A Sand Safari

There is always something interesting happening in our part of Australia - especially in Surfers Paradise. Once again there is a sand sculpting competition - which will last all this week so I will be able to return and take more photographs to share.
The weather is against these talented sculptors though. This morning there were very heavy coastal showers so for most of the morning what had already been created would have been covered with plastic to save it from being washed away. I did not get to Surfers Paradise until after lunch time and by looking South you could see the clouds building up and threatening yet another fall of rain. I was with the grandchildren - who both have very short attention spans - so they were happy with the fly-past of the sculptures.

We did not get a chance to see this sculpture before it was covered with plastic. I just hope that when it rains  it does not rain hard and come accompanied by wind because the plastic that was being used to cover the sand was really thin. It looked as if it would tear really easily!
A couple of the sculptures were well advanced and I will share pictures of them - others are still in the very early stages and although the shapes are revealing, they are not yet ready for plastering on the Internet!

The theme of the sand competition is "Sand Safari" so most of the works are of an "African" nature - but there are a couple that have looked "outside the box" and those I will share another day.

This lion cub and the picture that follows are both  of the same work. This artist is obviously a faster worker than the others and his piece is more involved too'

The sand that is used for the sand sculptures is not beach sand. Beach sand does not bind together well enough for this sort of sculpting. The papers advised that the good sand that was used last year came from Bundaberg but this year the sand had to come from somewhere else. Bundaberg is still trying to recover after severe flooding. Their quarries are still filled with water. So everyone feels they are dealing with inferior sand - BUT! They all have the same handicap!
Seeing what these artists can do with a pile of sand is really inspiring and my two little grand-daughters enjoyed an hour of sand sculpting themselves down on the edge of the sea!
Here is a turtle almost made by the eight year old.

By the time she finished it had four legs and patterns on the "shell" as well as a dry moat and a wall all around it.
It is so sad - while we were down on the edge of the wet sand near the sea a bunch of people who were about to have a surfing lesson came walking past us and I had to stand between my granddaughter and them to prevent them from marching over the top of her and her sand turtle as they dragged their surfboards behind them. They were so one-eyed that they could not see in front of themselves.
All pictures here were taken with a six year old point and shoot Samsung NV3.
AJ

Having another go with Photoscape

I have spoken to a few people who have downloaded Photoscape and are having a play with it and they are quite excited about what can be done. None of these people are clever "photoshop" users, they find the layers and masks and processes all very confusing and yet they are having a great time with this program and are getting very good results. It is good that a program such as this is not only easy to use but effective at all kinds of tasks too.
One of the people I have chatted to is scanning old slides and the results of the Photoscape manipulation I have been shown are excellent.

This photograph is a comparison shot. The photo on the left is how the original scan looks (I worked on this photo - it is of me a VERY long time ago!) The program allowed brightness and contrast correction, colour removal and cloning. The cloning tool is faultless! I was totally amazed at how easy and how invisibly the repairs were made. When scanning old photos there are always little black and sometimes, white, dots that mar the picture. I was able to zoom right in and use the clone brush to remove those blemishes.
If I wanted to give the corrected photo a sepia wash so that it looks as dated as the original a quick click on the appropriate filter will do that. But since the photo was a black and white originally and only time and poor developing has changed it to dull brown I will keep it the way I have now made it!
AJ

Playing with a free program

I am an avid reader of a blog called Digital Photography School and thanks to a link provided by one of the respondents to an article I downloaded a free photo editing program called Photoscape. What a find! There are so many useful little features in this program that most people would be able to edit their photos using this program alone! It can colour correct, light correct and give some super effects too.
I am going to show a few things that can be done with this program.

This is a photo that has not been manipulated. Now lets see what can be done with a few quick clicks.

How about a reflection? Admitedly the reflection happens at the very bottom of the picture - but a bit of cropping helps the effect! (I cropped just at the trainer wheel)

This is a fun pic - this is another filter called Coloured pencil and it gives an excellent coloured drawing. If you wanted this to be just a graphite - black and white - drawing you would only need to tell the program to remove the colour and "bingo"!

Finally with the bike wheel, an effect that is called "newsprint" - the pictures in a newspaper are made up of dots. to this has been added a black inner line around the edge and a coloured border edge - white.
Now for a bit of fun with a picture of pelicans.

Not too much has been done with this photo that is clear (other than the "call-outs") but white balance and levels have been used that made a good difference to a dull picture.
After that text was added - "The Chorus line" - and I was able to move it and turn it to put it where I wanted it.
Next I chose to put a couple of "call-outs" and there were so many different shapes to chose from that I took a while to find two that I would stay with!
Next I rounded the corners and decided that I had done enough to one photo! Its easy to go too far!
I do recommend you try this fun program - it comes with links back to the video tutorials so you will never be stuck for ideas of what to do with your photos.
Have fun - I know I will!
AJ