Landscape Turned Lavender

Landscape in Lavender

Yunnan Province, China 2005

Back in the day when I began photography class, there was a best selling print of mountain silhouettes done in various hues. I wanted to make a photograph like that one, but have never succeeded. The memory faded but didn’t disappear and when I looked hard and long at this photo, it bubbled to the surface of my brain.

I showed this photo here.  I do like the black and white version and maybe I’d be satisfied but for two things. Number one is that with Photoshop I have the ability to try variations on a theme and number two is that I can still hear our rather sexist leader telling me that my photos would not be good because I needed color film. (He and the rest of the group had converted to digital.) I want to prove him wrong every time I look at these photos. Even he would have to admit that this photo is successful. And maybe, just maybe he’d like it.  

I used my ‘prisms’ or textures to add the lavender hues. I have many prisms as I’ve told you. Some are just splotches of color, some are photos of texture, for instance, a section of  tree bark. You add one of these in a new layer and adjust the blend mode to suit. Trial and error is how you do it. When you get the color you like, you can embellish it by adding more layers of the same filter and changing the blend mode again to ‘screen’ to make it lighter or to ‘multiply’ to make it darker. Mask these layers and paint in where you want the darks or the lights.