Notes on my Bush St Photo Painting series

My Bush Street Photo Painting series was started earlier this year, and then I worked on it again more recently. It was conceived when after so many walks down Bush St and in my neighborhood at night, I fell in love with its ambience after dark - quietly alive with its neon, lights, traffic and general evening hustle and bustle.

Since I have often had my camera with me on night walks, I have often tried getting some decent night shots. This is generally a task of trying various exposures to try to preserve details in the lights, yet also capture detail in the dark as well. Then I take my best shots and work them up in Photoshop to repair poor areas of the image, and adjust to what I saw in my mind's eye while in the location. I then use my painterly filter on the image and adjust that, my goal being to smooth pixels and simplify details in the image to give a painterly effect. Some detail, but not too much detail is my preference. Voila! You have a photo painting.