by successfulbob | fine art portrait, inspiration, people photography, photographer profile, photography, photography creativity, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Artist – Kelly Schneider
PPA – Photographic Craftsman & Certified Professional Photographer
The work in these Painterly Posts are usually a bit more on the obvious painting side using the digital tools we have. Today’s artist is one I’ve been following for a while and while it is not specifically a painting style the work in my opinion transcends photography into a realm of it’s own. I’ll leave you to decide… Let me know what you think of Kelly’s work.
Elegant Shades of Red © Kelly Schneider
Kelly’s Start
Kelly got his start while traveling in the US Navy starting a business called Captured Journeys Photography. He shares, “Initially, I knew so little about photography and anyone doing it that I was not influenced except that I wanted to get great images! After a few years, I realized that if I was ever going to really grow my game and produce good work, I needed to invest in my craft and my skills. That is when I started looking at true professionals who were masters. I realized I knew next to nothing!” Schneider notes an early influence for stepping up his game was Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs fame.
A True Professional
When asked what makes a true professional photographer Kelly said, “I think being a true professional has little to do with how many hours or if it is a full-time thing. A true professional is someone who has dedicated and committed themselves with all facets of a skill or craft and invested in both time and resources to grow and develop their knowledge, skill, and ability to be recognized for their work. Being a true professional and doing it full time is another layer. It is just a measurement of how much time you are doing it, not how much of a master you are while doing it.”
KS Fine Arts Portrait
Changes in Photography
Changes in professional photography are coming fast and furious and while Kelly recognizes the single most impact in photography comes from those photographers who can leverage the changes. “The single most impacting element in learning photography (outside of the core ability to “SEE” light and render wonderful and powerful images, is the capacity to learn and use more complex and advanced technology in your photography.” According to Kelly. “Those who have a natural and gift for awesome photography will find themselves fading into the “non relevant” layers of photographers if they don’t embrace and learn how to bring new and exciting technology into their game. From the expanded things a photographer can do with such little effort with lighting and tech, is making it harder and harder to separate yourself from the over 44 million practicing photographers in the USA.
Elegant Stylized Portrait © Kelly Schneider
To be Continued
I’ll continue this post with Kelly next week when we find out why Kelly teaches other photographers his techniques and where he sees photography going in the next ten years…
Portfolio: https://www.500px.com/kellyschneider
Instagram: http://instagram.com@ksfinearts
Kelly’s Bio
Born and raised in Coronado California he joined the US Navy in 1980 and served for 29 years. During his US Navy travels including 137 countries, he began “capturing” life around him. In 2010, Kelly began his pursuit of professional portraiture, growing and developing his skills in creating “salient” portraits focused on weddings portraiture and boudoir.
Over time, Schneider has become passionate about teaching others. He earned a Master’s degree in Human Systems Integration from the Navy Post Graduate School in Monterey California. He completed the Executive leadership course at both UC Berkeley and Duke University and is a MDPPA Board of Directors member for 2019.
Kelly and his wife Kalina (also a gifted photographer and active PPA member/Maryland PPA member) have been hosting workshops both in the US and in Europe. Kelly Schneider Fine 
Arts ksfinearts.com focuses on Boudoir and Fine Art portraiture and workshops.
Schneider is writing his first book “The Salient Portrait – the science behind it and how to achieve it” and it is a core element of all his workshops and training events. He earned the Best Portrait of the Year award in 2017 for MDPPA and Best Portrait Photographer for the State of Maryland for 2017 and 2018 and Wedding Photographer of the year for 2018 as well as earning two Fujifilm Masterpiece Awards in 2019.
Kelly is married Mrs. Kalina Schneider from Katowice Poland. Kalina and Kelly currently call Accokeek, MD home with their two kids – a beagle and a terrier!
by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, imaging competition, photography, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Art – Part Two
Michelle Parsley – M.Photog, M. Artist, Cr., CPP
I had the pleasure of taking a Michelle Parsley full day Pre-Con class at Imaging USA this year. I was extremely impressed with her attention to detail and classroom style. If you ever get the opportunity to learn from Michelle, I highly recommend it. BTW you can also work with Michelle online. Check out links to her education at the bottom ot the post.
Hear again from Michelle as she continues her talk about her work and producing images for PPA’s International Photographic Competition
“Another glimpse into my imagination would be “Get off my lawn!”. Who hasn’t thought of
finding a Leprechaun? Just me?? Oh, ok… ;)
I absolutely love history. You can see the influence of times gone by in images like, “Secret
Admirer”, “Patchwork”, “Waiting for Papa”, and “All in a Day’s Work”. These were some of my
favorite images I’ve ever created — partly because of the historical context, but also because I
built the “sets” in scale miniature and composited my subjects into the scenes. None of those
rooms are more than 12 inches tall!
“Secret Admirer”
“Patchwork”
“Waiting for Papa”
“Source of Wisdom”
Easily one of the craziest things I have ever done for print competition was “The Source of
Wisdom”. This print really has to be seen in person to appreciate it. I knew by adding 3D
elements to the print, I was risking being disqualified — but it was something I just had to try. I
have an absurd amount of time in both building the set (I made over 300 books the size of my
thumbnail!!), compositing over 50 frames together, and then adding the miniature books to the
face of the print to give the final piece a 3D feel. At one point I found myself VACUUMING the
print to be 100% sure none of my elements would damage anyone else’s entry. Thankfully –
the judging panel really understood the story and rewarded me with a loan. One word of
caution — if you ever attempt a 3D print, ALL of the 3D elements must be below the face of the
mat or you could potentially be DQ’d for damaging other entries. Proceed with caution!”
Michelle Parsley, M.Photog, M. Artist, Cr., CPP
Behind every artist there is a story and Michelle’s story began as a child when she would draw or paint with anything she could find (which got her in trouble on more than one occasion!). She has been creating hand drawn and hand
painted art for clients for nearly 20 years. Michelle is mostly self-taught in all the mediums she uses to express
her creativity. By combining her love of both digital and organic mediums, Michelle is uniquely equipped to both create and teach art. Michelle earned her Certified Professional Photographer (CPP) designation from Professional
Photographers of America (PPA) in 2009 which led her to enter her first International
Photographic Competition in 2010.
She has since earned the Master of Photography 
and Master Artist degrees in 2014, diamond artist of the year in 2012, the
Imaging Excellence Award in 2015, Photographic Craftsman in 2017, Double diamond and the Imaging Excellence Bar in 2018.
When Michelle is not teaching, photographing, or painting, she enjoys a great cup of coffee, dark chocolate, and working on the family farm in rural Tennessee where she lives with her husband of over 25 years, their four children, four dogs, and an ever changing host of farm animals.
The class I took from Michelle – Photoshop Clone Painting
More Clone Painting Classes – All Clone Painting Classes
General Teaching site – Elevate Your Art
by successfulbob | painting study, photography, photography competition, photography creativity, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Art
Michelle Parsley M.Photog, M. Artist, Cr., CPP
I had the pleasure of taking a Michelle Parsley full day Pre-Con class at Imaging USA this year. I was extremely impressed with her attention to detail and classroom style. If you ever get the opportunity to learn from Michelle, I highly recommend it. BTW, you can also work with Michelle online. Check out links to her education at the bottom of the post.
Hear now from Michelle below as she talks about her work and producing images for PPA’s International Photographic Competition. All Images © Michelle Parsley 2019 All Rights Reserved
“For most of my client work, I create “pretty pictures” in either digital or traditional mediums. An
example of client work would be “A Study in Pastels”.
But when I’m given free rein to do anything I want — I love to tell stories with my images. I
believe storytelling is one of my artistic strengths and I find it especially satisfying when others
can easily see the story. I often employ this tactic in my competition images.
Sometimes, I am compelled to tell a serious story — like in the image “Dear John”. Anyone
that has served in our armed forces can easily identify with this image.
More often than not, I tell humorous stories like “Dinner and a Show”. What little one hasn’t
used a pot for a drum and sang at the top of their lungs? By giving him an audience of
puppies in a barn, it accurately reflects the realities of life with boys on the farm. (No — this
child is not one of my boys)
In “Who’s Training Whom?” You can really get a glimpse into my imagination. I had the
pleasure of visiting the old Sheldon Church ruins in the Charleston, SC area with Tiffany Briley
of Charleston Photography Tours a few years back. I couldn’t help but let my imagination run
wild! What a giggle it was to have Julia Kelleher photograph her son based on my directions,
and create this fanciful image of a friendly dragon. The dragon was created by photographing
a plastic toy from several angles and frankensteining it together in Photoshop.
Continued next week!
Behind every artist there is a story and Michelle’s story began as a child when she would draw or paint with anything she could find (which got her in trouble on more than one occasion!). She has been creating hand drawn and hand
painted art for clients for nearly 20 years. Michelle is mostly self-taught in all the mediums she uses to express
her creativity. By combining her love of both digital and organic mediums, Michelle is uniquely equipped to both create and teach art. Michelle earned her Certified Professional Photographer (CPP) designation from Professional
Photographers of America (PPA) in 2009 which led her to enter her first International
Photographic Competition in 2010.
She has since earned the Master of Photography
and Master Artist degrees in 2014, diamond artist of the year in 2012, the
Imaging Excellence Award in 2015, Photographic Craftsman in 2017, Double diamond and the Imaging Excellence Bar in 2018.
When Michelle is not teaching, photographing, or painting, she enjoys a great cup of coffee, dark chocolate, and working on the family farm in rural Tennessee where she lives with her husband of over 25 years, their four children, four dogs, and an ever changing host of farm animals.
The class I took from Michelle – Photoshop Clone Painting
More Clone Painting Classes – All Clone Painting Classes
General Teaching site – Elevate Your Art
by successfulbob | inspiration, photography, photography creativity, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Photo Art – Dan McClanahan
For this Tuesday edition of Painterly Photo Art I have Dan whose work I have admired for quite a while.
Dad Started It! This piece was photographed in my client’s garage, capturing each subject’s expression from a tripod and stacking them together in photoshop to create an ideal composition. The food was all real, but the background was manipulated to look like a dining room instead of a garage. © Dan McClanahan
Before images for Dad Started It.
Dan’s work is a mix of in-camera artistry using artificial lighting and photorealistic compositing, often with a fun and vibrant feel. He’s only been a shooter since the digital age, so progressive lighting and digital manipulation have always been a part of his work. Dan’s business is split between his portrait studio and commercial work, and you can see the influence of commercial lighting and sheen in his portrait work.
Sports Poster – Basketball © Dan McClanahan
Reference images for sports poster. © Dan McClanahan
“My inspiration is generally gleaned from my clients, so my concepts are a collaboration between me and them within the parameters set by their needs. My challenge is to see how technically interesting and creative I can get within those parameters. Beyond client work, I try to challenge myself a couple times per year to create something I have no idea how to pull off just to make myself learn how to do it. Our Christmas cards and my annual schedule poster for the Iowa State Cyclone basketball team are examples of this. Aside from being great learning experiences, these personal challenges generally reciprocate in the form of successful competition prints and great exposure for my brand. For example, the image above of the family having a food fight was commissioned by a mom that saw our crazy/fun Christmas cards and wanted something like that for her family. I’ll take it!
Commercial photography created by McClanahan Studio in Ames, IA. Des Moines photographers specializing in modern, creative imagery for marketing and advertising campaigns. Dan and Alex McClanahan create promotional photography throughout Iowa and all over the midwest.
The Dangerous Lure of Entertainment: This was a personal piece. I had a tenant that was a hoarder and left a lot of weird stuff behind when she moved out. I ended up building this set out of her possessions and visually portraying the danger of our culture’s over-addiction to entertainment. It’s something I have struggled with in the past, and I knew people that dropped out of college due to video game addiction. I set the scene in the early 90’s because VHS tape looks way cooler than DVD’s and it was fun to pull some of my childhood interests and possessions in as props. © Dan McClanahan
“I’m not adept at drawing or painting like many of my peers, so when I composite I tend to photograph my components with precise lighting to match the scene so that the layers come together naturally and don’t require much blending in photoshop. I tend to use shapely lighting setups that retain the full dynamic range of the subject while sculpting expressions and textures to look 3-dimensional in a way that is coherent to the scene. Rim lights and fill lights are often used in addition to a key light to create this look. Remember, it’s easy to add contrast in post-production, but it’s tough to fix a photo with blocked up blacks or blown out highlights.”
Newborn Mutant Ninja Turtle: I recently became a father and while we hired out our newborn photos to someone with much more expertise than myself, I still wanted to make a newborn portrait “Dan Style.” I mixed several favorites of my wife and me: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, crochet, my father’s glasses, my old boom box, and our favorite local pizza. I figure I better subject my daughter to all of my favorite childhood things in photos before she’s too old to object. © Dan Mcclanahan
Before image. © Dan McClanahan
Dan McClanahan became a photographer in 2009 with the goal of creating a fresh alternative to traditional photography in his market. His quest was so successful that his work quickly made waves in the photo industry with multiple Grand Imaging Awards from Professional Photographers of America (PPA), Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) awards, magazine features and becoming one of the youngest photographers on record to receive all three photography degrees bestowed by PPA. Dan has given back to the photography community as an educator, teaching numerous times at Imaging USA, SYNC, After Dark Education, PhotoVision and other events.
He owns and operates McClanahan Studio with his best friend and beautiful wife, Alex. He splits his time between advertising photography and high school senior photography. The couple live and work with their daughter in a twelve thousand square foot historic building they renovated and share with nine tenants.
Outside work Dan is a small town Iowa introvert that loves Jesus, his family, punk rock drumming and strong coffee.
See more of Dan’s work –
http://www.mcclanahanstudio.net
https://www.instagram.com/danmcclan
https://www.facebook.com/mcclanahanstudio
https://twitter.com/McStudio
Dand and Alex will be hosting a photo retreat in June in Hawaii – for more details
http://createdbykaui.com/photo-retreats-hawaii/retreat-details/june-6-9-2017-mcclanahans-hawaii-retreat
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by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, people photography, photography creativity, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Art – Kristi Elias
I have watched Kristi grow and set her work apart from others on so many levels. It has been an amazing journey to watch. Here is some of Kristi’s work and words to inspire you in your artistic quest in photography. While Kristi’s images do not involve painting per se they have a distinctive art feel to them. I turn this post over to Kristi.
Look carefully at this image and check out the background build.
(not to mention the build and definition on the fighter) – image © Kristi Sutton Elias
Original capture. Note the kicker lights that help with background separation and extraction.
image © Kristi Sutton Elias
“I am a fine art portrait photographer, a good portion of my work is conceptual composites. I create between 40-over 60 composites a week for client orders, some are more involved than others. The amount of time to create the composite varies depending on if I am reinventing the wheel and creating a new concept and artwork from scratch or re-creating a piece that I have created for another client before.
After processing. image © Kristi Sutton Elias
Original capture. image © Kristi Sutton Elias
“Most of my backgrounds were taken during our vacations, I pick vacation spots based on images I would like to create. Medieval and abandoned castles are my favorite, this year we are going back to Europe and I already have a shot list of where I want to go.
Original captures. See the final below. (I merged the three images original for this illustration: ED.)
image © Kristi Sutton Elias
Final image © Kristi Sutton Elias
“After I shoot a session, I upload my images into lightroom and cull through them rating my favorites. After that, I will open my selected image into photoshop and create the composite. Sometimes my composites could be 5 images put together to create the final image and sometimes just 2 images. After I have created my final composite, I use NIK Software Color EFX Pro 4 to create my final vision. I have a few go-to tools that I like to use, but overall each image is treated differently as its own piece of art. Some of my go-to’s are dark contrast and bleach bypass and darken lighten center. The best thing to do is go through all the filters and see what each one does and play with all the levels. Before I start an edit I look at the image and decide what color pallets, hues, and mood I want the final image to portray. I have created hand-painted backgrounds that I photographed and use for textures in my work.
image © Kristi Sutton Elias
Starting with a well-lit capture that has depth and dimension makes selling the final image that much easier image © Kristi Sutton Elias
“Another important part involved in my editing, I listen to Love songs or country love songs on pandora while I edit. Mood music :).”
www.KristiElias.com (Masterpiece Portraits)
www.KristiSuttonElias.com (Editorial and Advertising)
Kristi will be teaching a week long class on “The Fine Art of Portraiture” at Texas school this year. Click on the link to learn more about the class. It will be a very creative and fun class!
https://www.texasschool.org/speaker-lineup/kristie-elias/
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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by successfulbob | fine art photography, fine art portrait, photography, photography creativity, photography education, tuesday painterly photo art
Tuesday Painterly Photo Art – Arica Dorff
I met Arika when she was on a road trip creating images for her pet photography business. She was passing through Sedona, and I had the pleasure to make her acquaintance and discovered her pet art painting. I love the expression of her pet portraits and the feel of her art. I think you will too!
Here’s Arika.
“I got into digital pet paintings using Corel Painter after I sold my pet photography studio in Las Vegas, Nevada. I had my studio for nine years and always wanted to offer my clients the option to have their portraits enhanced to a painting, but I never had the time to devote to learning the art. Specializing in painting pets was a natural decision for me since working with domestic animals, and their awesome owners had been my niche for my entire photography and teaching career.
Had to put this photo of Lola right up front! Check out the bling! © Arica Dorff Photography
Lola before. Arica is often working from cell phone images supplied by her clients
Getting started I reached out to two well-known pet painters whose work I admired and I had the opportunity to train with them one-on-one. Their process of turning a photo into a painting is completely opposite of each other, and I quickly realized that, like any other art form, there is no right or wrong way to do things. Working one-on-one with artists you admire, along with online tutorials, is what I recommend to anyone wanting to learn Corel Painter. Painter is much like Photoshop in the sense that they are both incredibly powerful programs but not something the average person could sit down and use with ease without some training and understanding of how the software functions. If you are a Photoshop user, I’m sure you can recall your beginning stages of learning and how you wanted to throw your computer out the window because you couldn’t accomplish what should have been a very simple task. Or maybe you accidentally hit something on your keyboard, and now nothing is working properly. I’ve been there too. So save yourself a headache and invest in training and tutorials when learning Corel Painter and getting started will be fun!
Tasha – Makes you want to say AWWWW. © Arica Dorff Photography
Tasha original capture.
As portrait photographers, we make decisions every day regarding lighting and how we want the light to fall on our subjects. But when I started painting I realized that shadows were something to which I never gave much thought. I would just light my subjects the way I wanted, and the shadows were naturally just wherever they were. Well, when you hand paint a background in like I do for most of my paintings (as opposed to enhancing the current background in the portrait) your full-length subjects would be floating on the background if you didn’t anchor them with a shadow. Such a simple concept, but not something I ever gave much thought to until I had to create my shadows.
Painting also forced me to pay more attention to the direction of where light was coming from, which is useful when creating dimension and depth in your backgrounds. Notice how most of my backgrounds have a lighter area near the animals face, this lighter area always coincides from which the direction the light is coming. The opposite side of the painting is always a darker shade which represents the natural fall off of light.
Emma – Great expression © Arica Dorff Photography
Emma Before.
Pets eyes are my favorite part of every painting (okay wispy stray hairs might be an equal favorite), but the eyes are what makes the paintings come to life. When doing digital paintings, I often use the existing photo and just enhance it with detailed brush strokes. But not with eyes, I always paint in the eyes freehand. Step 1: Paint in the eye color. Step 2: Paint in the black pupil. Step 3: Paint in the white catchlight – make sure it’s on the same side of the eye where the light is coming from! Step 4: Paint in the counter catch light area with lighter highlights to bring the eyes to life.
Since I’ve done some teaching in the pet photography world, I’ve had a lot of people asking me to train them on digital pet paintings. I currently offer one-on-one screen sharing training sessions, and I’m working on putting together a downloadable video tutorial. For the photographers who don’t have the time or desire to learn to paint, I offer a wholesale option where I send them the digital artwork for them to brand and print for their clients (as opposed to my retail customers who I present with canvas gallery wraps).
Cooper – © Arica Dorff Photography
Cooper – Before.
Digital Pet Paintings have been an awesome way for me to stay connected with the pet photography community, pet owners who I love to create cherished art for, and I get to do it all while hanging out with my pup and working from home!”
Check out more of Arica’s work. aricadorff.com
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – If you are someone who is creating Painterly Art with photography as a base, or know someone who is, and would like to be featured here on Successful-Photographer get in touch.
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