The first time I drove past it, I thought to myself, “I should take a picture of this.”
The second time I drove past it, I thought to myself, “I’m going to take a picture of this.”
The third time I drove past it, I said, “Damn I wish I had my cameras in the car.”
The fourth time I drove past it, I said, “Hey wait a minute… I DO have my cameras in the car.”
BRAKES!!!
There’s a dilapidated old gas station / car wash in Whitehall, New York, near the Vermont border. I thought it would make for a great picture, maybe for a future competition. I had a couple of film cameras in the car, including a roll of splitfilm (two rolls of film in one camera) that was crammed into my Kodak Brownie Bulls-Eye.
Normally, I would shoot “splitfilm” with my 616 Agfa Chief shooter, but that often involves having to tape down every inch of the 35mm film into the 616 film, and that can be a pain. I was experimenting with the idea of using the Bull’s-Eye camera to replicate this splitfilm process.
After I got the film home and developed, I scanned both strips of film into my computer. But instead of finagling with it in my old Corel software, I decided to use this moment as a “teaching opportunity,” and create the splitfilm results in Photoshop CS6.
Gotta dive in somehow.
And in doing so, I figured out – well, with the help of a couple of YouTube tutorials – how to not only layer the 35mm scanned film onto the 120 scanned film, but also to tilt the 35mm layer so that the sprocket holes lined up properly with the building’s signage.
Ha. That’s kinda funny. The sign should read CAR WASH, but the W must have fallen off at some point, leaving the sign as CAR WASH. Fun fun stuff. I gotta think that the only thing that would get washed in that place would be the cobwebs and the weeds.
The image itself isn’t the greatest, but it does give me an opportunity to actually play with Photoshop and figure out how to do the things I’ve previously done with CorelDraw 9 and Corel Photo-Paint 9.
And the more I work with this… the more proficient I can be with this.
All suggestions for future tweaks with Photoshop would be greatly appreciated.
Chuck The Writer 
Chuck,
Don’t know Corel at all, so you may already know this, but I think the most important things to learn in Photoshop are how to work with layers and masks (you should never be modifying your original data at all, only the overlay layers). Try going to Layers –> New Adjustment Layer –> Levels (or maybe hue/saturation), play with the adjustments a bit, then create a mask (one of the buttons at the bottom of the layers window), and practice painting the effects on and off the image (select the mask, and then use a white paintbrush to add the effect, a black brush to remove). Also, tools that are particularly useful to learn early on are the clone stamp and the healing brush. Sorry if you already know most or all of that, but if not it’s a place to start. Good luck.
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Bob – thanks much, all suggestions are greatly appreciated. Of all the things that came with my copy of Photoshop CS6, the one thing it didn’t seem to include WAS A PHOTOSHOP FOR DUMMIES BOOK!!!!
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There are a ton of books out there, but I pretty much learned it by playing with it and trial and error. Once you get the basics, the occasional online tutorial to learn techniques, or the occasional “how to” book are definitely helpful. I’m usually not patient enough to learn photoshop techniques from books, but I did enjoy and find this one useful: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/024081259X/ref=wms_ohs_product
Your post inspired me to try to make a split film image myself. I’m all-digital though, so it had to be entirely out of camera (scanner, digital image, and Photoshop). It ended up looking pretty good – check it out
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Bob – Very impressive. Good job.
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Thanks – I’m entering it in a “Connecticut Fairs” photo contest next month. If it wins, maybe I’ll cut you in on the big $15 prize for your inspiration… 😉
It’s still much cooler to do it the “real” way, though, IMO.
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