Richland Carrousel Park lead horse

[Dennis Bishop]

My first couple visits to Mansfield, Ohio, were work-related. When I went on my own, it was because of a long love affair with carousel animals. The carousel is the first one with brand new hand-carved animals to open (in 1991) in the USA since the 1930s. The carving was done locally. I don't know why they spell carousel with two Rs in the name of the park.

I could've given the image a festive feel of balloons, cotton candy, and popcorn, but that isn't what I wanted. Good carousel figures are a work of art, so that's what I tried to reflect.

ISO 200, 1/15 sec, f/3.2, zoom lens at 22mm

I commented, recently, that I nearly always consider whether or not to flip an image horizontally for composition. This was one of the few exceptions. You're looking at the lead horse, the fanciest one on the carousel, from the show side (the outside). Carousels built for use in the USA turn counter-clockwise.

The original shot was very tight. I wanted to add canvas on the right, and I wanted to make the background roughly follow the outlines of the horse.
Added canvas
Stretched the entire image -- horse and all -- to fit and applied a nearly vertical motion blur (just to make it less distinct -- see note, below)
Stretched another copy to fit and applied a horizontal motion blur, this time at Lighten blend mode and 50% opacity
Flypaper texture at low opacity with a 45 degree motion blur
Flypaper texture at low opacity with no blur (Lead horses always stand on the platform rather than moving up & down, so I didn't want implied motion.)
(Both textures were largely blue to echo the blues on the carving and complement the yellow tones.)
Applied Topaz ReMasked horse from original image
Gradient vignette
Curves and levels
Alien Skin Snap Art -- Oil Paint with reduced settings for the head within Snap Art and the eye masked back afterwards
Nik Color Efex -- Darken/Lighten Center, slight lightening of the head area and slight darkening elsewhere
Added brass poles from a different shot of the same carousel, very low opacity and Hard Light blend mode
Gradient vignette
Levels as a final adjustment to black and white points

[Steve Adkins]

Dennis, Thank you for sharing your knowledge of carousels and techniques used with this image. The carving is impressive and I'm glad the tradition lives on. I like the mood your BG treatment invokes (great colors) and the painterly effect on the horse and overall is very well done. Nicely added brass poles! I'm torn about the left edge and the cutoff mane,( it may push the horse's eye too far to the right in the comp ) but that's a minor item on a very fine image.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . I'm torn about the left edge and the cutoff mane,( it may push the horse's eye too far to the right in the comp ) . . .

Thanks for your comments, Steve. If I return to Mansfield and take some more photos of the carousel, I'll definitely frame it more loosely. What the processed image will look like, I don't know, but it will likely include the entire mane. Maybe the brass pole, too. As I go back and re-work some of my older images, I realize I've learned a lot since I took those shots and processed them. This one was taken a little more than eleven years ago, less than a year after getting my first digital camera, a Nikon D1. And it was a JPG rather than a RAW file. Good grief!!!

[denise ippolito]

Dennis, I love carousel horses and this is wonderful. I too would have liked the entire mane so it didn't feel clipped and I agree with your thoughts regarding the brass pole. The colors and textures are great and I really like the way you thought OOTB for this. I may crop in tighter so it looks cropped not clipped if it were mine but it is your vision that counts not mine. I could have left a hair more room on the bottom-whoops!

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . I too would have liked the entire mane so it didn't feel clipped . . . I may crop in tighter so it looks cropped not clipped . . .

Thanks for you comments, Denise. That was a great idea about cropping tighter on the mane. I appreciate the re-post.

[Maureen Allen]

Love the ornate carousel horse. Your filtering is very well done, the background is particularly nice. I like Denise's crop.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Dennis,

wonderful carving on this horse. I like the processing here. I think I prefer Denise's crop a touch more than the original. Nicely done!