Harmony

Back to one of favourite subjects, dried climbing hydrangea flowers; this one was taken last autumn in my basement "studio". The reality of my studio is quite different to how it appears in my photos but I don't think I'll go into that or it will ruin the mystique, I will say that dirty windows make great light diffusers!

The processing for this one was very quick, it was one of the rare cases where almost all the textures I initially tried worked. Choosing the right textures for a photo is  a mixture  of trial and error, intuition and luck -sometimes I'll try 10 or even more I come up with a combination that works.

Aquarius @ Overlay 100% desaturated a little to tone down the green
Necropolis @ Soft Light 100% desaturated a little also
Peach Blush@ Soft light 35% to add a little warmth 

Aquarius is from Summer Painterly, Necropolis from Tex Box 1 and Peach Blush from Tex Box 2.

See it on Flickr

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Sunday Stroll

I've got lots of photos like this with distant people walking on the beach, at one stage I'd have wanted an completely deserted beach but now I seek out opportunities like this.  Luckily our beaches down here are often all but deserted, especially at this time of the year.

Now the processing, I think I used a texture from each pack in this one.
Sariel Leather @ soft light 100% blurred
Fly Edges 16 @ Multiply 60%
Voyageur Map @ Soft Light 100%
Algae@ Overlay 100%
Tarte Tatin @ Screen 22% masked from the sky
Ming @ Overlay 100% masked from the beach
And it was done!
See it a little bigger on Flickr

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$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

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Grunge Spring

This is the flower of the onion weed or Allium triquetrum  -not one of my favourite plants as it spreads so readily and is very hard to get rid of once you have it.  Apparently it can be used to replace spring onions in cooking so it does have its uses. It does have pretty flowers ,  just as long as you don't get too close -the smell of onions is pretty strong.

I decided to give this one a quick and easy  grungy treatment.
Backdrop @ Hard light 30%
Stygian Tin @ Overlay 100%
Copy of background @ Multiply 48%

Backdrop is from Tex Box 2, Stygian Tin from Summer Painterly.

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$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

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HDR Bottle

I came across this antique French Quinine bottle in the dunes, it had arrived on the high spring tides and made a nice change from the other modern plastic rubbish we get! Quinine was extensively used here in my area in the south of France as an everyday treatment for Malaria. We don't have it now as all the sea marshes are annually sprayed with insect killer, since the outlawed DDT arrived in the 1950's pushing the disease south, as far as Africa, where quinine is still used. Its no wonder all the old French houses have formidable wooden and metal wired fly screens, as the illness was quite a problem in the past.

I shot this image behind my closed shutters allowing a dramatic shaft of morning sunlight to fall upon the bottle. I hand-held the camera, normally only using a tripod in the gloomy winter.

I've just started using the new photoshop CS5, with the new CS5 comes an inclusive faux HDR filter. Meaning you can get great HD-like effects from one exposure. Its not shown with the normal filters for some reason, and I only discovered it through watching a promo tutorial. This HD effect really adds life and colour to the darker areas, naturally, HD is to be used with caution, as nobody likes having their eyes burned out! To find this feature, go to the top titles, Image - adjustments - HDR toning.

So, for your information, I'll say; 'duplicated HD layer' when I use this new feature in future recipes..
The next two layers shown were to knock back the HD brightness..

Base image duplicated HD layer - Normal @ 91%
Base image duplicated - Multiply @ 47%
Base image duplicated - Colour @ 37%
Labyrinth - Soft Light @ 21%
Lime Plaster - Soft Light @ 63%
Absinthe Vert - Soft Light @ 42%
Matmos Lake - Soft Light @ 84%
Matmos Lake - Soft Light @ 84%
Aquarius desaturated - Soft Light @ 77%
Aquarius desaturated - Soft Light @ 77%
final texture brushed from bottle

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$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

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Only $40

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Wish you were here....

This was taken at a lovely little beach called Bobby's Head about half an hour north of Dunedin which is now a wildlife reserve,  there's been much planting over the past 15 or so years to restore the area to its natural state after years of farming. The beach has wonderfully golden sands and is bordered at the south end by fascinating sandstone cliffs. It's a habitat of the rare Yellow-eyed penguins and we were lucky enough to see some, one on the beach and the other at its nest up a cliff. Unfortunately as usual I had the wrong lens on the camera for taking photos of wildlife -wide angle lenses are good for landscapes but not for penguins.

Now the processing, it's hard to tell from the finished photo but it was actually quite overcast and dull when we were at the beach, textures (and a bit of photoshop magic) have turned a dull late winter day into summer!

Pistachio @ overlay 58 % using a layer mask I removed the texture from the sky. This texture accentuated the orange of the sand.
Lavender skies @ Soft light 95% just on the sky
Next I added a sky layer from my archives to add some drama, it was a blue sky with clouds and I used it at overlay 100%
Oxford Parchment @ overlay 100% masked off the sky, another texture which warmed the sand.
Purple Haze@Overlay 100% I used a graduated mask on this layer to remove some of the texture from the lower portion of the photo
Finally to tweak the sky colour I used two colour fill layers
A Bright yellow @  Overlay 24%
Aqua  colour @ Screen 21%  -both these layers were just used on the sky.

Pistachio, Oxford Parchment and Purple Haze are from the Summer Painterly Set, Lavender Skies is from Tex Box 2

See the photo a little larger on Flickr

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Daisies

Some soft pastel prettiness to start the week. Flowers are in short supply here at the end of our New Zealand winter but spring can't be far away, I noticed a solitary crocus in flower in my garden the other day, which reminds me I must go and check to see if the snowdrops are flowering.  Talking of snow, thankfully we've not had any here this winter although there was some on the hills yesterday, just hope I've not spoken too soon.

On to the processing, I decided a light soft painterly feel was the best for this one. All textures are from the Summer painterly pack.
Iridescent brush@ overlay 52%
Brushed rose @ soft light 62%
Cobalt cloud@ hard light 27 % this layer gave the slight blue tone.
A little of the texture was removed  from the focus flower in each of the above layers, I used a layer mask and a soft brush to do this.
And it was done.
Not a big change but sometimes subtle is best :-)
See it a bit Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

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Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.
John Keats

We came across this tired looking starfish in a beach pool the day after watching Bright Star, the movie about the doomed English romantic Poets love life. The movie was shot with an attractive blue filter. This was the simple inspiration behind this post processing!

See it on Flickr

Base duplication, B/W - Multiply @ 45%
Lime Plaster - Overlay @ 27%
Ming - Overlay @ 100%
Ming - Overlay @ 100%
Ming- Overlay @ 100%
Merge, and finally adjust color to warm up.

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Passion

I bought these lovely wrinkly black New Zealand passionfruit today especially for photographic purposes, always a good excuse! Likewise the tamarillos, which must be amongst my favourite fruit. Unfortunately neither of these delicious fruit grow outdoors down here in southern New Zealand, but the tamarillo's at least grow almost like weeds further north. I'm jealous!
I suspect this still life composition is going to be a work in progress or at least it will be as long as the fruit lasts....we had tamarillos for desert tonight!

Anyway the processing.
I only used one texture in this so it was fairly simple.
After duplicating the background I added
Sahara Saddle (Summer Painterly) @ Soft Light 72% this was de-saturated a little using a Hue saturation adjustment and with a little texture softly brushed from the focus passionfruit using a layer mask.
To tone down the larger lemon a little I added
Sahara Saddle @ soft light 25% de-saturated as before. The texture was just applied to the lemon.

See it on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Brave New Organic World !

What could be more quintessentially french-summer than a field of sunflowers? Though I have to discover a new field every year and
because they are rotation crops they tend to crop up in some very odd places, and so they have to be tracked down.
This field was found on the edge of the city, by the new high tech prison so I was lucky, other years I've had to drive for almost an hour to find one.
If only the Satellite navigator or even an Iphone app could be programmed for this!
Captured in early morning sunlight looking upwards with a polarized lens filter.

Purple Haze - Soft light @ 11%
(softly brushed from most of flower head)
Purple Haze - Base images Overlay @ 69%
(softly brushed from most of flower head)
Balthamos Blue - Colour Burn @ 23%
(middle softly brushed away leaving soft edge vignette)
Merge all together.
Duplicate this new base image, change the top image to a lush green tint in saturation.
Duplicated 2nd base - Hard Light @ 100%
Gently brush away the highlights of the sunflower and snail etc to reveal the original base colours
Duplicate this layer and :
Duplicated 3rd base - Hard Light @ 24%

See the finished image large on my redbubble or on Flickr

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page