Playing with Actions—Portrait of Lauren

Using an image I shot of my niece, Lauren, I have applied nine of my favorite Totally Rad Actions from photographer Doug Boutwell—just to show you some of the effects you can achieve with portraits. I love his action names, too—Prettytizer, Cool as a Cucumber, Not-So-Magic Glasses, Rusty Cage, SX-70…

The first photo in the series is a “normal” shot (with minor retouching, but no action applied). Some of the actions were used at 100% strength; some were dialed back to about 60-75% strength (particularly in the case of Technicolor Dream World, Grunge Rock and Pross Crossessed #1). I just love these Photoshop actions—they’re well worth the investment if you want to take some of your photos to another level with very little effort. And no, I don’t get a kickback from endorsing Doug’s store—I just love to share a great product when I find one! I don’t use them in my garden and nature photographs, but they’re great used occasionally with landscapes, portraits and architecture—and when you want to add an artistic effect to a dull “record” shot.

Go play on his site here and try out his “recipes” for cool effects. Now I thinking I might have to add his “TRA 2—The Revenge” to my arsenal. When I ordered my actions and had a little problem completing the download, Doug was very quick to respond personally. Very nice guy with very nice products!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Dreamy Sylvia

Sylvia, Thelma, Patricia and my sister Kelley were the “Four Musketeers” throughout their junior high and high school years. All four girls were almost always willing guinea pigs as I was learning photography. Any time I had an idea, they were game to model for me. This is one of the first shots I remember taking of Sylvia. We shot it out in the country, not far from where she lived. She’s wearing the dress my dad helped me picked out for my graduation from high school. I’ve always loved this photo—she has such a classically beautiful profile. And she still looks the same, decades later. This is another one of my vaseline-on-the-uv-filter vignette images. It kind of has that Holga look, too, with the out-of-focus dark areas around the edges. I most likely shot this with my Sears Pentax K1000. 35mm slide scanned by ScanCafe.com (FYI: I received my DVD with high rez scans from ScanCafe a week ago, followed with the arrival of my original slides today—all safe and sound. I highly recommend this company if you have a slew of slides to contend with.)

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

From my 35mm slide archives…

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.