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How’s this for a tough assignment? Take at least four of the images at right (see images) and do something wonderful with them. All you have to work with is image-editing software, plug-ins, filters, and your own imagination. You can’t add any other photos. Those were the rules we laid out in the March issue when we announced Pop Photo’s Digital Wizard Contest.
With a $1,000 grand prize and wizardly honors at stake, 633 entries poured in from budding Merlins. From mutant sunflowers to rampaging gondoliers to beautiful, sublime winter scenes, we may have seen everything that can be done with these images (and more). What did we look for? Originality, technical proficiency, and an overall artistic vision.
It seems wizards do exist. (Click image to see larger view.)
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$1,000 Grand Prize Winner
Ironically enough, our digital wizard started out his project in a most undigital fashion—with pen and paper. Andrey Kasatsky, a 30-year-old professional ballet dancer from Cincinnati, Ohio, first sketched out his image on paper, basing his idea around a Fabergé Egg. Creating the shape of the vase with the Marquee tool, he then got to work in Adobe Photoshop 7. The gold look of the vase exterior involved a series of steps: Desaturate, Bevel And Emboss layer style, the Emboss filter, and a gold Overlay layer. “I wanted to do something completely different [from the other entries],” Kasatsky says.
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$300 First Prize Winner
Studying the original photos, Zhi Tao Wu noticed the two girls were looking at a cat. The 42-year-old chef from Macomb Township, Michigan, thought, “she shouldn’t be watching the cat, she should focus on a still life.” With Van Gogh’s painting in mind, Wu duplicated and changed the shape of each sunflower in Photoshop 7, then created the picture frame from the pattern on the Flatiron building. “For me, coming up with an idea is more important than doing the picture.”
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$200 Second Prize Winner
“If I’m going for a certain look, I’ll use the same tool,” says photographer Frank DiGiovanni, 31. He eschewed filters for his image, relying on layer and blending options in Photoshop 7 to create the final crystalline effect. The Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, resident used Hard Light on the tree for a contrasty, saturated look and Color Burn on the building to intensify colors. He then used Luminosity to silhouette the gondolier and make it “very eerie and black.” Vivid Light, on the girl and cat, completed the image.
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$150 Third Prize Winner
Once a champion Lego builder, 18-year-old Chris Mayernik has ample experience constructing elaborate pieces of art. From creating the wagon from scratch to adjusting shadows in the garden for realistic lighting, the Fairfax, Virginia, college student, an aspiring concept artist, spent more than 35 hours working, tweaking, and layering in Photoshop 7. The final image is testament to the power of the Paintbrush tool, one usually neglected in image-editing software.
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$100 Honorable Mention
As Photoshop 7 can often produce surreal results, Karen Grubb, a photo technician from DeKalb, Illinois, took her inspiration from the master of Surrealism, Salvador Dali himself. Her Persistence of Memory used nine of the original images, various filters including Twirl and Shear, hue adjustments, and perspective distortions. It abandoned reality altogether for an amusing take on a classic image.
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$100 Honorable Mention
“I wanted to develop a piece of artwork with humor,” says 35-year-old Ashburn, Virginia, resident Rebecca Karas. The techniques were simple: she selected the areas to combine with the Magnetic Lasso in Photoshop 7, then experimented with opacities and color tones for realistic merging. But the comical result—a disembodied, screaming pineapple head with a dapper hat—made this one a winner.
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