A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to spend some time in Puerto Vallarta (PV), a Mexican resort city on the Pacific Ocean, south of Mazatlan. PV has been there for a long time but until it became famous for being the site of a Hollywood film it was just a little port town with little road access. Director John Huston made “Night of the Iguana” there. One of our guides referred to it as the “best picture few people have ever seen” Soon it became a tourist destination site and hasn’t stop growing yet. At the time we were there several cruise ships came in for a short stop.

One of PV’s destinations is the Malecon – where on weekends many families stroll along a shoreline seawall with their kids and enjoy food, music, shows, acrobats and many vendors selling anything and everything to tourists like me.

The Dancers and The Angel of Hope are just a few of the statues along the walk. The little shopping kiosk is just one of a gizillion around the area.

I look forward to seeing how folks “artify” these scenes.

Regards

Bob Mc

Here are a few more PV pictures. Another shopping scene and 2 shots of some cobblestone streets in an older part of town. In one pic you can see the big construction cranes in the background for the large construction projects. Smaller one or two story projects see to be all done thru hand labor. Lots of hard working people very busy within most parts of the city.

The shopping pics are from a long narrow island in a river that splits the city into North and South.

I’m having difficulty working with the shopping pics because of the many objects hanging all over the place and the many changes of color. Look forward to seeing what you can do with those. As we were walking thru the island shopping area, we could see several big Iguana's hugging branches over us - really BIG ugly Iguana's.

Regards

Bob Mc

Some simplification, one of Danny's Impressionist actions and a crop - all to try and capture the bright colors and vitality of the area.

Bob Mc

Nice set of photo's Bob the colours are superb
here's a attempt at one (so far) using ahb

Palms

Great photos, Bob!

Color matched with a sundown photo, mucked up the photo using my Photo Art tute. Set a history state and painted with AHB and HB. Added textures.

Thanks for the play!

Hello Bob...

Lovely photos....

Palms....Great job on your two...strange we chose one of the same!!! Just love the bright happy colors!!!

Swampy...Very nice...must have a go at your tute..

As i havent so much spare time for painting just now i have got hooked on Dynamic Photo and I used it on this one...

Patricia..........:wavey:

Palm and Swampy - good work to get all those distracting wires , poles and things out of the way

Patricia - yours seems to handle the mish mash of tiny bright colored things very well. What is Dynamic Photo?

Regards

Bob Mc

Used a Conte Art Script-fu that I recently downloaded (was part of a set of artistic rendering Script-fus that I got from the exchange). Did by Glass tile thingy and a few other things (including a paper texture blend) for this Gouche. The complete rendering is here (http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/9554/shopping1bx9.jpg) (attached is a slightly lower quality crop). :)

Hello Bob...

Liked your rendition of your photo too...

Thank you for your kind words....Here is a thread Palms has started all about Dynamic Photo...with some examples of what can be done...Its brilliant for scenics and you can do gentle tone mapping or extreme...do try it as its really fun to see how it enhances your photos....

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/software/19458-dynamic-photo-hdri.html#post172245

Lyle....Very nice...It looks really good in the full size version.......

Patricia........:classic:

And another

Glad to see you have a bit more time again Patricia

Palms

The lady in the harbor.

Steve C.

Like Palms, and Patricia Kay, I had to have a play with all those wonderful colors.

I went for the crop to focus in on those wonderful plates.

I painted the "stuff" in Painter then brought over to Photoshop to add the detail, texture and blending.

Great work everyone!

The vivid colors are really what attracted me to the kiosks. Veritable kaleidoscopes. While there may be as many as 100 along the walking path on that island, unfortunately, most of them handle the same merchandise - it's difficult to find unique things but sometimes I'd get lucky. Tho, I have to admit that I now have 22 Puerto Vallarta ball caps - I'm a sucker for new ball caps.

Here are 2 more pic's of the kiosks in the same area. I had to crop a lot to get them the size to send. On the first pic below, look at the left hand side at the masks - they are cloth masks that many of the Mexican wrestlers wear. Gotta be very stuffy.

I'll post a couple of Iguana pics later - they are all over the place - including in the trees above the kiosks.

Regards

Bob Mc

Last of the pictures

Iguanas - in the trees above the walkway - careful when you look up!

Others seen were more colorful - these are about 3-4 feet long

Bob Mc

Thanks for the beautiful pictures, Bob!
Nice jobs done already!!!
Here's mine, done with my tutorial 5A.
Sylvia

Hi Bob...

Great pix; thanks for sharing them.

Dusted off an old Photoshop action, a modification of Mike Finn's watercolor freebee. (google: Mike Finn actions)

Probably a little less detail would have been better, but I liked the general result.

Awesome, Danny!

Danny,
Nice effect and thank you for reminding us of Mike Finn and his great actions.

Haven't heard from Mike for a while but his site is still there.

http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~mikefinn/action.html

Mike's action that I always thought was cool yet wild is Popartist and along with that action is one called Popartist Adjustment.

Here's that effect(s) on one of the shopping pictures. It/they really bring out the bright vivid colors.

The first pic uses popartist alone; the second add the popartist adjustment action as well.

Hope that you can easily see the color differences between the two

Regards
Bob

Bob reading about popartist again reminded me of a technique that was about a while ago (not mine)
run popartist, go to history and click on the anisotropic layer then run the action velvia ( from atncentral ) use usm if wanted ( i suppose it is like the illustrated actions about now ) works well on landscapes etc

Palms

Thanks Palms

That gives a nice effect too

Regards
Bob

Well; did do some addition preprocessing and postprocessing too. Here (http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/8861/ig3avv8.jpg)'s the complete rendering. :)

Such a busy picture and I don't think I've made it any simpler.

Peter

I know this is an old thread now, but I found this image so compelling that I had to try a watercolor on it. Alan

I know this is an old thread now, but I found this image so compelling that I had to try a watercolor on it. AlanAll of these have "no expiration date," so I'm glad you woke it up Alan.

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Inspired by Alan's great interpretation I decided to experiment with some of the nifty "custom brushes" from the CD that accompanies Jeremy Sutton's Painter X Creativity book (Jeremy's Mishmash, Wood, Den's Funky Chunky). After restoring some of the detail I added a little surface texture, too.

Danny, you've made a wonderful painting. I love the colors and the textures.
Alan

Fantastic, Danny. Very painterly and colorful!