Hotel California

My creative process is slow and unpredictable, with only a direction in mind,  which is to begin. Sometimes a month or more will pass from the time I take a photo and I find an idea to play off of it. Such is the case with some midnight long exposure shots of clouds I captured while visiting the Gulf Of Mexico at Fort Walton, Florida in June. While walking on the beach during the morning hours I was fascinated to see some smaller condos that looked out-of-place among the larger concrete cities. They had plenty of character as well that I used Topaz Impression to accentuate.

This architectural oddity ended up being the shrunk down focal point for a faux reflection shot below. Looking out our condo balcony at midnight, from a concrete city mentioned above :), you cannot see clouds with the naked eye. With a long exposure of about 20-25 seconds, the night sky becomes alive. Add in some blended and rotated layering of the clouds for good measure to !

Of course I cannot leave things as they are, I went on to give the character laden condo more focus. Adding two more layers of it and then giving some perspective warp to fill up the screen. After seeing the wooden entry near the middle, I re-positioned the middle section to fit better in the center, you know, to give it a welcoming look as this is Hotel California ! To get the color in the condo took blending in a luminosity layer and then using more Topaz Impression and Glow for texture. At last I wanted to give the color cross-section some separation from the background, so I blended in B&W from another edit to the mix.

Here’s to the next discovery of an imaginary world !

Cheers,

Jamie