Sepia Scenes #64

Welcome to Sepia Scenes this week! We have a new badge which you see above. Feel free to copy it and use it in your post.

My post consists of two photos from St. Michael's Cemetery in Astoria, Queens, NY.

A young woman dressed in draped roman garb is about to drop a rose from her wreath on the grave.

Here's a close-up of her hand and the rose. I added some soft focus around the edges of the shot and some graduated tinting. You can get both effects using Adobe Photoshop, Picasa, or other photo-editing software.

I think cemetery statuary lends itself particularly to a sepia tone, don't you?

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new badge for Sepia Scenes

I'll be using this new badge for our Sepia Scenes post this coming Wednesday/Thursday.

Just right click on the photo and Save Image to your Desktop or My Pictures if you'd like to use it.

We have a double posting day because there are quite a few people who live far from the U.S. and appreciate not having to post in the middle of the night.

I followed the instructions here for the sepia effect above.

Sepia Scenes #63

Merry Christmas everyone! It's Sepia Scenes day again and it's almost Christmas!

These photographs were taken at night at a house that goes all the way decorating for the Holidays.

This is what the house looks like in full color:

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All the best to all who are celebrating Christmas!

Sepia Scenes #62

Hey my friends we have Sepia Scenes again today!

This is a World War I soldier that stands over a World War I memorial in a St Michael's cemetery near me. I thought I'd show you what the color photo looks like so you can compare the sepia shot to it. The angle of the shot is such because the statue stands about 15 feet in the air and of course I'm looking up.

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Sepia Scenes #61

Join us again for Sepia Scenes! I found the photo below on the front of a house on City Island, Bronx, NY. The house used to be a bed-and-breakfast but is now a private residence called North Wind.
It is located at the island's northern tip and was once the home of the North Wind Undersea Institute, a museum that held old scrimshaw, shark jawbones, the 100-year old Andre Guillet tugboat, and aquariums featuring rare blue lobsters and some sea turtles. It was run by former Navy Seal Michael Sandlofer.



She is a ship's figurehead.

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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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Sepia Scenes #53

Today we start Sepia Scenes! You can post today and tomorrow. We start today so that our friends across the globe can post at a decent hour. My sepia posts are two of my favorite photos of lighthouses.

Huntington (Lloyd Harbor) Lighthouse

I took both of these shots from the shore using my Canon point-and-shoot at 10x zoom.



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