Playing with Photo Manipulation to Create New Designs, Multimedia Content

Lately, I have been finding different images I took over the years in different places I lived or visited during my travels and updated the photography section of the site, like my last blog post and update here suggested. However, due to the fact that post started to feel overwhelming in the amount of images, illustrations and graphics I have added to it, I feel it is time to make a new post.

Oftentimes, I start with a simple photograph and use assets from it to combine with other digital work or graphic design to create unique visual content. A photograph can really be brought alive or changed via software digitally.

Keep in mind that besides photo manipulation and digital photography, I also ended up digitizing and making full screen (1080p) old hand drawings or illustrations and adding effects to them in my last post. So it is is also worth checking out for this fact alone. However, below you will see more photography-focused work including fixed and manipulations I have been working on to draw new ideas and inspirations from.

I also have added and updated various resumes to this site for any employers or anyone interested in hiring a freelancer can check out. Although my education and specialty is writing, journalism, tech blogging, technical writing and the like I am a creative person. This means I can do other digital media work for you or your brand or myself I continue to do to showcase my skills and as a hobby. I also enjoy combining different digital endeavors to create things like infographics, bringing old photography to life, creating new ideas no one really does in terms of graphic design, combining traditional oil or soft pastels with digital enhancements, creating multimedia articles or resume fixes with images added, and more.

Speaking of resumes, I have created a digital and visual-based resume or CV — related to copywriting, technical writing or journalism — that you can see below using my assets and also found my old graphic design resume/CV I uploaded below it:

I can also do resume/CV editing, fixing or even creating ones from scratch for people who need this work (including proof reading or editing or even adding certain catchy SEO keywords to a resume) as that is something I have done before for friends and acquaintances. I also am looking for any sort of work right now, whether freelance, full time or in house or remote.

With that said here is my recent photography work in terms of photo manipulation, photo enhancement, and even photography turned into graphic design.

The first photograph below is that of a face done in mosaic or fresco (not an expert on tiling or such art styles) flooring within the main cathedral inside the Vatican, in Rome, Italy. I took the photo while on a trip to the cathedral. I changed it a bit digitally to enhance it from the raw photograph:

My revisions:

Another image from the same chapel if I recall right:

Gdansk, Poland:

Urban landscape at Warsaw, Poland:

Monument in Lisbon, Portugal:

Malta:

Caves near salt lake and Roman structures in Israel I was at:

Warsaw army day and plane show:

Strange clouds forming while I was on a beach in the Maldives:

Monument in Warsaw dedicated to the Warsaw Uprising. It shows soldiers or partisans going into the famous tunnels that they used for movement within different parts of the city:

The above image had some curves or shadows and contrast added, but was pretty bare bones from the original photo I took in Warsaw of the monument of the fighters of the Warsaw uprising. As you see in the monument, they used to get into the Warsaw tunnels as they fought the Germans around the city. I used to live in Warsaw a few years ago, but am currently in Lodz. However, I then made this version seem as if it was taken at night, but it wasn’t and changed the color of the rock or building block making up the overall monument and its figures:

I then decided to play with it a big more and used this graphic arts software tool called edge detect to reverse the colors or make it black and white, thus more artistic or hand drawn in nature:

However, I noticed the face of the soldier standing and in the background is not fully formed despite me liking the overall effect this gave it. So I fixed it myself below using a combination of mirroring the other side of the face and the clone tool:

I sort of like this version less defined of the face I also created with some experimentation, or left side of the face, because of how dithered it looks, as if the mural, or rock it is made out of, is old and falling off it:

Worked on it a bit more:

Here is another example of me fixing an image that looked good and was taken well (by me) in terms of the overall composition, but a part of it was blurry or my finger blocked some of the camera exposure or who knows the reason it turned out the way it did. This image was taken in Algarve, Portugal on a kayaking trip:

Here is me fixing this image and making it also sharper and more visually pleasing in terms of colors or saturation:

Here is a photograph I turned into graphic design by adding birds to it and later turning it into pixel art. I further worked on it turning it back into a digital image, but keeping some aspects of it as pixel art. What was left to create something completely unique and almost video gaming like. The image was taken at a small swamp and lake area in Warsaw, Poland:

I also would like to add that in some of the images you will see below or graphics that I created based on this idea of the photograph, I used the mask tool to combine photos/images some pixel art and some with a gaussian blur of the original image. Also, notice that I also had to get rid of that little line on the bottom that I forgot how I even got on there, maybe from taking a screenshot of the original image somewhere still located within my photos library, who knows:

I combined the above with one of the Portugese photographs or what I created out of it below:

Another example of a simple photo turned into more elaborate graphic arts — I took this one from a plane to the Canary Islands:

A picture of a bird I took in a beachside town of Stegna Poland. The second image I used gaussian blur to make the background less relevant and the focus of the image and viewer more on the bird:

Below is an image of old town Warsaw (enhanced slightly from the original version) where I used to live and a version with a different hue or color and saturation below it I created. Finally I combined aspects of both into a third image below them as you see below:

Here is a photo I took on a trip to Portugal (forgot exact location or town) that has a great use of clouds, ocean and overall scenery layout. I then digitized it and enhance dit via software. However, some artifacts formed due to me lowering the resolution or pixels shown as I wanted to fit it in under 300kbs or so to put in the photography section of this site. Thus, I used the brush tool and a soft airbrush to get rid of a lot of the artifacts present. I also came up with some interesting color differences or hues when playing with the image:

Below is an original photo I took of the Vistula river in Warsaw and me enhancing it digitally as well as changing up the color hues and making it seem more dark or like it was taken during the night than when I took the photo. You may notice some fishing rods or fishermen present within the photo and no those were not surfers in the background, I actually forgot what they were holding although it does look like surf boards at a glance:

An image I took off a boat cruise in Malta:

London, England:

Me taking a picture from a rooftop at a hotel in Tel Aviv, Israel:

Notice the strange artifact where the clouds and sky are within the top-middle portion of the photograph. I fixed this in software using smudge tools and also added some color and liveliness to it:

Here are some different manipulations I created using a combination of masks and different images of the same photographed changed with things like gaussian blur to put the focus on the bug (I think it was a ladybug) on the rock – I also had to recreate the antennae as it was so thin or barely visible and blending with the background to make them appear more visible:

Some seaside images or graphic designs (mostly monochrome) I created out of a photo I took of the baltic coast of Poland at a town called Stegna:

Botanic Garden in Lodz, poland:

Downtown Warsaw, Poland showing the famous fake palm tree:

Lodz, Poland

Me taking a picture of a street reminding me of San Francisco in either Lisbon or Porto Portugal:

There ya go. As you can see I have a lot of good photographs I took over the years from various places I traveled to and of various things occurring within the photos. I enjoy taking pictures of beautiful scenery in particular, such as the ocean, lake or sea. I also enjoy manipulating these photos and turning them into completely different ideas or works of visual design. Photo manipulation and multimedia photo creation using various digital assets I have accumulated over the years is both a hobby and a way to showcase my skills, but a potential way to earn a rupee as well as I am always open to new assignments.