I know I can write, and for the most part I take decent photos, though my subjects are still limited. I can draw a little, but all of my sketches are cartoonish and abstract. Realism, no chance.

But painting, no way. Luckily I have some prowess with digital mediums, so maybe, just maybe, I can satisfy my canvas craving that way.

Here is my first attempt.

The other day, as I was sitting in my office cubicle, I knocked my coffee mug with my elbow, which launched a bulb of the brown hot stuff into the air only to crash like an exploding water balloon on my desk. But after I shouted my token obscenity and rushed to grab a paper towel, I stopped to notice the splat. It was a pattern I could never draw, so I took a photo of it.

Then, I ran it through a handful of Photoshop filters, in addition to playing with the colors and contrast. In the end, I came up with a pop art, abstract image that I really like. I’ll try to make more of these from time to time.

Before:

After:

Related posts:

1. Photos: Going bananas
2. Photos: Art is a vandal

That’s not the say iPhoto doesn’t have a a nice stable of user-friendly effects. By boosting saturation, changing photos to black and white or sepia, or fading the color I’ve been able to enhance the photos just fine. But there’s one effect, giving your photos a retro look, that I’ve lacked.

Apple’s iPhoto has an effect called “antique” that gives photos an old look by softening the light and overlaying  a pinkish-orange hue. But it’s not exactly retro. Rather, it creates more of an aged or weathered look. To get the effect I want I was going to have to do it myself, using Photoshop. To help, I found this step-by-step guide to getting the effects I want on Howcast.

To test the technique I took a pretty nice photo I took of a Long Island Rail Road train approaching the platform in St. James one recent summer morning and followed the instructions. It worked, and, even better, editing the photo opened me up to the Photoshop techniques I haven’t learned yet, things like masks and gradient overlays. It’s added a whole new realm of possibilities for my newfound method of expression.

I’ll give the retro treatment to a batch of my photos and post them later, but, for now, here is the photo I edited, before retro and after retro.

Related posts:

1. Photos: The flower coasters
2. Photos: Self portraits in glass ball
3. Vermont, in a vintage light