I was taking an evening Photoshop class at the TCC Visual Art Center in Olde Towne, Portsmouth, Virginia. I looked down High Street on the way back to my car. It had been raining, and the reflections caught my eye, so I whipped out my phone and grabbed a few shots. There wasn’t much color, but the lighting was perfect for black and white.

I had to fiddle around a bit more than usual during processing. First, I straightened the horizontals and verticals, then I cropped a little. After converting to black and white I made it look like it was shot on film. Finally, I increased the contrast to bring out the reflections on the brick sidewalk.

Inspiration can come at any moment, and I’m often inspired by everyday things. That was the case here.

I created this close-up of slotted spoons the other day. I saw the finished photo in my mind’s eye while doing the dishes and got out my phone. The processing is pretty straightforward: I rotated the image a little, cropped it a bit, and converted it to black and white to remove any color from the reflections.

This was for a Photoshop class assignment where I could only use my cellphone camera. I was running out of time and needed to find something that would look interesting enough to submit for a grade.

I found a wooden model of a very modern skyscraper and started shooting. I did everything I could think of to make the model look exciting, but the original images were all light wood, lines, and shapes that were, quite frankly, boring.

I started playing around with apps, desperately trying to create something I could turn in. I have no idea how many things I played around with before finding this filter, but it was exactly what I needed to create something out of nothing.