Sometimes an idea doesn’t come in a flash. In this case it took years. It can happen to you, too. You just have to be patient.
This is an iPhone image that I shot and played with in between flights at Denver International Airport. I shot the jet at the gate through a window reflecting the interior of the restaurant. I don't remember which apps I used to get to this version, but I like the way the dual reflective subjects integrate together.
For regular air travelers, this is the Cantina in the United terminal.
I took this shot of Chicago's North Shore Drive from the top of Hancock Tower. A few minutes earlier, I took the photo I used as the source for my earlier Windy City illustration.
This is a recent portrait interpretation job I did for Mercer Harris Photography. Mercer is a real master of lighting, making it a joy to work on his portraits. I just love the pose he captured of this girl.
I have a course on lynda.com, Digital Painting: Transforming a Portrait, that goes into all of the details of how I approach and interpret a portrait photograph. When the subject and photographic quality is as good as Mercer's output, it makes the interpretation easy.
I've been going through some of my older photography. I shot this photo of a Buddhist monk in Tokyo during the mid-90's on film and had the roll converted to Kodak's PhotoCD format. Because I was unhappy with the overall quality, these images have languished for years. Now flash forward to the present. Photoshop CC has so many excellent dynamic range recovery capabilities now that I am able to extract much more contrast and detail out of these images than in the past.
I used Jixipix's excellent Aquarelle app to transform the photo into a watercolor appearance. I used some John's Watercolors brushes to distress the edges, as well as lighten some of the image itself.
I've been playing around with Painter X3's new Perspective Guides, which can be used to snap brush strokes to the lines of perspective. In this image, I started with a shot I took of Chicago from the top of the Hancock Center. I aligned a 3-point perspective grid to match the photo, then drew in the building shapes. The original photo is a daytime scene; I used a new color palette to change the cityscape to a nighttime scene.
During a recent trip to the Santa Barbara area, I was shooting the sunset from some cliffs near Carpinteria overlooking the beach when this group passed by.
Talk about being in the right place at the right time!
John Derry
