Vase of Lisianthus

After a hectic summer working non-stop, I decided to treat myself by reinvesting my earnings in a Photographic lighting studio set-up. Its still very basic.
(more about that next time) And as Canon 5D had no flash I had to buy one. At least i'm ready for those darker Autumnal months!
I painted my top floor studio wall a chocolate brown, Id give you the colour, but I mixed it by hand from old Farrow and Ball British paints,
I bring this up because the local French paint is terrible, you buy a big can and only get around two thirds of very watery paint at twice the price of UK paint - Lol, don't get me started! Anyhow, I use Farrow and Ball because its organic, doesn't smell and is dead flat Matt, giving a ready distressed effect if you use just one coat.

This vase is illuminated from a right side window, with reflected sun from the opposite yellow house. I used a fill-in flash bounced from a sheet of white card to the right of the camera, there is a white reflector to the left of the table. The Flash is on the camera, but pointing to the right.
Its well worth investing in a good all round orienting Flash, mine is the Canon 430EX II.
The camera was mounted on a tripod and tethered to my laptop with a USB wire, so I can view as I click, Its a luxury to see the image at large size as you shoot so you can sort out hot spots and snags.
Using a tripod helps get your composition sorted out, so you don't need to keep doing this, it saves time and shakes!

I used one of my old free negative textures, and you can find it here on Flickr The base image is already treated with CS5 HDR effect to brighten and then a De-noise.

Free Neg Texture Overlay @ 100%
Free Neg Texture Soft Light @ 100
Heather Overlay @ 100% - brushed from table area
Fly Edge no.10 Colour Burn @ 23% Dust and Scratches cleaned and softened.

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Tex Box 1, Tex box 2, Fly Edges, Summer Painterly & Spring Painterly

$180

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

Bluebells

It's been a while since we updated the blog, we've both been busy with other things.  I've been trying to get my garden organised amongst other things, I spent some of today planting my vegetable garden, I'm looking forward to heirloom rainbow carrots this season along with golden globe beetroot and celeriac, providing they grow that is.

In the flower garden the bluebells are still flowering, I love their elegant arched stems.
I gave these ones the Flypaper Texture treatment.

Eau de Nil @ Overlay 100% I  converted this layer to a smart object and blurred it using a gaussian blur and because I wanted some of the texture showing I removed the blur from the edges using the smart object layer mask.
Cobalt Cloud @ Soft Light 100%

Eau de Nil is from the Spring Painterly set and Cobalt Cloud from the Summer Painterly.
See it larger on Flickr

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

Tex Box 1, Tex box 2, Fly Edges, Summer Painterly & Spring Painterly

$180

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

Grunge flowers

Just to show that I don't just do pale soft flowers and also to show how textures (and toning) can change the entire feel of an image.  Our fly edges work well on black and white images especially if you want to portray a gritty "early photography" look.

I started by converting the base image to black and white using a black and white adjustment layer, tweaking the colour sliders to get the tone and contrast I wanted.
Fly edges 18 @ multiply 65% desaturated
Curves layer to tweak tone
Then I merged all, ctrl -alt -shift-e on a PC
Converted the layer to a smart filter so I could go back and edit then used the render lighting effects filter to add a bit of drama and light. I used a bluish light hence the blue/grey toning of the finished work.
For a little added grunge I added
Stygian Tin @ Soft light 100% desaturated

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

Gift Coupons

Click Here

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Ode to Spring

Tulips are such elegant flowers and in a way I'd love to be able to grow them en-masse like this, but massed bedding displays don't really suit my style of gardening as I garden by the "overflowing and abundance" cottage garden method. Thankfully the botanic gardens just down the road has wonderful spring bulb displays so I can get my tulip fix there! I shot this using my trusty 50mm lens at f1.4 for maximum bokeh.
Now the processing....
Brushed rose @ Soft Light 100% I warmed the toning of just this layer to taste using a hue saturation adjustment
Apple Blush @ Soft Light 43% gently removed  from the focus flower using a layer mask
Burnished Clay @ Screen 24% for added softness, once again I removed a little of the texture from the focus flower using a layer mask
Curves adjustment to tweak the contrast a little.

See it on Flickr

Apple Blush is from Tex Box1, Burnished Clay from Tex box 2 and Brushed Rose from the Summer Painterly set.

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

Emerge

I love spring! As well as being beautiful, trees covered with blossom are wonderful to photograph and texture. This is the flowering cherry at our country hut, it was just coming into flower when I took this -unfortunately I've missed seeing it in full bloom this year.
I decided to go for the painterly effect in my processing of this.

I started off by increasing the saturation slightly using a hue saturation adjustment layer.
Aquarius  @ Soft light 100%
Brushed Rose @ Overlay 100%
Then the tone and contrast were tweaked using curves and levels adjustments.

See it a little bigger 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

Grunge Bluebell

It's midwinter here in New Zealand so this one is from last spring -I'm counting the days (or maybe months) till they're in flower again, in fact I'm looking forward to having any flowers in the garden. There are some weeds still flowering (must be why weeds are so successful) so I think I'll have to resort to photographing them soon :-)

Now onto the processing.
Apple Blush @ Overlay 100%
Fly Edge 18 @ soft light 58 % -this was stretched over the image so its edges weren't so prominent, it's' this layer that gave most of the grunge.
Ming @ Soft light 100% which gave much of the bluish toning.
Ming @ Soft light 100% Don't be afraid to try doubling a texture layer at the same opacity, doing this here added lots more depth and enhanced the blue tone. I removed some of the texture from the focus flowers in these two ming layers using a layer mask.
Curves layer to tweak tone and contrast.

See the photo on Flickr

Our single packs are all still available (click on the sidebar links) but due to popular request we have introduced a triple deal, all three packs for $100!

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

Please note that this is big, almost 400 mb file so the download may take a while. Average reported download time for this pack varies from 15 to 20 mins, perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea between downloads!

New Dawn

One from a while back when my roses were in full bloom, there are still some late season flowers but summer is gone for another year.
The soft pink of the New Dawn rose and a blue sponge-ware jug are a great combination in my eyes!
I decided to process this softly...I couldn't really do anything else.
Archival Canvas @ Soft light 68%
Peach Blush@ Hard Light 73 % desaturated slightly
Peach blush @ Colour Burn 40% with some of the texture removed from the focus flowers
Dark Blue colour layer @ Exclusion 70%
Curves layer to tweak tone etc.
See it on Flickr

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!

Gently

More roses from my mothers garden, she has inherited lots of standard roses with trunks like small trees! I'm not a big fan of that style of rose bush myself but can see the advantages, you don't have to bend over to smell them and they're much easier to weed around, you can also cram more into your garden.

Anyway, this was processed as follows.
Sail cloth@ Hard light 75% blurred with a gaussian blur
Concorde @screen 46% with it's saturation increased using a hue saturation adjustment as mentioned in my previous tutorial.
Dark blue colour layer @ exclusion 20%
Purple colour layer @ overlay 30%
Then the overall tone was tweaked with curves and hue saturation adjustment layers

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!

Memories...

I've been offline for the last few days while my computer was upgraded. The upgrade (basically a new computer) was done by my son and it didn't go as smoothly as expected -the two hours he quoted me turned into almost two days. The house has never looked tidier!!
Now that I'm up and running again I've been spending a lot of time reloading my programmes and discovering that some things don't work any more, the main one being Outlook Express which I've used as my email programme forever. It's great having a much faster computer though, processing Raw files which used to take what seemed like forever to save in Camera Raw are now done in moments and now I can open photoshop and Bridge at the same time without the whole system coming to a standstill.
Anyway I processed this quickly last evening when I was looking for something relatively easy to work on. Forget-me-nots from this past spring. It started off as a fairly subtle treatment but then I decided to pile on the grunge :-)


Backdrop @ Soft Light 100%
Peach Blush @ Overlay 62 %
Archival canvas @ multiply 100%
Grosgrain @ Normal 22%
Archival canvas @ hard light 24 % with a little of the texture removed from the focus flowers.
Copy of background @ Soft light 74%
Pompeii Stucco @ Hard light 100% with it's colour cooled a little with a hue saturation layer.
Pompeii Stucco @ multiply 47%
Holmes @ Overlay 81 % with its colour desaturated slightly

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!

Baking

It's strange how you can work on an image for hours and not get it looking quite right so you give up and do something else (or in my case go to bed) and then the next day open it and add some different textures and within moments you have something that works. Thankfully this is what happened here as I had a busy day ahead of me preparing for a son's birthday.
The cake is made, I just have to ice it now....just wish I'd read the recipe a bit more closely so it will be interesting to see what it tastes like :-)

Anyway, here's the recipe for this flower which unlike a cake recipe you don't have to follow to the letter :-)
Peach Blush @ Hard Light 64 %
Colosseum Sienna @ multiply 57 &
Apple Blush @ Colour Burn 38 %

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!