Ghost of Yellowstone's Old Faithful Inn(extra)

For my final cover I listed an article on the Ghosts of the Ahwahanee Hotel. I haven't really believed that ghosts existed until, one summer, my wife and I visited Yellowstone National Park. We did the usual tourist things, seeing the geysers, buffalo, bears, hot springs, etc. We also stopped off to see the old Old Faithful Inn and spent a while looking around. The main lobby is a giant open space, going up several floors. I was up about two floors, taking pictures and having fun. When I downloaded the day's pictures onto my computer that night I was astonished to see what appeared to be the bottom (at least) half of a ghostly image standing right next to my wife. I have no other explanation for what this image shows. What I have attached is the original, unretouched image.

 After looking at this image, I did a little research and discovered the book Yellowstone Ghost Stories by Shellie Larios. It seems to confirm what I think is a ghost.

The Ahwahanee Magazine (final cover)

FINAL: Front Page Cover

            For my fictional magazine cover photo I’ve chosen to use a picture of the Ahwahnee Hotel I took a couple of years ago. I liked the way that the hotel seemed to merge right into the rocks of the mountains behind it. Now, after I’ve applied a blur effect, that feeling is more one of depth, rather than merging. I still like it. I’ve been able to apply a few fancy tricks to the masthead to make it stand out a little more, but the length of the title placed a size constriction on it. All of the article titles, with the exception of the tennis courts, have an element of truth to them. The caves do exist, although there’s not much to see. Back in the 1940’s they were a stop on the valley floor tour. Today, park management doesn’t want to admit they exist. They’ve even taken down all signs and trails to them. The tennis courts do exist. They’re pretty run-down now, and I don’t know of any plans to fix them up. The book may not have been a best seller, but it is very interesting. The yearly stats on water falls and flooding are easily obtainable. There are rumors of ghosts inhabiting the Ahwahnee, as there are of most major hotels. My wife and I did stay there during the remodel. It’s a little uncomfortable and noisy, but heck, it was the Ahwahanee!
PLEASE NOTE: This cover was constructed prior to the recent tragic deaths of three visitors. It is in to way intended to capitalize on their misfortune. (rnh  7/26/11) 

John Muir Collage (mid-term)

The images used to create this collage all relate in some way to John Muir. All of them have some personal meaning. The only truly important Muir-related area not mentioned or depicted in this collage is Muir Beach in Northern California. I grew up in Santa Rosa and visited Muir Beach frequently with my parents. I regret to say that I’ve only been to Muir Woods a couple of times, but Yosemite is a different matter. I have an early home movie of my parents on their honeymoon at Yosemite in 1935. My ties to that park are, therefore, long and deep. For these parks and experiences and so much more, we have John Muir to thank. Thus, this collage has been constructed in celebration of Muir’s contributions to the American soul.

I’ve used many of the techniques which I’m learning in this class. Most obviously, this image is submitted in duotone. I was working predominantly in color until I added the black and white image of Teddy Roosevelt in Yosemite. The addition of this image was jarring to the color image, so I converted it to duotone, simply to see how it would blend. I like the duotone better, so that’s my submission. I placed the stamps and the map on opposite corners of the collage in order to provide a little balance for those images. The coin is on the rock--solid as a rock, as is the United States monetary system. Roosevelt is placed directly on the John Muir trail, where I was hiking when I took this picture. I’ve tried to blend the image of Muir Woods into other areas of forest in this picture. The two rocks that I’ve “borrowed” from Yosemite are blended in and I’ve reduced their opacity. I made two layers of the quote, changed the font color on one to black, rasterized them, and joggled them around a bit. I know I could have done this differently, but I kind of like the effect of doing it this way. The quote is one of my favorite quotes from Muir. I’ve discovered that by hiking a mile on most trails in Yosemite that I see very few other people, even if the park is packed with visitors. The hiking I’m doing is good for the soul and is helping me recover from quintuple bypass surgery. Visually, I feel that I’ve created a balanced image. The color scheme, duotone, really has turned out rock-like. I’ve balanced the placement of people by placing Muir top left and Roosevelt bottom right. The objects relating to Muir are the stamps bottom left and the map top right. Nevada Falls is centered in the image and there is about 1/3 sky. I’ve used that sky as a backdrop for the quote.

Little Green Men (lesson 10)

Lesson 10—Surrealism

            What could be more surreal than little green men (and woman) invading the Earth, sneaking through the forests of Yosemite? Well, this may not be as odd as Dali, but it might conjure up thoughts of the old SciFi movies of the 50’s. In order to create this image I’ve used as a background a photo that I took in the early morning mists of Yosemite Valley and then I started adding little green men with the help of the custom shape tool. Using the technique of cloning to a different size, I then shrank them, placed them, flipped them, and hid them behind trees. I even skewed one to make it look like he’s turning. I then put all the green men layers and masks into a group called Men. That was lots of fun. In the interests of fairness, I made the leader a female figure, again with the help of the custom shape tool. I then used the same tool to create the speech balloon and lowered its opacity way, way down. I used the text tool to type in her command to the people of Earth and then used a new shortcut (CTRL + H) in order to hide the text selection and be able to preview the text in its true color and chose that hideous purple/maroon color. That’s a really handy shortcut and a really ugly color. I also linked the balloon layer with the text layer so I was able to move them around and resize them at will. I grouped the word balloon and text into a group called Words. Then, since she was talking, I figured she needed a mouth. Her stylish lips were provided by the completed exercise in lesson 5. Her eyes and nose were made with the help of the custom shape tool and were sized and placed with the use of snap-to guide lines. The mouth, eyes, nose, and female figure were placed together in a group named Woman. By placing the elements of this little vignette into three groups I was able to make some sense out of all the layers I’d ended up making.

            I must say that I had fun completing this assignment.

Richard Hallett

Half Dome in shadow

For my sixtieth birthday I decided that it would be fun to spend some time on top of Half Dome in Yosemite. In order to do that, I needed a wilderness permit which would allow me to go there. As I was waiting in line to get the permit, I glanced over toward Yosemite Falls, and there on the wall of rock opposite to the falls was the shadow of Half Dome. I decided that that was a great omen, and it was! The next day (my birthday) some family members and I climbed to the top of that rock, where everyone sang happy birthday to me. I’ll always remember this experience.

Yangorra Falls

In order to create this composition, I had to juxtapose part of an image I took of Yosemite Falls with the cliff face on Angora Peak near Lake Tahoe. Fortunately there is an existing small (very) seasonal fall which follows the same course which I place the bigger falls into. This is a beginner try, so it's kind of rough.

Assignment Six

 

For my sixtieth birthday I decided that it would be fun to spend some time on top of Half Dome in Yosemite. In order to do that, I needed a wilderness permit. As I was waiting in line to get the permit early in the morning, I glanced over toward Yosemite Falls. The sun was rising in the east, and there on the wall of rock opposite to the falls was the shadow of Half Dome, my destination the next day. I decided that that was a great omen, and it was! The next day (my birthday) some family members and I hiked to the top of Half Dome, where everyone sang happy birthday to me. I’ll always remember this experience, and John Muir's quote restated my feelings perfectly.

Assignment Four

  The picture above consists of a background image of Half Dome in Yosemite, along with two other images---one of me sitting down taking a break while I was hiking in another area of Yosemite, and a third image of a full moon in Hawaii. Yosemite is my favorite place to be (outside of my own home) and I have thousands of images from there. As I was reviewing them, I came to the realization that Yosemite is predominantly a granite gray in color outlook. If it’s not that, then it’s green. I chose this particular photograph to work with because I felt that, with the fallen tree and Half Dome in the distance, it had a lot to work with. Since this picture has the granite colors of both Sentinel Dome and Half Dome, I decided to work mostly in the blue spectrum of light. The moon over Hawaii presented a challenge, however. (OK, so I borrowed a concept from Ansel Adams) I have a stock picture of the moon, so I color matched that picture with the warmer Hawaii picture, lightened it up a bit, reduced the opacity to about 50% and got a fairly pleasing result. The picture of me on a hike was a challenge to select and then transform in size into the picture. One glaring problem was my straw hat. It’s yellow, and although yellow is a complimentary color to the main blue theme, it stood out way too much. So I toned it down quite a bit. I’ve also grouped the layers, but that probably won’t show up once it’s converted to JPEG. I then added the text to the sky and played around with the text tool until I was able to bend the text around Half Dome. I then added my name, changed the font (size and color) and reduced its opacity.

Homework Three

In order to create this duotone image I began with a stock photo of a house at the beginning of autumn. The image came from a program called Photo Explosion. This program has lots of good stock images, and I found one of a Mustang which I felt that I could incorporate into this image. It was easy enough to copy, since the Mustang image came on a blank white background. So I selected it using (basically) the quick selection tool, and then added it to the house picture. After playing with a number of different locations for the car, I decided that it would fit best in front of the house. I placed it there and then noticed that, looking through the windows of the car, I could see only the original white background. In order to fix that as best as I could, I used the clone stamp tool and used the siding of the house as a source, stamping that into the empty windows. It worked OK, but I felt that there must be a better way. After I have now learned a few more Photoshop tricks, I now know how I think I could have done that step better. Finally, after I had that portion of the image fixed, I converted it into a duotone image. I decided that since the picture was an autumn theme, that a brown tone might look good. After playing with the curve in a number of different spots, I came up with this color combination. Looks pretty good to me.