I Wanna Go Out 'n Play, Too

[Dennis Bishop]

Ask anyone in Ohio who doesn't live near Sandusky what's there, and you'll likely be told Cedar Point Amusement Park. Possibly with comments about the roller coasters. You're likely to get the same answer from people in the neighboring states and even farther afield. Those of us who love old carved carousel animals also know Sandusky as the home of a merry-go-round museum with permanent and traveling exhibits. It was almost 12 years ago that I was there, so I don't remember if this horse was a permanent fixture. However, it seemed to want to be on the working carousel instead of standing there watching it.

Nikon D1, ISO 200, f/3.3, 1/20 sec, zoom lens at 23mm

post-processing

• added canvas to the top and got rid of some of the ceiling structure that was part of the old post office in which the museum is housed
• Unhappy with the composition out of the camera, I moved the right side of the image toward the center (with the horse masked on to a separate layer above it) and did some related masking of the background.
• The wall on the left was originally yellow. it was covered with two Joel Olives blue textures. (The lines you see on it are from Fractalius layers applied to the original background and moved up in the stack.)
• Topaz Simplify -- Watercolor II masked off the eye and -- to a lesser extent -- off the bulbs on the carousel
• Selective Color adjustment layer -- applied only to the background to make it a bit redder
• Flypaper Textures -- two textures, one brown and one blue (duplicate layers at different blend modes) applied to the background
• Fractalius -- two B&W presets based on the old Sketch preset, one masked to background, the other masked at different opacities to foreground and background, all at Multiply blend mode
• Alien Skin Snap Art -- B&W Stylize Line Art preset, Multiply blend mode
• gradient vignette -- sides and top, masked off of horse
• maroon border -- masked off of horse

[Cheryl Slechta]

Dennis, I love the perspective! I think the muted colors in the background and the filtering is just perfect. The only thing I might change is removing the line on the bottom edge just to the right of the horse going up. He reminds me of the Trojan horse

[Dennis Bishop]

Dennis, I love the perspective! I think the muted colors in the background and the filtering is just perfect. The only thing I might change is removing the line on the bottom edge just to the right of the horse going up. He reminds me of the Trojan horse

Thanks for your comments, Cheryl. I wondered several times about that line. It's the edge of the wall, but adding the textures made the wall and floor so close in color that it just looks like a line with no purpose. I'm wondering if I should've handled it by making that little bit of wall a bit darker.

[Judy Howle]

Outstanding work on this one! I love the horse and the background is perfect in colors and softness; interesting to look at but doesn't detract from the horse.

[Paul Lagasi]

Very nice work, merry go round horses are great subjects, bench and merry-go round is perfect background. Well done.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Dennis, here is the line I was talking about. I like the lines behind the horse - I think they enhance the image.

[Dennis Bishop]

Hi, Dennis, here is the line I was talking about. I like the lines behind the horse - I think they enhance the image.

Thanks for the extra work, Cheryl, but we were talking about the same line. When I more carefully tracked things down while trying to fix the problem, I found that a number of steps resulted in the loss of color, there. The simplification in Topaz Simplify was one of them. I ended up just painting the darker blue between the line and the horse on a new layer.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Dennis, I think that is much better.