – Ecuador – Italy – Thailand

....</span

Read all of VISIONS

Magnificent Bastard

..

 Brilliant, combative,  imperious, atheist, rhetorician  and part time drunk…

But, oh, to be able to write like him!

Photo by  Meeshypants, subject to this creative commons license.

Read all of VISIONS

My Melancholy Baby

..

 Photo by Camil Tulcan, remixed by me, both images subject to this creative commons license

Come to me, my melancholy baby
Cuddle up and don’t be blue
All your fears are foolish fancies, maybe
You know, honey, I’m in love with you

Every cloud must have a silver lining
Just wait until the sun shines through
Smile, my honey dear, while I kiss away each tear
Or else I shall be melancholy too

<instrumental-first two lines of second verse>

Smile, my honey dear, while I kiss away each tear
Or else I shall be melancholy too

Frank Sinatra’s Version

Flickr Groups

 Crying Women – Pretty Girls Looking Sad 

Read all of VISIONS

Midnight Glamour

..

      

Photo by Sara Cerboni, subject to this creative commons license

It’s late.  I’m tired. And sad. My teams lost. Tomorrow’s another day. More of my teams will lose. Then comes Monday.

I need something to pick me up. I get no kick from cocaine and mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all. How about some simmering glamour photos? Yes, all of these girls are winners!

A Glamorous Set by Sara 

..

FLICKR GROUPS

Glamour Girls – Glamour / Erotic Creations – Glamour Photography – Nude Glamour Photography

Read all of VISIONS

Pixelated Love

..

Photographs lie. Perhaps lie is too strong a word. Let me restate my premise: photographs deceive. The viewer’s mind naturally assumes what she sees in the photograph is real. She will form an opinion based upon that assumed reality. Quite often her opinion, her perception, is wrong. She has been deceived.

I am not talking only about photos which have been extensively altered with Photoshop or other software. Nor am I talking about fashion photography with its use of tons of  light, makeup and hair stylists to turn an attractive woman into a siren of incomparable beauty. Regular photographs also lie – deceive – the viewer. The artist behind the camera chooses what to shoot and, more importantly, how to compose the image; she chooses,  or provides, the light, the point of view, and other elements of composition to create the artistic effect she desires.  A photograph by a good photographer is stunning; the immediate emotional impact on the viewer is strong.

With painting our eye instinctively knows the paint and canvass does not depict literal reality. The viewer’s eye is drawn more to the artist’s use of form and color and the texture of the painting than his subject. Even with the more realistic paintings created in past centuries our modern vision is not fooled. Photographs, however, remain for us depictions of the real. Even though we may intellectually know the image doesn’t reflect literal truth, we still react to the reality displayed much more than to how it that reality is distorted and displayed

The photographer may use the emotional power of photographic reality on the viewer to good effect. On the other hand, the visceral impact of the image may overwhelm the viewer.  How to balance the image to avoid having the perceived reality of the photo overwhelm its composition is a choice the artistic must make.

I am fooled by my own photographs. Even when I have extensively altered the image by adding or removing various elements or changing the image’s color, tone or composition I still am seduced into believing my deceitful image depicts something which actually existed.  Take this photo of a brick wall, for example:

The intensity of the various colors in the bricks is unreal, an effect created with Photoshop. I took the photo in April of 2006. I’ve looked at it hundreds of times since. Every time I do I viscerally believe the wall’s colors are real.

This image below of my nephew David’s bride Mary is another example. She’s a lovely young woman; but I used all of my dark Photoshop art to create an illusion:

Essentially this is a glamour photo. I spent considerable time altering elements of her face, removing every blemish, heightening her skin color and brightening her  eyes and intensifying their color. Altogether, I must have spent more than half an hour working to modify the original photo. Even though I know my detailed work recreated and enhanced Mary’s face, Every time I look at it, I fall hard for the stunningly beautiful woman depicted in the finished photograph. My brain knows my altered Mary is not real. My eye – and my heart – disagree.

Read all of VISIONS

What’s Life?

Back in the day there was a  wonderful oversized magazine called LIFE. Life was always chock full of excellent photos taken all over the world. Here’s an excerpt from the magazine’s Wikipedia page:

The (Henry) Luce Life was the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for more than 40 years. The magazine sold more than 13.5 million copies a week at one point and was so popular that President Harry S. Truman, Sir Winston Churchill and General Douglas MacArthur all serialized their memoirs in its pages.

Perhaps one of the best-known pictures printed in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph of a nurse in a sailor’s arms, snapped on August 27, 1945, as they celebrated VJ Day in New York City. The magazine’s place in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Luce purchased the rights to the name from the publishers of the first Life but sold its subscription list and features to another magazine; there was no editorial continuity between the two publications.

Life was wildly successful for two generations before its prestige was diminished by economics and changing tastes. Since 1972, Life has twice ceased publication and resumed in a different form, before ceasing once again with the issue dated April 20, 2007. The brand name continues on the Internet and in occasional special issues.^[1][2] 

Life’s website follows in the tradition of its print predecessor by featuring wonderful  photography of all kinds. Here, for example, is a twenty photo sideshow of Galen Rowell’s photographs taken in the Sierra Nevada. Life has almost three thousand photo galleries dating from at least the 1940’s. On the offbeat side, here’s a set of photos of celebrities with big dogs!

FLICKR GROUP: Life Magazine / Vintage Fashion

Read all of VISIONS