A night in Paris and meet the Artist – Serge Ramelli

“An artist who stops making art is committing suicide. Get off the couch and start painting again.” – Ramandeep Singh

I noticed that quote today in my Facebook stream from a fellow photog/creative here in South Florida. Her amazing work is right here.

Hits home for me as around this time of year. It’s easy to get swept up in the day to day responsibilities and thus, robbing yourself of the gift of enjoying your art (whatever that is for you). Like anything that means alot to you, you have to carve out the time right?

I played a bit with this one tonight. I’ve been inspired by Serge and a few of his processes. More about him in a few.

There are many ways to process HDR images and like I said, I have been experimenting. This one was created from the archives. Just before turning in during my last night in Paris, I stopped here and clicked off a few. After processing with Photomatix, I was like…eeehh, not happening. Just seemed a little too grungy. I then tried the “Merge to HDR Pro” right in photoshop CC. Man, has THAT algorithm has come a long way! I’ll do a video on that soon, but the latest version of CC gives you the option of going right to camera raw to tone it. Very cool. I then painted in a sky texture, refined with Lightroom, and painted with the new radial filters to add a few pools of light here and there. Thanks for the tips Serge!

Of course, this is all Greek to those who read this blog for the non geeky stuff, so sorry for the boring details!

So who is this Serge you speak of Michael?

Meet the Artist – Serge Ramelli (aka, PhotoSerge.com)

Imagine living in Paris AND working as a photographer. Seems like a dream to me. City of light, amazing architecture, delicious food, and a central hub of all the best in Europe …. whats not to like? Having been there a few times myself, its one of those places I always dream of returning to.

Whoops, getting off track here….

I was first introduced to Serge and his work by Scott Kelby during a guest blog post I believe. In addition to his amazing images, he is also a gifted teacher and presenter. I have taken a couple of his courses and actually, applied a couple of his techniques on the image above. He shares his gift regulalry on his Youtube Channel here. For those who want to take a deeper dive, he has a few tutorials on his site as well.

Here is a quick video below of him sharing one of his workflows.

Enjoy, and thanks for your art Serge!