Photo Challenge – Before and After

It’s time for another Brenda Photo Challenge! The current challenge theme is Before and After.

I love photo editing as much as I enjoy taking photos! As my faithful followers know, I’ve worked very hard the last couple of years to learn how to make the most of my digital photos. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can take a wonderful image, but it can always be improved or made more special with a little editing! I have a couple of images to show you today, where I applied my typical editing techniques and then applied some special effects.

The first subject is the bird feeder located right outside my first floor office window. It is always a delight when the woodpeckers come calling for their dinner. This red-bellied woodpecker has become a regular guest. When I took the image, the camera settings were f/8, 1/160 second, and ISO 800.

I can’t leave well enough alone! Here’s what it looks like with a painterly conversion.

And of course, I am a great fan of textured backgrounds, so here is a version with a rustic texture applied.

I have it all animated for you in this version, so that you can easily see all of the transformations!

Here’s another example of a “before and after” that is rather dramatic. I took this photo a couple of years ago at the Grand Canyon. It shows an interesting old stone building near the Desert View Watch Tower, located on the eastern side of the south rim. The camera settings were taken at f/7.1, 1/500 second, and ISO 200. I applied normal editing in this first image and it quite lovely in its own right.

But I wondered how I could make this image look like an old-time post card! So I applied a Topaz filter on it to give it a bit of spicy contrast and also added a texture layer. I was really pleased how this turned out!

And here is the animated transformation!

Now that you have seen my contributions to the challenge, please click on the link at the beginning of this post and find some other great Before and After images!