Print advertisements really have come a long way over the years.  Here are a bunch that I’ve found recently that are very inspirational.  Some of these even have an inspirational message, in addition to being visually inspiring.

How true is this?  We need to choose our words very wisely when speaking to children; especially our own kids.  Sticks and stones break bones, but you can stifle a child with harsh words.

Got fish breath?  Then you need some Clorets!  This is such a great ad, with lots of copy space. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Friday PHOBAR day again. The youtube video “The Perfect Lie” is another example of a retouching transformation using Adobe Photoshop.

Here are five great retouching examples showing people that have been Photoshopped beyond all recognition (PHOBAR).  Some of them transformed the entire face, while others went nuts on changing the body using the liquify tools.  These pixel pushers did an amazing job – credits noted below each image.  Digital manipulation at its finest!  Some of these are more extreme makeovers than others, but all here are really well done examples of photo retouching and “digital airbrushing”.

Before and after by ~silverpaw98 Read the rest of this entry »

The creative imagery of Carlos Caetano has always amazed and inspired me, ever since beginning my journey as a stock photographer.  Born in the sixties, Carlos Caetano started and developed his career as a graphic designer in studios and advertising agencies. He stood a few years in a magazine and multimedia publishing house and, later, worked as web designer in a major internet portal in Portugal. Self-taught, Carlos took advantage of his privileged access to the digital graphics tools and specialized in the use of Photoshop for image post-processing and optimization.

Being a photo enthusiast since a very early age, Carlos took a course in professional photography between 1994 and 1997. Today, he works as a freelance graphic designer and photographer and is a contributor of stock imagery to several online image banks. The royalty free stock photos that he creates can be bought and downloaded by designers that use them in various marketing and advertising products, books, blogs, or editorial pieces.

Carlos Caetano is a “Pentaxian” and actually uses a Pentax K10D DSLR, several Pentax and Sigma lenses and Manfrotto tripods. When not outdoors shooting landscapes, he is at home, busy with tabletop shoots of objects in his improvised studio: the dining-room table next to a big, luminous window, and a piece of white paper or styrofoam to bounce light into the shadows. This is all he needs as studio gear, allied with his Photoshop skills.  His images can be found for sale on stock photography sites such as Shutterstock.com,  istockphoto.com,  dreamstime.com,  fotolia.com,  bigstockphoto.com,  and several others. He is available for photographic assignments, photo post-processing and manipulation.

To contact Carlos or to view more of his work, check out:
ccaetano.com
picsweep.blogspot.com
facebook.com/ccaetano

Would you like your work to be featured on the Arena Creative blog?  Whether you are a photographer or a graphic designer, if you have something creative to share we would love to feature your work!  Contact us if you are interested.

Recently I was in the mood to create something a little wild in Photoshop that I could also license as a royalty free stock photo.  I’m not the visionary type that can just get ideas in my head, and then go run and shoot all of the separate pieces.  I’m more of the type that shoots a lot of “stuff”, browses through it all, and realizes later (sometimes accidentally) which elements might play nicely together.  So, I started with a shot from my own photo library of a few little kids running. They were the son and daughter of some friends of mine, and I got a shot of them running through the park during a family photoshoot I did for them about a year ago. When I was in NYC recently, I caught a crazy shot of the traffic driving across the Brooklyn Bridge, with a slight gap in the traffic. I was standing above the highway on the foot path, and shot it at a slight angle so that it looks a bit more candid.  What was the result? Here it is!

The original kids shot:

The final:

The shadows were a bit tricky, but I got them right.  The size and skew angle of the children was probably the most difficult part.

It’s so much fun when you realize that you can combine multiple photo pieces to create and entirely new and different composition. Gotta love it!  The parents and kids got a kick of of it, and laughed their heads off on seeing this final result   That’s about as good as it gets.

Now why would someone want to use this photo?  Why bother going through all of the trouble to compose such an image?  Why not?  First of all, I had fun doing it.  Even if I don’t make a dime from the photo, that right there was worth it.  But unfortunately, homeboy has to pay the bills.  If my wife thought I messed around all day on the computer creating “fun” photos that I couldn’t sell, she probably might not be very pleased with me.  How might someone put this final image of kids running through highway traffic to good use in an advertisement or magazine article? I was thinking it might apply to childhood behavior concepts; perhaps even hyperactivity or ADHD.  Wild kids, kids gone wild, or other topics of that nature.  What about the location?  It’s New York City, and we all know that NYC is one of the most visited cities in the entire world.  Maybe an article about family friendly vacations to the Big Apple might find a nice use for this hilarious photo.  In the end, it can be applied to a number of different concepts.  Safety, behavior, travel, parenting, and more.

Image keywords: add, ADHD, bad, boy, Bridge, Brooklyn, brother, cars, Chase, chases, chasing, Children, control, crazy, Danger, dangerous, excited, freeway, Fun, funny, Girl, Happy, highway, hyper, hysterical, Kid, Kids, loose, misbehaved, misbehaving, mischievous, motorway, out, playing, plays, running, siblings, Sister, smiling, Street, tag, teen, together, Traffic, uncontrolled, undisciplined, unsafe, wild, young, youth