I would like to start my manipulation assignment with a photo of the person who introduced me to the exciting world of Photography, my friend Andrius.  My earlier posts of Las Vegas were photos that we took together two years ago on vacation and then he later showed me how to apply image editing techniques to enhance the picture and make it overall more interesting.  Therefore I only thought it appropriate to start with a photo of the master photographer himself.  This first photo was taken just outside of our hotel in Las Vegas.  Since he was in a tunnel like structure I tried to put the focus more on him in the center.  I blurred and darkened his surroundings keeping his image sharp and well detailed.  I also intensified the colours to make the photo pop.

Here I choose to manipulate an oyster mushroom since I find nothing else in this world more beautiful then food (I am training to be a chef after all). I felt that this picture didn't need too much work to make it interesting, just a small boost to enhance its natural beauty.  Notice how the small details such as the cracks in the cap of the mushroom are a lot more prominent in the second photo.

In this picture, I decided to give it a completely different look and have some fun.  I zoomed in on the Eiffel Tower so it gives the illusion you are climbing up the foot, and then added a technique called "Heat Map" which added all sorts of colours.  At this point I decided that this looks like a postcard like many I saw while traveling in Paris, so I wanted to achieve that look further by adding font into the picture saying "Paris". 

The last two pictures are of two separate trips to Varadero and Punta Cana.  I felt that since both of them were taken on tropical islands, I wanted to keep that magnificence of the tropics in both pictures when I manipulated them.  I boosted the colours to be more vibrant then used HDR (high dynamic range imaging) to show a greater difference between the lightest and darkest areas which enhanced the photo even more.