Sepia Scenes #60

We have a new Sepia Scenes badge for the season! If you want to use it feel free to right click and save it. the photo is of my holiday door decoration.

The photos below were taken at City Island, Bronx, N.Y. this past weekend. It was a beautiful day, warm and very sunny.

These photos are done in half-sepia. Here's a really easy way to do it:

A quick and dirty way to produce this effect in Photoshop:

1. Duplicate the photo layer.
2. Apply a sepia effect to the top layer (play with Image > Adjustments > Variations...).
3. Adjust the transparency of the top layer to suit (start at around 50%).

There are a few other tricks to bring out the best, so I recommend checking out the referenced article and giving it a try!

Conclusion
Combined with a little edge burning in and contrast adjustment, this effect can give a striking new depth and mood to a photo. Could suit a wide range of subject matter.


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Sepia Scenes #58

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Sepia Scenes friendswho are celebrating!

Enjoy your family with peace, happiness and good food!



Kissena Park, Flushing, NY in half sepia


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Sepia Scenes #57

My Sepia Scenes post for today features "The Laughing Buddha" standing in a garden in Hawaii in 1990. I took this shot with a Pentax SLR film camera.


Laughing Buddha
Hyatt Regency Hotel, Waikoloa, Hawaii

Budai (Chinese: 布袋; pinyin: bùdài), pronounced Hotei in Japanese, is a Chinese folkloric deity. His name is Chinese for Calico Bag, after the bag that he carries. He is almost always shown smiling or laughing, hence his nickname in Chinese, the Laughing Buddha (Chinese: 笑佛). In the English speaking countries, he is popularly known also as the Fat Buddha.

Budai is often depicted as having the appearance of a fat bald man wearing a robe and wearing or otherwise carrying prayer beads. He carries his few possessions in a cloth sack, being poor but content. His figure appears throughout Chinese culture as a representation of contentment. His image graces many temples, restaurants, amulets, and businesses.

However, the "Fat Buddha" is not the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and strictly speaking the statue is not an idol. Buddha means "one who has achieved a state of perfect enlightenment" and there are several people who have been given the title. Gautama lived from around B.C. 560 to B.C. 480, it was not until around 127 BC that statues actually depicting him became prevalent. Before that, and still today, statues of the Bodhi Tree and other objects associated with his life were common. Of course by then nobody knew what he really looked like, he was from a noble family and had been described as tall, slender, and of "manly build."

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Thanks very much!

Sepia Scenes #56

Hi everyone! Welcome back to Sepia Scenes!

I took these shots on a trip to Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. The top one is through the cat tails toward the Tappen Zee Bridge. The bottom is the Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow Lighthouse just north of the bridge.





I applied Half Sepia to both these photos and see how different the effects are?

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Sepia Scenes has been written up (briefly) at astrofish.net/xenon

Thank you, Kramer!

Sepia Scenes #55

Welcome to Sepia Scenes this week! I'm looking forward to your sepia posts!

Architectural details of St. George's Episcopal Church, Main Street, Flushing, NY

Have a great SEPIA day!

You know what to do I'm sure!

Sepia Scenes #54

We're posting early so that our global friends can post at a decent hour around the world.

So welcome to SEPIA SCENES for October 28/29/2009.

I took photographs of a couple of beautiful red roses this past weekend. The day was rainy so the roses were dripping in raindrops.

I used Adobe Photoshop 7 to create both these sepia effects. I used regular Variations on the top photo and modified the color to enhance the raindrops. I used Curves to enhance the bronzing effect of the bottom photo.

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