Large Yellow Wildflowers 3, 4, and 5Flores Silvestres Grandes y Amarillas 3, 4 y 5

Here are the next three in the large yellow wildflower series of the beautiful large sunflower-like flowers which started blooming around the first of October in the now-naturalized park in northern Mexico City.  This just shows you how important it is to visit natural and nature-taken-over areas frequently because the changes can be huge. It is hard to imagine that it is the same place where I took my Agave photos in the winter.  It looked so desolate then, but now at the end of the rainy season it is just full of green foliage and flowers.

Large Yellow Wildflowers 3

Large Yellow Wildflowers 3 by Christopher Johnson

Large Yellow Wildflowers 4

Large Yellow Wildflowers 4 by Christopher Johnson

Large Yellow Wildflowers 5

Large Yellow Wildflowers 5 by Christopher Johnson

Pink Wildflowers 1Flores Silvestres Rosas 1

I took photos of several wildflowers blooming in the nearby (about 5-6 blocks) park a couple weeks ago when walking to the tianguis. Unfortunately I dropped one of my bags (bolsas de mandado) on the way there so I had to put all my vegetables in the other one which made it extra heavy.

I fixed the lighting as best I could and made the background painterly. I think I sharpened it some too. I really am good at forgetting what I do. I don't want each floral artwork to look like the one before.

Pink Wildflowers 1

Pink Wildflowers 1 Antiqued

Jorge 1 PortraitJorge 1 Retrato

Jorge, Jonathan's father posed for me for a couple minutes at the party on Sunday. It was the first time that I've taken his photo so he looked a little nervous. I hope he likes it. I'm really happy with both the color and antiqued versions of his portrait. The only difficulty was deciding how many wrinkles to keep and how many to get rid of. They can make a man look distinguished or old. I'm hoping you'll find him more distinguished.

Jorge 1 Portrait

Jorge 1 Antiqued Portrait

Genaro 1 - PortraitGenaro 1 - Retrato

Genaro is a young man and he loves to sing and dance however I wanted to give him a more serious dignified look in his portrait. He is wearing a white polo shirt and eyeglasses. I made three different versions, normal color, color with sepia, and antiqued: black and white with sepia.

Genaro 1 - Portrait

Genaro 1 Sepia - Portrait

Genaro 1 Antiqued - Portrait

Jonathan 2 - Portrait Jonathan 2 - Retrato

I did this second portrait of Jonathan in three different versions, one "regular", one with sepia on color, and the other is my antiqued style which is black and white with sepia among other changes.  My favorite is the portrait with a sepia cast over the color.

Jonathan 2 - Portrait

Jonathan 2 Sepia - Portrait

Jonathan 2 Antiqued - Portrait

Jonathan 1 - PortraitJonathan 1 - Retrato

Gerardo brought his brother (ok, half brother) over to visit yesterday so I took the opportunity to ask him to pose for some quick photos to make his portrait.

If you live in Mexico City, you can make an appointment to stop by and have me take your photo for a portrait or you can send me high resolution photos to use (contact me on Facebook or Twitter for my e-mail address).

Here is the first in the Jonathan series which is a close up of his face. I tried to keep it simple.

Jonathan 1 - Portrait

Estoy disponible para hacer retratos digitales. Si te encuentres en México D.F. o en el Estado de México, haz una cita para tomar tu fotos.

Gerardo 3 Portrait

Yesterday afternoon I did another photo shoot with Gerardo. I got some great photos in the the late afternoon light filtering through this tiny house's third floor window. His face was a mix of light and subtle shadow. I was up until about 2:30 am working on this portrait. I hope to get 1-2 more from yesterday's photographs.  Since you are wondering, yes, his hair is shorter.

Gerardo 3

In this portrait he is curious or surprised about something I said so his eyes are extra wide open!

Pilar 1 Artistic Portrait with Effects

Pilar 1 Artistic Portrait with Effects - Finished!

You'll see the simple version of my portrait of Pilar, my neighbor, in my previous post. Here is my finished, complete version. I hope you like it.



I applied quite a few effects and filters each in its own layer. I used dodge on her eyes and burn on her shirt and quite a few other little details including changing the setting of clone stamp to lighten or darken, or change the percent of burn to almost nothing...