I dabble a bit in photography, something I’ve always found to be fun. I don’t (yet) have the fancy cameras, but I still like to do it. I think, especially being an artist and a graphic designer, I have a decent eye for composition.
I also like dabbling with duotones when I’m working with photos. Full color is fun, but I really like altering the perception of an image based solely on it’s color. If you aren’t familiar with the idea, images can be (and this is really simplifying things) full color, grayscale (“black and white” to most people), and toned. “duotoned” as in two colors, “tritone” as in three colors, and so on.
To duotone something (and I just call it duotoning, your mileage, as my friend says, may vary), you take either a grayscale photo or a color photo that you’ve removed the color from, and add only one other color to enhance the black.
For example, here’s a photo that I duotoned. It uses the first color of black, and the second color of a sort of rusty/orangey color:
You get a certain emotion, a certain feeling from this photo. I’m shooting for historical, maybe patriotic in a sense, but something different than the full color version. Here’s the full color version, and while I like it I think the duotone gives it something extra:
The color photo is a decent photo, and still dramatic (I think). But the duotone adds something else to it, something that’s not necessarily there in the full color original.
Here is another one that I duotoned using a different effect. In this case, the image is really two layers in Photoshop. One layer is a blue and black duotone, and the other is a yellow and black duotone. By laying one on top of the other, and using Photoshop’s blending modes and masking abilities, it looks like this:
I purposely left it a little flat, to give it a more “matte” effect. That’s the beauty of Photoshop, as I could easily have given it a more contrasted, harsher feel, and it would still add a great drama to it:
This feels more militaristic, like there’s a battle being fought (or about to be). I like that Photoshop can leave it up to the artist to covey what they want, in whatever method they feel.
All in all, I just like taking the photos. Here are a couple of others that I thought came out nicely.
Opinions, as always, are welcome.
