Day 37: Addiction Confirmed

OK, I really must admit my addiction to making kaleidoscopes now. I spent several hours today playing with ScopeWorks and so far I made nearly 100 kaleidoscopes. Read on to see a few samples.

One of the photos I used as a base for more than 50 of today’s images was a picture I took of a large rock. I didn’t think it would provide much in the way of color or contrast. Man, was I wrong!

I mean, here’s the first one I made. Kinda blah. (This is straight out of the camera, and into ScopeWorks, then into PhotoShop just to add the watermark. No resizing, no editing – notice the jaggies at the edge of the black background – no cropping or color correcting.)

But I figured it was ok, and maybe I could use it for something someday.

Imagine my surprise when this turned up:

“Hey, where’d that greenish bit come from?” I checked, and sure enough, there was a little bit of green on the rock. So I saved this, and turned the animation back on.

Next up, was this one:

“Hmmmm… there’s a lot more color and contrast here than I thought!” So, again, I saved this and turned the animation back on. Again. And again. And again.

And again.

Here are just a few more of my favorites from today’s playtime:

The five images above were saved at a higher resolution, so I did have to shrink them down for posting here. Otherwise, no corrections or other tweaking besides adding the watermark. Pretty cool, huh?

You may have noticed that none of the images have a point facing straight up/down or left/right. The way this software works, it sets the end of the triangle flat at the top (or bottom; not sure which) of the kaleidoscope, then reflects around the circle. Although these have 12 points, there are actually 24 “petals”, which alternate mirrors, so it gives the impression of 12 points. Anyway, I didn’t bother to turn any of these so the points or other elements of the images pointed in any specific direction. Nor did I bother with tweaking any of the layers for color or value, or anything else. I’ll save that for later. Who knows what I might come up with tomorrow? Besides, I have plans for some of these! 😉