Five

Another shot taken on a walk on the lovely Doctors Point Beach just to the north of Dunedin. These same people appear in a similar shot but I processed this one quite differently which shows how a different textures can give the same scene a whole new look. As well as some Flypaper Textures, I used a new one that will be available in a soon to be released pack once we've made up our minds what to include :-)

To start with I duplicated the the base layer, I then blurred that layer using the lens blur and added a layer mask and removed the blur from my subject, the people
The textures I used were
Tarte Tatin @Soft light 45%
Shargreen Bone @Overlay 45% This layer had a mask added to remove the texture from the ground area.
Bruised Saffron @ Overlay 13%
Lamp White Brush @ Soft light 25 % with the texture removed from the ground as before.
Unnamed new Flypaper (available soon!) @ Overlay 77%

Bust and tree

On the same day but taken just before the last 'Reflected Light' posting. This is inside our Beziers Park of the poets, decorated with many stone carved busts. Its made up of two pictures, merged in photoshop, as my Autopanopro was playing up!
A more finished/textured version of this image is on my Flickr site.

As always the textures are from the first used.
Apple Blush - Opacity - Soft Light 43%
Necropolis - Opacity - Soft Light 72%
Caramel soft - Opacity - Hue 54%
Raw Linen - Opacity - overlay 21%
Raw Linen - Opacity - overlay 21%

reflected light

Walking back from our local 'Park of the Poets' in Central Beziers,
I came across this dark and narrow bow terrace.
The lowering sun reflecting off the opposite houses stucco in an interesting way, lighting the upper apartment windows.
You'll see I've removed a mass of visual pollution from the skyline, aerials are the one thing I almost always clone out!
Processing was easy, I just used several textures to build up a good depth of grunge.

Caramel Cream - Overlay - Opacity @ 84%
Dangerous Liaisons - Overlay - Opacity @ 27%
Orient Express - Multiply - Opacity @ 35%
Raw Linen - Soft Light - Opacity @ 100%
Pompeii Stucco - Overlay - Opacity @ 18%

See it on Flickr

Faded Memories

These half dead flowers are the remainder from an earlier photo session but they caught my eye when I was trying out my new 50mm lens. Focusing at f1.4 is very hit and miss I can see even with auto focus :-)
Processed with Flypaper Textures Tarte Tatin @ Soft light 36%
and Pompeii Stucco @ screen 33% (softened slightly with a guassian blur) A layer mask was used to remove some of the texture from the flowers.
Finally I used a curves layer for a final adjustment to the tone.

Have a great weekend everyone! I'm looking forward to some time for some more experimenting with my new toy:-)

See it on Flickr

Flypaper Textures: Cow on the Hill

We visited our "hut" in the country during the weekend, it's situated beside a river in the midst of farmland so we had sheep over one fence, someone making hay in the paddock over the river and over the road there was a large herd of dairy cows.

I processed this lady with Flypaper Textures once again..
First was a layer of Dangerous Liaisons @Soft light 65% this brightened the image a little.
I followed with a layer of Nora Batty @ Overlay 100% this layer was blurred to soften the texture a little
Then I added a layer of my favourite Apple Blush @ Multiply 73%
Finally I tweaked the tone using a curve layer and added a slight vignette using the lighting effects filter (see my previous post for details on how to do this).
And the result...a more painterly cow :-)

The Happy Couple - Flypaper Textured :-)

About a month ago I visited a local beach with my son, intending to take photos of him but when we looked over the sand dunes we were surprised to see this pair of NZ Sea Lions a short distance away. Naturally I rushed back to the car to exchange my short lens for a longer version as these guys don't like you getting too close, they are surprisingly fast movers too and you had to keep an eye on them especially if you got between them and the sea.
This is but one of the many photos I took that afternoon and was processed with Flypaper Textures to add a bit of depth and a vignette

The Flypaper Texture I used was Caramel Soft, as well as adding texture it gives a slight vignette effect. I used it at Soft Light 100% This layer was blurred an desaturated.
As well as the texture I used a vintage film effect (a combination of curves, colour layers etc) to mute the colours.
Once I was happy with the effect I used the stamp visible command on a PC it's Ctrl -Alt -Shift -E duplicated that layer and changed it to a Smart object from the drop down filter menu, this wonderful feature which was introduced in PS CS3 lets you go back and edit your filter settings.
Then I used Render lighting from the Filter menu to add more of a vignette. From the render lighting dialogue I selected a 2'oclock spotlight and omni and then tweaked the settings, this can take a while as there are lots of controls to play with, as well as intensity you can also change the colour of the light and the size etc.
See the following screenshot for more details.

I reduced the opacitiy of the lighting layer to about 50% After a final curves layer to adjust the contrast I called it done!

red box

Back in early July we made a special trip to the beach at sunset just to photograph the full moon rising over the Mediterranean.
The light was superbly opalescent, and I was lucky, as I captured several nice images as well as the later moonrise.

This is one, a huge red container, not sure why it was there or what it contained, but being this amazing rust,
the final rays of the sun turned it into a stunning bright red.

The base image has already been brightened, I only needed a texture to beef up the tones and give a slight vignette effect.
I chose just one, Caramel Cream - soft light Opacity - @ 45%
This was given the full 'Gaussian blur' treatment for a really smooth finish.
I gave the final image a clean up with a slight paint effect, and removed a group of people on the left with the clone tool.
If you look on my Redbubble thread, you'll see another more painterly version.

Night Surf

Sometimes the most interesting shots happen as accidents.
I was playing with moving my camera during a longish exposure at the end of a beach walk and this was one of the resulting photos.
My processing was simple, I used a blue toned (with a hue saturation adjustment) and slightly blurred Caramel Soft @ Overlay 100%
A final tweak of tone and contrast and voila it was done!

derelict farmhouse

Whilst on the way to the beach yesterday,
with a slight sea mist over the vineyards.
I came across this derelict farmhouse in a sea of golden vines.
'Chasse Gardee' I'm told, means strictly licensed hunters only.

Apple Blush - Soft Light Opacity @ 29%
Raw Linen - Overlay Opacity @ 100%
Necropolis - Overlay Opacity @ 39%
Caramel Soft - Soft Light Opacity @ 27%

Both the final Necropolis and Caramel Soft textures were brushed off the left side of the image to help balance the tones.
The hard canvas texture of Raw Linen was left to help pull it all together.

Leave only Footprints...

Hot off the camera....Taken on a lovely walk on the beach this evening -there was some dramatic storm light and the sea looked amazing and even if my photos didn't do the scene justice, it was great just to be there.

This one looked okay before but I thought I'd see what I could do with some textures, it was processed using these Flypaper Textures.
Shargreen Bone @Soft light 31%
Grosgrain @Overlay 76%
Another layer of Grosgrain @Overlay 76% but this one was slightly desaturated and its hue was tweaked so it was slightly more yellow
Apple Blush @Overlay 47%
Dangerous Liaisons @ Soft Light 54%
I finished with a curves layer as usual to tweak the tone and contrast.