How Can I Do That?
- Christopher Neal
- Mar 30
- 3 min read
Most of my creativity begins with this simple question, how can I do that? Typically I will see an image that really catches my attention. A unique location or subject or process and I immediately try to figure out how I can capture something similar.
In fact my nightscape photography began exactly that way. I saw some images of the Milky Way online and started to wonder if I could get some shots of my own. Lately I've been feeling a bit stuck. The weather and work and baseball and life in general keep me from getting out to the places I want to shoot at the times I need to shoot.
When that happens I start looking for other types of photography to challenge myself. I've tried motorsports and portrait and pet and long exposure, you name it and I've either done it or looked at doing it.
Recently I've been spending a lot of time processing older images. Shots that didn't get a good look when I first took them or re-processing with some of the new tricks I've learned. This has put images in front of me that really don't have much going for them. The sky is bland or the foreground is too busy or there is no real color in them.
There are a lot of these shots in my catalog, I mean a lot. In 2022 and 2023 I captured over 120,000 images. Many of these are duplicates because they are stacked shots or time lapse but there are also thousands that just didn't work. I shot them because we were out on the beach fishing or watching sunset or sunrise or at the lake or who knows what else.
I finally figured out what to do with some of them and it came for that magic question, how can I do that? I have been following a French photographer, Thomas Fotomas on Instagram and he has a very unique style that is a combination of real images and digital art. For weeks now I have looked at his images trying to figure them out. They are beautiful and fascinating and I wanted to see if I could do it.
A deep dive on Youtube last night led me to a another photographer who had figure it out and posted several videos on how to do it. Andrew Lanxon showed me the way and after a few attempts with some of my images I finally got something I like. A fresh take on a shot of my youngest son and my 83 year old father fishing in the surf on the south end of Ocracoke Island on a beautiful October Sunday morning last year.
It's a fairly simple process of isolating the subjects and applying a motion blur to the rest of the image but it creates captivating photographs. I don't really like adding or subtracting or heavily manipulating photos but there is just something about this that appeals to me. It's a real image that has been turned into digital art.
I don't plan on going out to specifically capture images to be processed like this but it's nice to know that I have some options for some of those thousands of shots that seemed to go to waste. This is part of what keeps me going out. The learning and trying and failing and figuring out what others have done so I can put my own perspective on it.
If you're interested in learning to shoot nightscapes or post processing check out my YouTube Channel here. I'm also available for private coaching in the field or zoom sessions where we can work with your own images.
Please check out my available prints here.
The two photographers that inspired and help me are linked below. Please check them out.
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