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

In the corner of a French field

This French farm stone mazet or finca was leaning in an alarming way, anybody who's seen the leaning tower of Pisa would instantly get the idea! So, I corrected it by slightly pinching the ground with the CS warp.

These structures were lived in by poor Mediterranean farmers, normally just two rooms, one up, one down. The animals slept downstairs and the farmer on top.
Often the iron animal feeders will still be in place along a wall with a corner cooking/fireplace just where it was over 100 years ago.
Outside there is always a deep artesian well, normally these wells have a fig tree growing next or even out of them.
If you ever need to find the old well in the south of France, just look for a fig tree, and that's where it will be. In my first French village house I found the old garden well by this very same method!

For this image, I had in mind a kind of bashed-up and rusting Victorian biscuit tin lid. It sometimes helps if you have even a slight vision or end goal in mind, then you can then start opening your chosen chocolate box of textures and try each of them!

Firstly, I always like to re-size my image to 4000 pixels along one side, to match the textures, this helps speed-up the selection process.
I'll normally double up the base image and use a slight painterly effect.
only then do I start to play with the textures..

As ever, I list the first texture used to the last, as sequence is important!

Aquarius - Linear Light @ 72%
Brushed Rose - Color @ 30%
Europium - Vivid Light @ 50% (brushed from center and dark corners)
Touchstone - Soft Light @ 57% (brushed from lower left dark corner)
Mouse - Overlay @ 100% (brushed from over the top of the sky)
Mouse - Hard Light @ 60% (flipped horizontally, balancing the last)
Stygian Tin - Luminosity @ 79% (turned terracotta in saturation)
Base image - Overlay @ 100%
Desert Djinn - Normal @ 10%
Fly Edges number 30 - Saturation @ 60%
(some of the left and right edges clipped off)

You can see the finished big version on my Flickr.
Please feel free to leave feedback!:-)

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

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!

Daisy had issues

The story came about with the bar code idea.
Daisy is a radicalized cow, she always has issues and frequently stomps around the fields with slogans painted on her sides.
Today's protest is not wanting to be just a number. Her long-suffering farmer owner loves to see what she's come up with every morning.
Naturally she's the head of the herd, and always gets the best milking position.
She's one clever cow!

In this Flickr Challenge we had to use textures on Jill's start-off Cow image.I think this surreal cow idea came after seeing Swiss Chocolate advertising many years ago in Hamburg. Its not so new, but I like to think my texturing is! :-)

First I took a photograph of a bar code from a newspaper, and overlaid it onto the cows back after first roughly cloning out the black saddle markings.
I used a quick magic wand to remove the white newspaper background and defringed by 6 pixels.
I then applied a simple warp mode with the 50% visible bar code to roughly get it onto the back in the right position,
it takes a little practice but is fairly easy once mastered.
I softened the bar code and made it slightly fuzzy with gaussian blur @ approx 1.5%.
Next I flattened and made the whole thing B/W and then chose a sepia tone. To pull the whole thing together I used these flypaper textures:

Flypaper Edges #27 - pulled square - Hard Light @ 71% softly brushed away from cows features
Leaden Hall - Hard Light @ 100% softly brushed away from cows features.

Don't forget our earlier packs...click on the sidebar links, the combo offer for packs One and Two is still running too :-)

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and 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.

Snow Seeds

Happy May Day!
For a slight backward step, as I produced this image several weeks ago, when still experimenting with the new Fly Edges.

It's always a leap of faith when trying something you've never done before. I'd taken these last snows of the year pictures, and had a kind
of Lomo effect planned for them, but thought I'd just give them a try with the pre-launched edges first, and what an epiphany!

The new edges when used in a very hard way like this are ideal for classic, timeless minimal image enhancing.
However, its still early days and we hope to show many more such leaps of faith!
Though I say myself, I was quietly pleased with the outcome, as was Getty Images, who snapped it up!
Happy days:-)

Base image
Fly Edge #24 Hard Light @ 98%
Base image Soft Light @ 100%
Base image Soft Light @ 100%
Fly Edge #24 Multiply @ 97% texture removed from middle of seed heads - to lighten

Flatten image or merge all.
Slight brightening in curves to finish.
Please note;
This fly Edge texture #24 was first flipped before using in this image.

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!

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.

Apples

These very small and very scruffy apples came from a roadside tree, I'd picked them hoping they'd be sour as I had intended making a savoury chilli jelly,  I discovered however that  they're sweet with very tough skins....definitely not for eating but they made good jelly.
I liked how they looked in front of my newly purchased bowl -you'll be seeing more of that in the future:-)

Because of the simple subject matter I wanted to give this  a clean look so I processed fairly simply
Apple Blush @ overlay 42%
Apple Blush @ Soft light 48 %
Peach Blush @ Multiply 66 % this was just to give the apples a little more depth so I removed much of the texture from the background.
And finally to add a little softness .....
Fly Edge 8 @ soft light 25 %

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!

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.

Iris

Last week, armed with a piece of black card, I took the dog a walk to our local Park of the poets to photograph iceland poppies, thankfully as the wind was low I managed several acceptable shots. See it on Flickr .

Later, at the duck pond I took a few experimental shots,
I couldn't see a thing in the bright afternoon sun and so tend to guess, this Iris is one such lucky shot! That's green pond water in the background.
This selected image worked because the background was blurred or out of focus.
I spent ages on this recipe, but decided, finally, the colour was just too bright, so after flattening,
I desaturated around 50%.
The secret to getting a good effect here is the careful, neat brushing, removing the Fly Edges No.3, the second texture used, from the flower.

Fly Edges No.3 - Soft Light @ 100%
Fly Edges No.3 - Normal @ 81% (texture brushed from flower)
Fly Edges No. 10 - Hard Light @57%
Lime Plaster - Hard Light 100% (texture brushed from flower)
Lost Void - Overlay @ 19%
Lost Void - Soft Light @100% (flipped)
Copy of Base image - Soft Light @ 100%

Merge all together, save
De-saturate around 50% Save
Here I decided the whole thing was too soft, so...
Double up base image, to the top image, do this:
Filter - Sharpen-Unsharp Mask
Filter - Artistic-Pallet knife 10%
Filter- Artistic- Poster Edges10%
Brush this top layers background away from flower leaving flower sharpened only.
Merge, two layers, save.

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Both texture Packs!

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.