A beautiful picture

(http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/51489966/?qo=4&qh=special%3Anewest )
I found this image this afternoon, when I was finding my inspiration for my next blog post. I found this image very beautiful and it kinda create some feeling internally.
I think this image is not real, at all. I do not know how they created this picture, but it still look really beautiful to me. The sky, the cloud is so beautiful. The color, too, is very attractive. The way the author use the green and orange is really well done. They support eath others well. Looking at this picture, i think there is balance in it. The horizon divides the sky and the land into two seperate pieces and personally, i think, they are equal in this picture. The colors also create balance in the image
The author, may want to send some meaning to us. Because, the land is green, means it is fertile. But the tree, i do not know why but it has no leaf. It like a dead tree. Together with the baloon on the sky and the planet (personally, i think it is Mars, right?), I figure out the meaning of this picture may be: "the old land may be fertile but it has nothing for me to stay, i need a new horizon, a new place where my dream can be archive and that is where i am flying to". The author must have a very good dream.
This picture really has a beautiful design with the planet, the color is nicely used, the meaning is wide. This image is good.
Does any one can tell me the meaning of the sign in the right conner?

Recognize something?

This is some crazy stuff I created by Photoshop Cs2 using the previous water drop post technique ^^. I do think it has some design principles in it^^. Cohesion? Unity? Rhythm? And I think it is a little bit busy. In my opinion, I think this image can be a jungleor water ?!

or nothing at all?. So, what do you think it may be?

I created this using those tools: gradient tool, blending tool, liquify command, etc. I modified the Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Color Overlay, Gradient Overlay... and finally, my madness

Easy way to create water drop with Photoshop CS2

Photoshop, as everyone knows, is a powerful tool to create expressive images. Personally, I like to play with Photoshop. I will introduce a easy way to create drops in this entry. This is my personal experiments ^^.

Firstly,open Photoshop CS2, open any picture.Because drops are usually found on leaf or flowers, I will use a picture of a rose, taken by my friend, Thao.

Secondly, create a new image for the original water drop. You can create the drop inside the picture as a layer but with a seperate image for the drop, you can save it for later use.

In the drop's image, create a round or esclipe marquee (M). Then select gradient tool and draw a line from top to bottom. After that, deselect it.

Then choose blending option, select "overlay".
In the Drop Shadow and Inner Shadow option, you should choose the number to fix with your images. In this case I choose "Angle" is 164 and -38 (do not stick "Use global light").
Now you should have a original drop.

After that, go to the your image, have the selection tool in command, then drag the drop onto the the image you want to have the water drop. In this case you will want to have a different layers for each of the drop. This action is my recommendation, because you will need to resize it, change its shape (use "Liquify" command in "Filter" tool).
The rest is your talent. The position, the size and the shape of the drop are all your talent. Remember to have the blending option of each drop's layer is "Overlay".

This is my final work. I think it look quite like real drops ^^I know about this when I was studying in high school.Photoshop is one of my favourite tools ^^.

Moreover, I think this website has a similar way to create water drop, too.<http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut006.htm>. If my instruction is not clear to you, you may want to look at this tutorial.

My Icon

This is my first icon ever
This icon consists of 2 elements, the round shape in the back and the “VP” word in the front.
The word, as you can see, is a “V” and a “P”. That is my name, Vinh Phuong. (I leave the “I” in the middle of the V and P on purpose, as everyone can read it as V.I.P, lol)
The round shape, in Eastern thinking and my opinion, stands for fullness and completeness and continuity of everything in this world. Till this time, I live with a belief: “Everything I do, both bad and good, will be paid back”. Therefore, I have always lived usefully and did nothing bad (or limit my bad action as much as possible, lol)
In general, my icon shows my point of view: “I am a small part of a world of continuity, my objective and everyone’s is to continue what our fathers and brothers could not do. In another word, to connect the past, present and future”.
About the color, my hobby is movie, especially mysterious ones. So that I used dark and gradient color. I like gradient because, in my opinion, it expresses the continuity.

Black and White Images

When I was studying in high school, I was very fond of playing with images. One time I found the grayscale picture mode, I was very interested. I found out that black and white images are very useful in many purposes in art and photography.

Looking at a full colored picture and a black and white picture, viewers can find many new things in any way of thinking. Some black and white pictures are like an open-ended story. A story contains not only just what the picture shows but also the things outside of the picture. For example, here is a picture of my friend, Khang, in the trip to Da Lat, January 2007. I took this picture when he was standing next to Xuan Huong lake, looked like he was full of thinking and emotion (actually he was just looking at the lake). However, the original picture, the colored one, cannot show the emotion well. Therefore I changed it to a grayscale picture with Photoshop CS2 (Image->Mode->Grayscale). Now, in my opinion, the picture has some emotion within (a man standing in the shadow of the tree, looking at the vast space of the lake, viewer cannot see the face of the man and his body is covered in dark light. This, I think has added some more emotion to the image, better than the original one).

Another purpose to use black and white images that I found out is they can trick the eyes and make viewers think the picture was taken long ago. For example, the below pictures were also taken in the trip to Da Lat in January 2007 by my friend, Thao. If there were not the original one, who say the picture was taken recently ? (at least they can guess the time is after 1975, because there is an antenna in the picture :D). Black and white color did change the picture magically. We can feel the value of time and the breath of history in it.

Moreover, after try some experiments, I found out black and white add values to the picture or in another word, make the picture more valuable. Below is a picture of a Vietnamese girl in Vietnamese traditional dress (*) (Ao dai). The colored picture (I took it from extremecharity.typepad.com website), in my opinion, shows nothing but just a beautiful image of a young woman wearing Ao dai. However, after change it to black and white, the picture changed significantly. It now has the classical and elegant view, showing value of the past, of tradition and the beautifulness of Vietnamese women and clothes.

If anyone want to create a thoughtful, high valuable, elegant, classical and impressive picture, black and white picture is a powerful tool. When images is change to black and white, they are not photography anymore, it is now art.

Those are just my first feeling and touching with black and white images. I will do more research on this aspect as it is now my inspiration.

*Image source: 321 Cyclo: September 2005, http://extremecharity.typepad.com/321cyclo/2005/09/, viewed March 5, 2007