Jan 4

Written by:
Wednesday, January 04, 2012 

I have decided I'm going to start a project 52 this year.  The original idea behind this for many who tackle it is to take one photo a week.  Sometimes there are themes in mind, sometimes its just a way to ensure you get out shooting.  In my case, I have a list of various photo- and post processing- techniques that I am interested in learning or perfecting and as such, a project 52 will allow me to focus on one item from my list every week and will hopefully make me a better photographer at this time next year than I am today.  After all, its about learning and growing in your chosen field, right?

Week 1: Conformal Photography

In doing my research to compile my project 52 list, I came across this link and I had the same question as the author... how do they DO this? After a bit of searching, some fighting with Photoshop and installing a plug-in (links below) I have managed to figure out the basics.  I can already see myself losing hours playing with this. I chose an image of a ceiling inside the China Pavillion at Epcot from our vacation there last December as I really liked the repeating patterns and thought this technique would create something interesting with it.



Here's what I did:

This plug-in must be installed first (note the Droste effect, used to create these, only works in the 32bit edition of CS5) http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/pixelbenderplugin/
Then download and copy this effect to the pixel bender folder: http://www.subblue.com/projects/droste
Then open your image of choice in CS5 (32-bit version) and have a blast! Follow the tutorial on the droste page to get you started and then have fun!

My end result:


I will add creations as I do them to my facebook album. Let me know if you decide to try this as I'd love to see your creations!