This beautiful arching bridge is an icon of the California Central Coast. It may be familiar to many from its appearances in numerous automobile commercials. There is some historical information here.
I stopped for this shot on a bright and hazy day in late February. The winter rains have turned the hills green. I set the aperture to f/16 for more depth of field and shot 5 bracketed exposures and blended them together in Photomatix Pro 3.2.
I discussed the technique of Polar Coordinates in the last two posts and explained the process here. I began the previous posts with the distorted images followed by the original. I’m starting with the original in this post (scroll down for the distorted image.) This is one of my favorite shots, contrasting the fallen tree’s decay with the new life of the flowers. It was taken near Ten Mile stream in Kings Canyon National Park. The transformed image is quite different.
Today’s post is another example of using Photoshop’s Polar Coordinates filter to radically transform an image. I explained the process here in Monday’s post. The original image (scroll down to see) is of a brown pelican drying its feathers on a boat dock in Moss Landing, California. The distorted image emphasizes the sweep of the bill and the wing feathers but leaves the eye distinct, a nice touch, I think.
As a landscape photographer I try to portray what I see in a natural and realistic manner. As a rule, I don’t care much for distortion or excessive manipulation of images. This technique of using the Polar Coordinates filter in Photoshop, however, can sometimes provide an unusual twist. I learned this technique from a tutorial by Rick Sammon, a well-known photographer and Photoshop instructor. You can learn more about Rick at his website here.
Not all images are good candidates for the Polar Coordinates filter, but, occasionally, it works very well. There are 3 simple steps. First, with an image open in Photoshop, go to the menu bar and choose Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates. In the dialog box that opens, choose the bottom button “Polar to Rectangular” then
click OK. Second, go to the menu bar and choose Image>Rotate Canvas>Flip Vertically. The final step is to return to the menu bar and choose Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates. This time, choose the top button “Rectangular to Polar” and click OK. Done.
The image used is of a Pale Tiger Swallowtail taken in Kings Canyon National Park in 2005. Scroll down to see the original image.
