July 02, 2011

David Potter

My son loves Harry Potter. And he loves carving things out of sticks and tree limbs. So yesterday he found a relatively straight stick and as he waited to be picked up to go to the pool with some friends, he used my pocket knife to remove the bark. Instant wizard’s wand. Well, almost instant.

After he left for the pool, I smoothed the knots and sharp edges with sand paper. He couldn’t seem to put it down. Eventually he said he wanted to update his Facebook profile picture with a photo of him holding his new wand. So I pulled out my camera and took a picture of him holding the wand. I focused on the tip of the wand so he would be out of focus in the background. The picture looked kind of cool, but wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be.

So I opened it in Photoshop and applied the lumos spell to it. Now it’s quite cool!

3 comments:

  1. Nice effects! I love my camera and the photoshop that goes with it. So many things you can do to an ordinary picture.I don't blame your son for liking Harry Potter. The movies are great and the books even better. Have a great time David.

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  2. We're huge Harry Potter fans. I loved the books!

    I would be lost without Photoshop. I used to process and print negative film in our bathroom. I don't miss the chemicals.

    In this photo I made multiple copies of the background layer. I set the first layer to the multiply blend mode but masked out the effect in a gradient fade around the tip of the wand. Then the layers above that were all set to screen (about six or seven layers). I set an increasingly larger reveal mask gradient on each layer to give the impression of the lumos light coming from the wand and lighting David's face and hand. I think it turned out pretty well, although it needs a very bright spot at the center. Since that's the only area of the picture that's in focus, I didn't want to obliterate it.

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  3. I love Harry Potter too! So I made this site http://hogwarts-letter.com. You can send Hogwarts Acceptance letter to anyone you like from there! Trust me, the reactions you get are worth it!

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