My new and improved Blue Boy

My new and improved Blue Boy

Since I learned so much about using (and abusing) pictures in Corel Draw, Word, Corel Photo-Paint, and Corel PaintShop Pro during the 2011 December blogging challenge, I was recently asked if I wanted to become a more significant part of Russel Ray Photos along with Russel Ray, Eric Cooper, and Zoey the Cool Cat.

Hesitance....

When I visited Roy Kelley's blog yesterday evening, he had a post on Winterthur. That reminded me that I had a picture of the Blue Boy from the Huntington Library, Musem & Gardens in San Marino, California, east of Los Angeles.

The picture is huge, and I'm small, and flash photography is not allowed in the painting room, so my picture was washed out and dull, and you could tell that I was looking up at it:

I took that picture with a telephoto lens from as far back as the camera would let me so that the picture wasn't so distorted.

I knew there was a way to correct the distortion but didn't know where to begin, mainly because I didn't know what that type of distortion was called. While Eric was over here last night, I asked him about it, and it's called "perspective distortion." It's real easy to correct using Corel PaintShop Pro X4, so easy that after Eric showed me, I waited until he left and then tried it on my picture.

I should say that ever since I saw this painting when I was young — I used to do water colors and oil paintings, which my mom's home is full of — I've loved it, and I always wanted to see it in person. The picture above does not do it justice. However....

When I finished last night, I had a picture that does do it justice:

That's what it looks like to the human eye, which can adjust for low lighting, types of lighting, etc.

I'm so proud of myself. Russel Ray Photos? Sure, why not?

Roy likes to leave beautiful pictures with all his comments, so I was going to leave him a beautiful picture of Blue Boy this morning. When I went by his blog, he had another blog post about Winterthur (you really have to stop by and look at his beautiful pictures of the museum collection) and invited us to leave our favorite museum picture, so, of course, I left Blue Boy.

This is another example of what Eric likes to say: "What comes out of the camera is just the basics to start with." The camera cannot reproduce what the eye sees, but with something like Corel Paintshop Pro X4, you can make the picture real close to what your eye saw, or what you want other eyes to see.

By the way, you can catch Eric and his great photography tips and tricks over at our Russel Ray Photos WordPress blog. He did his first post yesterday evening, and I'm sure he'll have more today since I know what he and Russel were doing yesterday afternoon.

I'll be blogging soon at WordPress, too, possibly as early as tonight or tomorrow. I'll let everyone know when I have it set up.

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3. Out & About San Diego — Last 10 days to see the beckoning cats
4. Out & About San Diego — 2012's first home show, January 6-8
5. Back to business (I'm so happy the December blogging challenge is over)
6. A break with tradition: One million points. It is what it is.
7. Real estate news — San Diego home sales hold steady in November 2011
8. Real estate news — San Diego County median sales price holds steady in November 2011
9. Real estate news — S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index reports lower San Diego home prices in October 2011
10. 2011 December blogging challenge — Day 30: Business plan
11. San Diego Mission Valley condos for sale — Kensington Park Villas (December 30, 2011)
12. 2011 December blogging challenge — Day 29: Then I got bored
13. San Diego Mission Valley condos for sale — Mission Verde (December 28, 2011)
14. 2011 December blogging challenge — Day 28: If the teacher's not available, explore!
15. San Diego Mission Valley condos for sale — Mission Heights (December 27, 2011)