Hot Chocolate

I recently tried out something new when making chocolate milk, and Anastasia and I took the opportunity to do a little photoshoot!

Yummmmm. Isn't the mug cute? It's actually a little sugar container, but shhh, that's irrelevant.
The chocolate milk is regular (German) milk (Haltbare Vollmilch ultrahocherhitzt! Von Milbona!) mixed with a cheaper ripoff of Nesquick (I'm classy, I know), plus butter-vanilla aroma and rum aroma of the brand Dr. Oetker. This was then topped off with whipped cream from a can, caramel-hot-chocolate-chips, and a stick of cinnamon! (Drinking the chocolate through the cinnamon like a straw was delicious.)

After that - Photoshop, and this very handy 30 second tutorial on how to create a bokeh (circle lights) effect. Ta-dah! Now I want another mug of this...

Anil Saxena

From retouching and digital artist Anil Saxena's Behance profile: "Anil Saxena … well, let's say he's different. He started out doing conventional darkroom photo composition and retouching before moving these skills over to creator and then photoshop. Having moved to Mumbai to work as an illustrator he became interested in retouching as a way to utilize his eye for creating striking imagery. Drawing from his technical background in graphic design, CGI and his trained creative eye, Anil enjoys developing stunning imagery. He believes color grading is paramount. For him real work begins, when we lesser mortals might think that the image is just perfect! In his own words 'If the image is a success but my work goes unnoticed, I'm doing my job well.'"

Anil takes images and photos and blends them together to create fantastical and delightful compositions conveying humorous or touching messages. For the image titled Music exists all around us, the artist took the following photos and combined them into a vivid and interesting image.

Close-ups and a step-by-step clip of the process can be seen here!

He has many other interesting projects on his Behance portfolio, but here are another two or three more of my personal favorites. As always, you can click on the images to see them in a larger format!

MANIPULATION

I Love Nature so much

Feeding Grass (from the Micro World series)