What goes into this file ? Anything that I believe deserves the title. What went into todays picture?  The answers might surprise you. One of them surprised me!

Two photographs. A standard tidal pool shot and my feet in a paddling pool.

I like my shots of the tidal pool uncluttered by other humans. One on the beach and two swimming is the perfect number. My feet are in a paddling pool, as we are doing more granddaughter care currently because my daughter broke and dislocated her shoulder. We bought a pool to entertain the small person in a heatwave, in the evenings the pool is the perfect place for feet.

I used an app called PortraitArt to turn my feet into a portrait. A paid for App.

Source: PortraitArt https://share.google/wZ1ZXELS2mzac69r0

Then using Snapseed. A free App, I stuck the untouched pool photo and the foot portrait together using ‘double exposure’. Manipulating them to get a pleasing image that matched my imagined image of sitting comfortably with my feet overlooking the pool. The reality is neither comfortable or possible. The angles are all wrong and the rocks not particularly comfy.

Then back to the PortraitArt app for a poster style.

Then some touching up using the magic eraser in Google Photos and I have the image I imagined.

Then, and only then do I use Photoshop, just to save my image at a high resolution for future use.

I have been image manipulating for more than 45 years. Early on, in a wet processing dark room for both photography and radiography. Complicatedly, doing specific and very accurate radiography to produce subtraction or multilayered images to aid medical diagnosis. Then digital radiography became a thing and latterly AI assisted imaging. These things save lives.

Curiously as an artist I often use nearly all those skills to create my Hybrid Prints. These things create Art.

So when a ‘proper’ artist or photographer looks at my Hybrid work and says,

” Oh Photoshop, anybody can do anything with photoshop”

or,

“It’s just AI, no skill in that”

I smile and say,

“Really”

My thought bubble is a little more dynamic.

But here is the surprise to me. A couple of weeks ago I framed a Christmas gift, a print created by a fellow artist called Ian Purvis. I have yet to hang it but in the evenings when I watch Scandi-Noir dramas on Netflix, the framed print looks at me, desperate to be hung.

My colour choices for my image couldn’t be more similar if I tried.

Which all goes to show that there are lots of things that go into an original image, however it is created. It all comes together in my head, a cluttered and very busy space. I hope that this is my last gentle rant about ‘real’ artists or photographers. Somehow I doubt it.

I am unable to provide a link to Ian Purvis website currently. This will be updated as soon as I can.

Below is an image of him with one of his prints. The same one that gave me my subliminal colour choices.

When I look at the Firestone Feet there are so many influences, accidents, concatenations and serendipity that have been incorporated in this image, alongside skills old and new. I think that just thought bubbling ‘Crack On’ is pretty mild really.