Picture 420...

No… this picture is not drug related…
This was supposed to be uploaded on Wednesday…..
…but this video didn’t want to render.

The screen capture of me working on the picture took a forever to render.
And then it rendered all messed up.
Issues….. there’s always issues.
And then it was going to be uploaded Friday, I was busy shooting a video with my brother.
I had all day to type up this post and upload the video, so it isn’t his fault.
I’m just lazy.
And then I took me forever to type this post.
It’s midnight on Friday right now.
So, I just pushed upload date to Saturday morning.
I can’t do it at my typical 9 PM time slot because we are going to be racing!
They have a special Saturday race.
It’s probably going to be done by 9 PM, but I’d be too tired to upload anything.
So…. That brings us to 9 AM on Saturday.
That’s a good time.
So, basically it took a bit longer than what I wanted, but oh well.
ANYWAYS!
It has been a busy few weeks for me.
I’ve been doing a bunch of editing.
I’m trying to get all the racing videos all caught up.
They are harder to edit than I thought.
This week has been the most exciting.
I’ve been getting ready for the Summer class.
This post was supposed to happen before the class started…
…but that plan didn’t work.
So, that happened Thursday.
And then later today is another tractor race that I have to edit.
AND THEN!!!! We go on a two-day trip to Cedar Point!!
I might not snap a picture like last time.
It’s a family trip.
Plus, after this week's picture…. I’m starting a series.
Like I mentioned… the Summer started.
My plan is to make at least one picture from whatever location we go to.
And then the video would be just about the trip and where we went.
We are going to eight places, so we’ll be doing this series for eight weeks.
It starts this Wednesday.
We go on the trips on Thursdays.
We already went to the first place.
I don’t want to spoil it yet, but it was pretty cool.
Hopefully, the videos can show that.
I think the picture that I made there is really cool.
I was going to just use a typical GoPro selfie.
But I had enough alone time to actually make a decent picture with my main camera.
I can’t say that will happen for every trip.
I’m sure I’ll upload a quick GoPro selfie at some point.
ANYWAYS!!! That’s next week.
This week’s picture is something different.
It actually had a plan!
During the Spring Photo class, we did two different themes.
My first one was about different spaces, and my second one was about houses.
Like different colorful houses in the area.
We were trying to get the personality of the house owner from the house itself.
However, my backup plan was going to be about…. Cellphones.
All you see are people staring at their phones.
Someone in the class did a theme about the River Walk in town.
And you could see people just looking at their phones.
And my teacher even talked about it.
And then another person in the class had a theme about a social gathering.
And there was a picture of a person taking a picture with their phone.
And my teacher even asked her to do a theme about that.
And she did.
It was a series of pictures of someone holding up a phone.
It’s hard to explain without showing you.
It was basically my idea.
I still don’t have a phone.
And I wanted to get the different views of having a phone and not having one.
But since the teacher gave that idea to someone else, I didn’t want to look like I was stealing it.
It was my backup plan though.
But the theme about the house worked out just fine and the teacher loved it.
However, I still wanted to do that theme.
The pictures would have had two Me’s in them.
One looking at a phone, and one not.
And then there would have been a few solo pictures of the cellphone guy ignoring things.
And the non-cellphone guy enjoying life.
So, that’s kind of what I did for this picture.
That’s what I wanted to achieve. 
However, it changed into something more.
If you notice, we aren’t holding cellphones.
It took the story to the basics.
People are always looking down, either at their phone or just looking down period.
They look down upon situations.
Always looking at the bad side of things.
I found myself looking down a lot.
I didn’t think I could achieve what I wanted to do.
I changed that.
I decided to go to college to at least try to achieve something.
I started to look up more.
I still have my moments, like the last picture I did.
But mostly... I'm trying to be happy.
So, that’s what this picture is about.
All I’ll say is that it’s a march to the sea.
That’s it.

That’s all you get.
Also, this photo is a lie!
IT’S ALL FAKE!
Ok, I’m kidding.
It is different for the other pictures though.
Usually, I'd set up the camera…
Then I’d move…. Take a picture….
Move… take a picture…
So on so forth.
This time I actually did everything in front of a “green-screen”.
AKA…. The side of my house.
I shot the base picture….
… and then I separately shot the different Me’s on a wall on the side of my house.
See…

That way, I could play with the size of the Me’s and perspective.

If I needed to make the smaller and squish them in more, I could.
It just seemed much simpler.
And it was.
Sure, it was more Photoshopping than usual… but it was fun!
I also did something else different.
Normally, I’d Photoshop it together and save it.
Then, bring it into Lightroom and color it.
Then bring it back into Photoshop to save it as a smaller files size.
However, this time I did everything in Photoshop.
I found a way to access all the same tools in Lightroom… in Photoshop.
So, I did it all in Photoshop.
Plus, I switched to using camera RAW files, and those can only be edited in Photoshop.
So, haven’t really be using Lightroom…. At all.
Oh well.
For the coloring, I didn’t go too extreme.
Just a little boost in saturation.
COMPARE!!
This one is comparing the main Photoshop edits.

Hover your mouse (the computer one :-P) over the original picture to see the after editing one.
If you're on a touchscreen device, just tap on the picture. You may have to tap more than once.

And then this one is comparing the color edits.

And this one compares...EVERYTHING!

Let's try the Image Slider for a split comparison.
It will compare ALL changes, as well.
CLICK and DRAG the BLUE BAR around to get our own split image.
Or, you can use these presets.
Before FULL, After FULL, 50/50, Before a QUARTER, or After a QUARTER.

Before

After

ONTO THE VIDEO!
This video is long as usual.
I recorded a bunch of cool videos and I didn’t want to cut anything out.
Sorry.
I was playing with the new lens for my camera.
I was getting super macro shots of ants and whatnot.
Those are key things in this video…
Cottonwood fuzz and ants.
Those things kept appearing throughout the video.
You can CLICK HERE to see the video or watch it below.

Don’t worry, the next video should be short.
It’s mostly going to be about the Summer class trip.
However, there will be a few things at the beginning of the video that I cut out of this one.
Yes, I cut things out… yet the videos are still really long.
It was 3 hours unedited.
ANYWAYS!
I’m going to go!
COME BACK WEDNESDAY!!!