Fauxto Friday - "Joshua Moon"

Long time no blog, am I right? To be honest, I sort of forgot all about this little photography journal I started long ago. Lately, I’ve been doing some work with my photos that I’ve really been getting into, and it inspired me to revive my Fauxto Friday feature.

To refresh your memory, the point of Fauxto Friday was a way for me to showcase the ways I use Photoshop to edit and retouch photos in order to remove objects, swap out backgrounds, restore damaged prints or, in the case of the featured photo of this post, create something arty and new.

This project came about the way the best ones do, when you were really trying to do something else! In my case, I was going through the folders on my computer where I keep the thousands and thousands of photos I’ve taken over the last few years. As much as I love to edit photos to remove unwanted things, you’d think I’d apply a more minimalist approach to my personal photo indexing. But, alas! Everything I shoots, I keeps! 😃 Including every single blurry image shot from the window of a moving vehicle when we go on traveling adventures across the country.

As much as I’d like to keep all those “I-can’t-tell-what-I-was-even-taking-a-picture-of-in-this-one” moments, my computer and external hard drives are reaching maximum capacity. Some photos are just gonna have to go. Well, they will have to go once I actually get back to that spring-cleaning project. Because as I was looking through the photos from our trip to Joshua Tree National Park in 2015, I found this photo that inspired my art project.

If you know me well, you know that I’m a bonafide tree hugger. Mostly because I’m a nature girl, but it started with Dr. Seuss. When my dad taught me how to read, we read Dr. Seuss books (which also sparked an appreciation for reading, but that’s another story), and The Lorax was my favorite. Those truffula trees captured my imagination like nothing else, still do. So when I got to see Joshua trees for the first time with my own eyes, I felt like I was living in that book. 😍 At first glance, my thoughts were to criticize my photo skills from almost 5 years ago. “This pictures is so overexposed… the colors are so washed out… it’s so unimpressive.” At second glance, my thoughts switched to a more positive track. “Wow, I’ve really improved my skills over the years. I can tell I used an auto mode to snap this, but now I could shoot this in manual mode and capture a better No-Touch needed image. [pats self on the back] But my editing skills have improved too… 🤔 I’ll bet I can do something with this.” Using two other images from my own gallery, I layered pieces of a sunset and the full moon in with the Joshua tree. A few shading adjustments, color tweaks and lighting changes later, it began to take the form of the desert night scene I’d envisioned when I started out. But it still needed a little something extra – a touch of oil paint stylization – and voila! A beautiful work of art to hang on your wall.

And while I’m busy flaunting my skills, I’ll let you in on a little secret about one of my recent more popular photos. (JK. It’s not really a secret… I never hide the fact that I edit my photos.) This pretty picture of two female northern cardinals sitting in a snowy pine tree… they’re both the same bird. 😱 When this little beauty landed on that branch, I was lucky to snap two really good shots. But I couldn’t decide which one I liked better, so I tried putting them together. I didn’t mention the editing at the time of the posting for one simple reason… I was testing my skill level to see if anyone would be able to tell it was a Fauxto and would call me out on it. In my eyes, it was a glaringly obvious forgery, but I received nothing but compliments on it.

BEFORE

AFTER

And then there’s the Dark Eyed Junco that was coming in for a landing on a table. While I did capture the birdie mid-flight, a deck chair was mucking up the background and there was a bit more shadow on his face than I wanted, plus the color was a little on the flat side.

BEFORE

AFTER

Let me know what you think!