A Smudge Painting of Me by Pat Thompson

In my last blog I wrote about how Flickr has enabled photographers and artists to collaborate and share images through the liberal Creative Commons Attribution license used on Flickr.
During one of our breakfast mornings Mike Baird, my friend and photo partner and I were talking that neither of us had nice head shots of ourselves that we could used as image ID’s in blog’s, group sites, like Flickr and others. So we decided to put a poll together on our Yahoo Photomorrobay Group to see if other photographers were also interested in head shots of themselves. There proved to be much interest in the idea so we set a date and decided we would do a pre-event walk-around to determine the best time of day and locations in Cloisters City Park. We took turns photographing each other in different poses, moods and locations and then posted our results on our Flickr sites. While none of the images I posted that day of Mike were use by anyone, one of the images Mike took of me was picked up by a very talented artist by the name of Pat Thompson. Pat was free to use Mike’s image of me through the liberal Creative Commons Attribution license that Mike has chosen to use for all of his images. Mike believes that an image not shared is an image never taken . When Pat Thompson finished his work on the image he contacted Mike making him aware of his work , freely sharing his artistic renditions of me with Mike and myself.
Sorry to be so long winded but I felt this story was pertinent as to how this image came to be, you never know when you push that shutter button who, where, when or how that shot will be used.

The top image is the smudge painting Pat Thompson’s magic pen created of me. Pat uses his computer screen as his canvas and may use digital image processing software from companies like Abobe’s Photoshop, NIK Software, Topaz Suite and others to brush his visions into a piece of art. Pat’s talents have created a vast website of the most interest and imaginative portraits from original out-of-the-camera images. Please take time and visit Pat’s website to experience for yourself his creative approach to digital art painting. You may even decide to have Pat smudge paint a favorite photo of yourself, just send him an email.

courtesy "Mike" Michael L. Baird, flickr.bairdphotos.com

The image to the left is the one of me Mike took that captured Pat’s creative eye. You can click on either image and it will take you where you need to go.










As a final note, this purposefully pose was intended to be stoic, contemplating and without visible emotion. I believe Mike and I succeeded.