Philodendrons Gone Wild

I went out in the yard and took pictures of my plants as Isaac was rumored to be a threat to Florida. They always seem dearer to me at the thought of their possible destruction. I have two large leaf philodendrons that are at least 36 years old and they have extended themselves many feet into the yard from their initial corners. I love the "eyes" and decided to play with the most recent picture of them. Although it's not a great photo I wanted to see what I could do with it to create an image.

After about an hour in Photoshop, I had a moderately successful photo that I gave a formal treatment to, shown below.

Then, I tried experimenting with doubling the image to look like a reflection. That didn't work. But, a face appeared when I doubled the image and so I changed to a vertical format and played around with aligning the mirrored view until it looked quite menacing. After another hour of playing with custom brushes and patterns in Photoshop, Zarathustra came to mind. It's a long way from my sprawling philodendron. But I thoroughly enjoy the process of playing with Photoshop, and going a little wild with it.

I've been using CS3 for quite a while now, but have just committed to CS6 and the Creative Cloud. As soon as I get a laptop capable of running it all, I will probably never stop playing. And I'm glad Isaac has passed us by!