Home › Forums › Shoot to Serve Assignments › VersePic Opportunity: Walking Wisely
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December 16, 2016 at 10:36 am #20512Benjamin HolmesModerator
A hearty hello to the Lenspiration Community! For Sharpening Character’s VersePics Bible Memory tool of the week, we are in need of an image to backdrop Proverbs 28:26.
“He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered.”Requester: Sharpening Character
Purpose: VersePics Bible Memory Tool (See http://www.sharpeningcharacter.com/versepics for more information, and to see examples of past VersePics)
Images Requested: The main keyword is “walketh wisely”, and the meaning of that part of the verse is that we will doubt our own heart’s judgment (as it is deceitful and wicked: Jeremiah 17:9) and listen to the wisdom of others, and especially to God’s. Couple of thoughts are someone or something guiding you, whether that’s a compass, an actual guide, or some maps. Along similar lines, a landscape photo of a dangerous path. It could be stepping stones across a river, or a small path along a gorge or cliff. These are some suggestions, so if you think you have an image that would go great with this verse, don’t hesitate to upload that here too!
Remuneration: Being a small organization of 4 guys that is self-funded, we cannot offer any payment at this time. Any submissions received would be regarded as a gift towards advancing the Kingdom of God, and helping others to memorize and meditate on His Word.
Terms: You are granting Sharpening Character (and our partner ministry Courageous Men of the Word) the right to use your image for VersePics (be it this verse, or another at a later date. If the latter, we will verify with you before use.) You also grant us the ability to fully and completely edit and Photoshop your photos. You continue to retain full rights to your submissions.
Priority: High
Deadline: 11:59 PM Eastern, Thursday, December 22th
Submission Notes: Please add your submissions as Attachments to your Replies. Please do not use links in the Reply, or add your submission directly in the Reply. You have the ability to upload 20 attachments (2MB or smaller) per Reply. You may make multiple Replies, but keep in mind that we only want to view your very best submissions. Please submit images that exceed 2666px wide by 2000px tall. If you submit a picture below these limits, specifically tell us in your reply so we can know beforehand. No watermarks, text, or any other image modifications please! We will credit you by your forum name with the Lenspiration Watermark in the final VersePic.
Contact: For questions, please email [email protected]
Can’t wait to see what you all come up with for this verse!
Ben
VersePics Director for Sharpening Character
December 22, 2016 at 9:49 pm #20547James StaddonKeymasterJanuary 2, 2017 at 11:00 am #20711Andrew StevensParticipantJust for a quick update, this opportunity is technically closed. Ben should be posting another update shortly.
-Andrew
Producer, Sharpening CharacterJanuary 3, 2017 at 6:01 pm #20715Benjamin HolmesModeratorHey Lenspiration! First, I want to apologize for it taking absolutely forever to finally post a reply to this Shoot to Serve Opportunity! It turns out having a busy schedule, extremely limited internet connections, as well as having your phone break (the internet connection!) all at once CAN result in some serious delays!
Once again, this time for lack of time at the internet, not lack of knowledge, I will be uploading the images separately. Sorry!
[Image 1]
John 1:14 in a Phone VP layoutBefore jumping right into this, well, I guess last week’s VersePic, I need to tell you a little bit of behind the scenes. I had been checking the STS forum since I posted it nearly twice a day, and as we got closer and closer to the deadline with nary a reply, I began to check my other sources for great photography anticipating no replies. I made one last check a few hours before the deadline Thursday, and still seeing no replies, called Andrew up, and after talking for a while, brought up the subject of the VP. Since we didn’t have any replies, and therefore no real commitment for the reference, we decided to switch it up a bit and do a last minute change to a new reference: John 1:14. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” The next morning, after I had created the VP, without really a reason, I checked the Lenspiration forum, and saw that James had posted a reply just a couple hours after I had done my “final” check! AAA!!! Since I had already created the John 1:14 VP though, we weren’t able to switch back… My sincerest apologies to you James! Hopefully I’ll be able to use those another time.
With that introduction, I finally get to jump into John 1:14! I found the background to this VP on Pixabay, one of my favorite sites. Pixabay is a royalty free stock photo site, where all of the pictures are free! They have a huge community of very professional photographers, and anyone can submit their photos to the site. (Just a word of warning however, as with any other site, and especially photo community sites, you need to be very careful. Each of our Internet filtering methods and standards are different, but you should be aware that this is a site that allows ANY type of photo to be submitted.) Pixabay.com is easily one of the greatest tools of my arsenal in creating the VersePics, with a huge selection of absolutely breathtaking photos that I’ve used in almost every VP since I began creating them. I thank God for allowing me to find this amazing resource!!!
[Image 2]
The original photoBefore I go on, you may be thinking “Really? What does snow have to do with THAT verse?” to which I would reply, listen to the corresponding episode on the podcast! Well, the photo was perfect, but less so the color… I didn’t really like that green, and I was feeling like I wanted a nice, subtle, icy blue. Thank goodness for Pixelmator!
[Image 3]
Pixelmator’s Hue and Saturation ToolPixelmator allows me great control over colors. There are seven menus to adjust color and saturation, with both a “general” color change that effects the entire photo, to finer hue color changes that effect only one color or hue in the photo. Each of these seven menus have a color wheel and brightness and saturation settings. As you can see from the photo, I’ve now changed the color of the photo to blue, while also making the color more subtle by decreasing saturation and brightness levels. I did different settings in the seven to get the effect I desired, but I only show the general menu here since you only can show one at a time.
With the color-change finished, I found myself not really liking the softness of the background, or more specifically, the lack of it. The background (versus the foreground of the snowflake) had too many details, especially in the upper right corner, and not enough blur. I fixed that detail using Pixelmator’s Selection tools and the Soften Tool.
[Image 4]
Softening in PixelmatorFirst off, notice the layers on the left. I have three layers here, with the top two in a group, and the bottom layer being the original image for reference. (Having the original open and right there can be so useful, and powerful when I’m trying to figure out how I want to make an edit comparatively, as well as figuring out whether some adjustments look better, or worse than the original photo.) I used Pixelmator’s powerful selection tools to select the background, and then duplicated it to the top layer. The foreground stays on the background meaning that I’m in no danger of softening the details that need to stay sharp! Any irregularities in softening or selection that I see can always be corrected by fine-tune softening the lower, complete layer. This is maybe a more time consuming method to just putting a foreground over a blurred photo, but this way I don’t get any ghosting, and I get to choose what and exactly where I get the extra blur. I did end up softening some specific parts of the foreground to help the focus of the image, but at least in my opinion, seeing those sharp edges on that snowflake make the extra care all worth it, and if you’ve seen the finished VP, you’ll know I zoomed in a ways, so not having any ghosting or accidental softening was important to me.
With all of the changes I wanted in Pixelmator finished, I moved on to Over.
[Image 5]
Adjustments in OverEven though Over primarily is focused on putting text on photos, it really isn’t a bad with basic photo editing, and I’ll often fine-tune a photo here after seeing what everything looks like with the text over the photo. That’s what ended up happening here. After a time of messing about with text and looking for a certain look, I decided to further decrease the saturation, and put just the teeniest bit of sharpness in for that snowflake. (4 out of 100) Because that snowflake was large, in focus, and pretty much the only thing in focus, it presented so many difficulties I hadn’t anticipated. If it at all went underneath the text, it looked horrible. If it went too close to the text, it look horrible. If not enough of it was showing, you got it, it looked horrible!!! This was very much an unforeseen difficulty! I solved the problem with a lot of tinkering, and an ounce of luck with finding what I think was the right solution. Since I was already zoomed in, or in other words was cropping out a lot of the photo, I could rotate the picture in addition to trying out soooo many size levels to align the snowflake up with the text just right so it didn’t look horrible! On reflection, that shouldn’t be your first thought when trying stuff out, but so many things were at that point that I was looking for anything that worked, and I think what I ended up with does, if not very well.
[Image 6]
Finally finished!!!Phew! With this VersePic out of the way, I now got to start working on the next one, which turned out to be John 4:35! HELP!!!
[Image 7]
Graphic design is a job never finished, and I seem to like it that way! That however, is an entirely different story, and one I won’t be talking about here! I want to extend an extra thank you to James Staddon for his excellent contributions, as well as an apology for not being able to use them!
May God bless you as we start a New Year in Him!
Ben
VersePics Director for Sharpening Character
January 3, 2017 at 6:02 pm #20716Benjamin HolmesModeratorJanuary 3, 2017 at 6:04 pm #20720Benjamin HolmesModeratorJanuary 7, 2017 at 10:00 pm #20741James StaddonKeymasterI am so glad you were able to come up with something for that verse! I absolutely LOVE the way you edited that snowflake photo. With New Year’s travel and all I was totally out of the loop ever after submitting those pictures, but I’ll be keeping my eye on the forums here again now.
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