CD Covers

Painted Hand Ruin
©Joe Bridwell
Some of our Four Corners heritage springs from Ancient Anasazi habitations. The inset is Painted Hand ruin in sw Colorado. Anasazi inhabited the area from 700-1300 AD. Often, their protective towers sat atop a canyon wall, giving wide view.

Could such ruins help create a provocative CD cover and generate an appealing, marketing tool from a memorable Anasazi ruin?
Here is an original Anasazi tower near sunset. With some masking in Photoshop CS3, we simply created a circle with the elliptical marquee, clipped the ruin by making a white circular mask shaped like a CD, then used an arc to impose various semi-circular embossed texts to advertise workshop particulars.
Now, having ignored HDR during capture, I decided to enhance this capture using Lightroom. Two opposing dark-to-light gradients modified outer boundaries on nne and ssw azimuths, creating filters roughly parallel to the ruin's broken edge. The left gradient also sharpened and enhanced mid-tone clarity of the ruin. In effect, this choice of gradients focuses the viewer’s eye along the ruin's jagged edge, thence upward to our Lightroom 2 Workflow title in an upcoming Workshop. Then the eye can finally ascertain other information, should the viewer desire to explore farther.
An image like this, a CD Stomper, CDs, CD Cases, and Matte White Labels – and you’re prepared to supply Workshop CDs… or perhaps you prefer another way to get to a similar goal!

God's Hand

God’s Hand
©2006 Joe Bridwell, Chopawamsic LC
One day, the Bisti Badlands was under siege from a norther. The Bisti is northwest of Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico.
This rather unusual cloud formation caught my eye. I felt like God was saying, "In My House, there are many mansions..."
Later, I would recognize the complement between individual hoodoo towers acting like eroded fingers pointing up towards God's Hand – with it’s own beckoning fingers.
Nikon D70, 24-120 @ 34 mm, 1/30, f22, ISO 200.

Open for Business...

Pathways of Light is now accepting e-mail subscriptions for our digital photography blog. If you choose to become a PoL reader, you'll receive an e-mail for each blog we create.
Our passion is nature photography in those magical hours surrounding dawn and dusk in some of the gorgeous, wild country from our southwestern United States. From time to time, we will highlight an image, describe circumstances surrounding its capture, indicate something about its processing, and what gear created it.
We'll also be discussing digital photography, fine art, Photoshop, gear, blog creation, blog management, marketing, books, workshops, tours, and other items which appeal to us as time goes by...

We welcome your comments as this blog grows! There's an old saying, "There's 10 different ways to do the same thing in Photoshop!" That might be followed up with, "There are many workflow procedures; may be each photographer doesn't need to reinvent the wheel." While we've learned some of these concepts, we expect you know others. We hope your comments will help us to continue to grow _ and_ that, in turn, we can help you grow...

"Whoever Loved, That Love Not at First Sight?"

"Whoever Loved, That Love Not at First Sight?" Marlowe, 1595~(Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 3, Sc. 5 ~ 1600). Paraphrased centuries later "... at First Light!"

My passion is provocative light on nature's gorgeous landscapes. I love Magic Hour when 'Light, Not Objects, Is the Source of Color.' Naturally, dawn, daytime, and dusk show very different characters; find the right light, pose the right landscape, and Luck will ride your shoulder in beauty.

Lavender Dawn, an award-winning image of White Sands, seems appropriate as the first image to carry our theme and illustrate Newton’s observation about 'light as the source of color.'

Actually, Marlowe wrote:
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

It's as if Marlowe knew digital cameras were on a rather distant horizon. Today's literal translations might be
"Deliberate - learn your equipment, learn your digital imaging environment (Lightroom and Photoshop), learn how to think Photoshop when you shoot…
"First Light - then go shoot when and where Lady Luck abides."

Our blog, Pathways of Light, is an effort to describe all aspects of Marlowe's famous line ~ just in terms of digital and fine art photography of nature.
We discuss happenings in the digital world.
We show you fine art photography in our book Paths of Light.
We teach you how to use Photoshop in Capturing Nature's Light, we show you presentation styles, and we discuss paths to turning your images into award-winning memories.
Anasazi Adventures is a Magic Hour Four Corners digital tour where we practice what we preach ~ shoot at dawn / dusk then midday discuss how you can turn your images into award-winners. Here, we take Pathways to new heights; we get out in the real wilderness with a camera to capture Pathways of Light!
When not otherwise occupied, we simply discuss other things that also interest us...

Reward yourself! Dance through our Fine Art Galleries. Look at limited examples from our book, workflow, and workshops. Take Pathways with us on tours to ancient Anasazi lands...