Memphis Belle.

It's time for another image of the love of my life. Yet another medium is represented here, as this is a Polaroid black and white original.. (in fact, the sharp-eyed will see the box and some other prints! I've had this image since it's capture and I just noticed it today while zoomed in for the hand tinting!)

The picture was taken at a park somewhere in the Memphis, TN area when the young Margaret came to visit a lonely sailor. And dumped him.

At least it wasn't via a "Dear John", and of course, things eventually worked out just fine.

Rippled water effect from ACDSee Pro, hand tinting and "60's" color with rounded corners and frame from Picnik.

Kosher

No.  I’m not.  Title is merely taken from the unusual pattern on the necktie and,... well.. the obvious.
From an afternoon’s delight in the Seventies.  Black and White original; Creative color and beam effects from Picnik.

Analog Kenmore.

Here’s another “oil” from the tropics, c. 1969.  Drying socks.  We would soon learn from the old-timers that it was healthier to discard the socks altogether, as well as the boxers;  less surface area to “grow stuff”. 

United States Marines

Boogieing out..

Something completely different.. a scanned 126 Instamatic 3.5 x 3.5 inch print.  From my vacation in the tropics, 1969.  Converted to “oil painting”.

Naughty Miss A_____.

Something different.  A Polaroid instant print from the mid-70’s.  If this was still the era when a boss could still chase his secretary around the desk… this would be that secretary.

ACDSee Oil paint effect, and some basic color and exposure editing.

Tab A, Slot B

Original: 30+ year old black and white negative.

Cherry-picked from several Picnik effects till I liked the result.

Another Pair of Breasts

Like Poles Repel ~ Perfect Balance

               …and finally, what happens if one doesn’t follow the advice in the old saw: Don’t get your tit in a ringer….

Tit-al Wave

…same starting image, taken to extremes.

Keeping A Breast

A simple black and white image of a young lady's breast, captured nearly 40 years ago. Home darkroom developed and printed, complete with squeegee marks, and decades' worth of dust speckles and other detritus of time passing. Cleaned up with a few editing tools and it looks pretty good. But we can do more with it. Much more.

Adding color, and a sun spot effect can change the mood completely.  But that’s just a start.  Here’s my favorite.

The Island

Tomorrow, I'll have two more examples, including one that might just go too far.

I Like Beer! It Makes Me A Jolly Good Fellow..

Several of my mother's uncles worked at the Sebewaing Brewery. Not long after I went to work at a camera store in Saginaw, Michigan, a co-worker and I took a little photo trip to Sebewaing. This is one of the many images from that trip. From the original black and white negative.

Illustrated is the straight tinting process using Picnik. Click on image to biggify.

Monologue..

What?!? Why so serious?

Some of the stickers and text tools available in Picnik. I would have preferred a more realistic pair of nose glasses, but that would have required a more labor-intensive project in Photoshop Elements. I may still give it a go.

Scanned under-exposed black and white negative.

Auto - Erotica

Another "oil". Lube extra.

Bathroom Window

After Gaugin.*

Scan of original (not very artsy) color print. Converted to "oil painting" in ACDSee.


*Link will take you to a most amazing Google site: Google Art Project. Explore. Discuss.

Languid.

Original B&W Scan

Some days it pays just to leave the image black and white. Minimal post-processing with Picnik.

Garden Sprites.

It's said things are not always black and white. I agree. This is an original color print, and has been turned into an "oil painting", using ACDSee Pro editor. It was mirrored with the same software.

Weatherball Red, Warmer Ahead..

Weatherball red, warmer ahead.
Weatherball blue, cooler in view.
Weatherball green, no change foreseen.
Colors blinking bright, rain or snow in sight.

Downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan c.1974. The Michigan National Weatherball is upper left.

Just to show that they're not all going to be scantily clad humans... (just most).

Trailer Tras.. Treasure

Of course, no day full of examples of selectively tinted images would be complete without an image of the woman, who by a circuitous route, would become my wife. Margaret, about age 16.

"Peek-A-Boo_"

More painting with Picnik, with an interesting addition. Picnik has "seasonal" effects. In the case of this image of a young lady, (who solicited my photographic services to do a "glamour" shoot to impress a gentleman), the snow on the ground is real. The falling "snow"... is not.

Dune Flyer

Last Summer there came what is known as an "Aha!" moment. Google released a new version of Picasa, which included something called Picnik. I began to explore the free version. (I don't like to pay for anything unless it's absolutely necessary). There are tools there that just opened up a whole new level of creative manipulation. The most important feature, early on, was "Tint". It took a few minutes to figure out that, unlike "tint" on Picasa, you didn't have to render the entire image in a single color. You can mix a color, and apply it with the "paintbrush" to different elements of the image, hit "apply", pick another color and do it again. I loved how this worked!

The above image is the first, and still one of my favorites. The original is a fairly low contrast black and white of a fellow student at the Thomas Jefferson College of the Grand Valley State Colleges,  where I was studying art, photography, creative writing, bowling and bicycling. She was gracious enough to model extensively over several days, which included this trip to the dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Once I saw the impact that localized color had on the overall image, you could say I was hooked. I'll have more examples of this technique over the coming days.

White-Hot Babe on a White-Hot Blanket.

This, on the other hand, is Margaret.

An original Kodacolor 620 3.5 x 3.5 print, scanned, converted to black and white, then selectively re-colored with Picnik "Tint" effect tool, and posterized.

My favorite model. (and my current desktop wallpaper)

Dominant Female

Only thing missing is the whip?

Following up on yesterday's image, where a monochromatic color cast was added to a black and white original, I used Photoshop Elements again, to add multiple colors to the image, along with a Mardi Gras mask I found online. Then the whole image was "posterized". Finally, the border was added today, using the many tools available in the free version of Picnik.

I've had fun with this image again lately, experimenting with the effects tools in the ACDSee playbook. One particular humorous example, using the "mirror" effect is the aptly titled, "Two-Headed Monster". Margaret thinks it's creepy. (And no, this is not Margaret).

Contemplation.

The very earliest example I have of a deteriorated 30+ year old black and white negative turned into a bit of moody art. This was modified, first, by using the "repair" tool on Picasa to remove the bicycle carrier from the lower right, and to remove all the dust marks and imperfections. Then the "color" was added by pretty much flying blind with Photoshop Elements, trying this and that until I was satisfied.

Eat It!

OK. Let's get this out of the way now and never have to think about it again! Any photographer who says he or she doesn't have a shoebox full of these images is flat out lying. In fact, with cameras on virtually any cellular phone, and digital cameras big and small, I'd bet the numbers of "self portraits" has probably risen exponentially. Just Google Brett Favre. In fact, there are serious erotic art websites for women to post self-portraits.  Without looking, I'm guessing there are sites for men, as well.  You can look if you want to.

This is one of the earliest "selective coloring"  images I worked on.  You'll probably be more interested in the others.  You may leave the page now.

Let's Begin at the Beginning.

This all started quite innocently enough. I had an album full of Polaroids (the digital camera of the '60s), and Argus 75 square prints- both black and white, and color- of Margaret. A very young Margaret. The featured image, from an original Polaroid print, in fact, shows a Margaret young enough that had that bikini top slipped, I probably could have been arrested. But let's not go there now.  Her grown children wouldn't approve.

Anyway, I wanted to get digital files of these images, so I scanned them, and cleaned up the dust and mold spots, and left them in a folder on the computer. That's how I got the above image, which is also used as the image in the blog title.  That, I thought, would be the end of it.

It was later, as I began to go through several decades worth of black and white negatives and prints that I got the idea to see what could be done with the plethora of editing tools that reside on my hard drive. That's where we'll go in future posts.  This could prove to get real interesting.