Chalk path into mist

Here's another example of why we should always carry our camera on airport runs! I drove through thick fog banks from melting snow on the way to Gatwick airport in England over Christmas, being on the motorway it was impossible to stop, so I changed my route home to the minor country roads to capture some serous fog!
This was taken at a beauty spot, a big picnic area, that normally has a superb view of the surrounding chalk hills, you can see the white chalk path in this image, in fact the chalk is always just a few inches under all the grasslands in this protected area of the Surrey Downs.
Shot with a soft grad Cokin filter.

Continuing the conversation about texturing improving images rather than rescuing bad ones' here's an example, the base was ok, but needed some re-balancing.
Textures were used all over then gently brushed away at the darker sides, to try and even things up. A final colour tweak at the end with a flattened version helped pull all the colours together and cool the overall look.

The final result has, I've been told, the timeless quality I was looking for, possibly for a Romance period bookcover? Just a few days after publishing, Getty Images snapped this up as a rights managed image, so I guess they thought so too! :-)

Aquarius - Overlay @ 100% Bottom left hand corner brushed away
Europium - Soft Light @ 100 % all 4 corners softly brushed away
Rose Blush - Overlay @ 100% Bottom left and top right brushed away
Elysium - Hue @ 50% Blurred with Gaussian Blur

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orbit around the winter sun

In January we often get these midwinter fairs, we think they all come south to over-winter, only returning to northern Europe in the spring.
It was nice to see this fresh white painted Ferris wheel as they're normally brightly colored.
Taken from the ground, with a circular polarizer, the camera turned portrait format.
A few snaps later, I was off to Apple Mac to buy a new 15" Macbook pro, to hook up to my 27" apple cinema display.
I'd been constantly warned these Macbooks weren't really strong enough to process huge Raw files, well I'm happy to disprove this myth!
I really wanted to be able to travel and process whilst away, but I still have the 2008 circa Imac and will now use both. I hope this info helps others decide!:-)
feel free to ask more mac set-up questions.

Processing was long, so I've shortened the recipe as much as possible,
I think it took all afternoon to get this looking something like the way I'd envisioned it. Remember, if you find your image getting too muddy, just add a base image copy as I did here.
My main goal was to get rid of that blue sky, and add a bit more mood.

We've recently heard that people think textures are just used to hide poor photography! Well, nothing could be further from the truth,
as we show in our before and after tutorials, everything is out in the open! Here at Fly we tend to use textures to enhance and bring out more mood from images, filling negative space with mostly organic texture, and some painting with light. We'll have more to say on the subject later!

Brighter HDR version of base image - Luminosity @ 100%
Pans Sky - Overlay @ 61%, softly brushed from parts and white frame.
Muscatel - Soft Light @ 100% Flipped vertically, softly brushed from top and bottom cabins.
Aquarius - Soft Light @ 100%
HDR base 2nd copy - color @ 100%
Muscatel - Soft Light @ 100%, softly brushed from top and bottom cabins.
Luminescent - Saturation @ 93%
Iridescent Brush - Soft Light @ 100%
Iridescent Brush - Soft Light @ 68%, middle brushed away
Iorek Ice - color @ 24%
Aquarius - Soft Light @ 14%

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The miracle of positive thought

Its always a pleasure to share our published images.
This book came out a few days ago, shot last summer, we've already shared the recipe, but here we've brought the two together!
Translation: Where there is a will there is a way!
The miracle of positive thought.

This was shot a few mins after sunrise over a green wheat field and a vineyard on the horizon. The camera was very low, almost in the wheat, and I shot on automatic in raw mode.
Processing was simple, I used just one texture,
Muscatel, desaturated, Hard Light @ 100%
And a base copy which was altered in curves, changing the saturation to more of a purple tone. This final top layer was Normal @ 44%

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Trio

Our country hut (or crib as they're called in southern New Zealand) is situated beside a river in the midst of farmland. We have sheep on one side and cows on the other so I have plenty of four legged models. These "models" were in a paddock up a hill just a short distance away, thankfully they weren't too scary when they spotted me and stood still long enough for me to snap a few shots.
The photo was taken just prior to  sunset so the light was lovely.

I started processing with a gentle levels adjustment to brighten the shot slightly.
Peach Blush @ Overlay 39%
Brushed Rose @ multiply 100% the colour of this layer was desaturated and toned more yellowish using a hue saturation adjustment. I also removed some of the texture from the sheep using a layer mask.
Necropolis @ overlay 22% desaturated  slightly and with its colour tweaked a little using a hue/saturation adjustment.
Next I did a little gentle dodging/burning to brighten the sheep.
To do this I made a new layer and filled it with 50% grey @ Overlay ,  then with a soft brush at a low opacity (about 8% or less), I painted with white to brighten selected areas, or black to darken.
I finished with a subtle HDR adjustment layer on the merged layers.

Peach Blush is from Tex Box 2, Brushed Rose from the Summer Painterly and Necropolis from Tex Box 1
See the photo a little larger on Flickr

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lone tree on Christmas day

Another picture from the same Christmas day sunset shoot as the previously blogged snowman. I knelt down in the snow for this shot, and used the same Cokin mild ND2 graduated filter as before. Processing was simple, and with the addition of a slight clone-over, removed the distracting buildings behind the tree.

Base copy slight HDR enhancement in CS5 - Multiply @ 15%
Base copy slight HDR enhancement in CS5 - Soft Light @ 23% over snow only - sky brushed away.
Dawn Grunge - Soft Light @ 100%
Matmos Lake - Soft Light @ 100% Flipped vertically and horizontally, smoothed. Colour changed to a 'Lime green' with colour sliders.

See it bigger on Flickr

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Ethereal

Weeds often make the best photos! These are the small flowers from a weedy shamrock leaved oxalis that pops up in my garden every year. I have a garden full of pretty flowers at the moment and then choose a weed to photograph.

Anyway as requested here's the texture recipe.
I started by brightening and softening the image, I used a curves adjustment and soft pink fill at screen blending mode to do this
Mulberry silk @ soft light 28%
Brushed Rose @ Soft light 58%
Copy of background @ Soft Light 82%
Cobalt Cloud @ Linear light 38%
Archival canvas @ Linear Burn 49% masked from the focus flower area using a circular graduated mask, this layer was also desaturated and lightened a little using a hue saturation adjustment
Soft pink Graduated fill @ soft light 31% this was to brighten the top right corner mostly as it looked a little murky.
And it was done!

See it on Flickr

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fire and ice

After a late Xmas lunch I spied a lovely sunset, so arming myself with borrowed wellingtons, set off across the Surrey fields and over frozen streams and fences to get some better views, as the area is heavily wooded.
I'd previously treated myself to a cheapish Cokin ND graduated filter (ND2), after my last disastrous trip with the stuck-on PL filter, and inevitable over-dark images. This time I took no chances and was rewarded with a much more usable batch.
I found this snowman on the village green, with a ready made hole through the head (no, I didn't punch through, ninja style as was suggested on flickr!) Anyhow, it was an opportunity I couldn't resist,
the fire and ice concept!
There was so much going on texture wise I thought I'd stick to my old favorite 'Matmos Lake' just to help pull the image together. Though first I doubled up the sky a few times, to darken it with the Multiply mode, the base being brushed off beforehand.

Matmos Lake - Soft Light @ 100% Flipped vertically and horizontally, changed to a red tone with the color sliders, blurred with the dark top pulled away from the image.
Matmos Lake - Soft Light @ 100% Flipped vertically and horizontally, bottom 2/3rds removed with a soft brush.
Matmos Lake - Soft Light @ 100% Flipped vertically and horizontally

A final brightening with Auto Brightening.
See the finished version on Flickr

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fog after snow

Happy New Year to everyone!
A big thanks to Jill for taking care of things whilst I was mostly off-line in the country;-) I'm just back from Surrey in England, where I've seen more snow than I have for years! Those pics are yet to come, but first an old favorite of mine, trees in fog. Very simply processed using only Matmos lake flipped upside down and used twice. The version shown is a square crop, just for flypapers!

Base duplicated, slight enhancement with HDR CS5 - Lighten @ 40%
Matmos Lake, flipped vertically with color saturation changed to a green/blue tone, blurred with Gaussian blur 80% - Soft Light 88%
Matmos Lake flipped vertically with color saturation changed to a green/blue tone Color @ 48%
See the finished version on Flickr

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Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

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