One of the things I miss in the iPhone is a variable aperture. This allows for the relative isolation of a subject by soft focusing the rest of the image not in the same focal plane as the primary point focus. This is also accomplished using swings and tilts in a view camera, but I digress..

Last time we were in England, we went to Stratford-Upon-Avon. This tree was in the garden of (I believe) Shakespeare’s sisters house . Since I love animal forms where there aren’t any animals, I shot this both with my Canon 5D MII and with my iPhone. I find I do this frequently, so when ever I get a break since I can easily review and play with the iPhone images, putting what I’ve found to use later on in the 5D images.

The original image showed great promise, even without the Real Ale I had been consuming.

A growth springing from a tree takes the shape of a being escaping from the core of the tree

The being needs to be separated more from the surrounding tree to give it emphasis and a sense of movement. I carefully outlined the being in BigLens on an iPad, because doing it on the iPhone seemed crazy after a few Real Ales. The result achieved my desires but is far too obvious for my tastes.

A growth springing from a tree takes the shape of a being escaping from the core of the tree made more obvious by blurring the surrounding image using BigLens

I loaded the origional image into Blender, on the left side and the BigLens’ed image on the right and moved the pointer back and forth a bit. I was pleased that I immediately saw the result I was seeking.

A growth springing from a tree takes the shape of a being escaping from the core of the tree made more natural by blending the original with the BigLens image using Blender.

Now there are some things I have learned since doing this.
a. Real Ale really helps image realization.
b. I should have edited off the side branches on the BigLens image to remove the smear around them in the final image.
c. When using Blender, I always load the target image on the left and the modifier on the right. It’s just easier to remember when you’re doing multiple blends
d. English people don’t seem to notice people editing images in pubs, especially if they cheer the local team occasionally and drink Real Ale.

I believe the next entry will be about using this technique in portraits. Have a great day and see you then.