My first cover!

My first book cover, or at least the first one I've managed to find. Although my image (the bird and branches) only makes up a small portion of the cover I'm thrilled! And yes I'll be buying the book and will even read it, might have to read the previous books in the series first though.
Here's the book on Amazon
And here's my original photo on Flickr

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Off-Season becomes her

On my recent trip to England I drove to Eastbourne, which is about a 30 min drive east along the coast from Brighton, or as the locals call,
'London-on-Sea' as so many ex-Londoners have moved there over the past 20 years.
Eastbourne is the poorer, more sedate neighbor, boasting superb unspoiled white cliffs and the most popular suicide jump in the UK!
Its pier is by far the better of the two famous piers, Eastbourne's pier also retains its Victorian Camera Obscura, which was closed for many years after a fire. However, I read this is now open again, though sadly not on the day I visited! Its the big dome on the right.
My afternoon visit was gloomy one, thick Stygian cloud-cover hung ominously over a becalmed green sea. The piers lights were mostly off, which was a shame as I think the few lights that were on really added something.

The above picture was shot with a circular polarizer, as have all my UK trips pictures had because the dratted thing was stuck on! On my return to France I took it back to the camera shop and they managed to release it by simply wrapping doubled up elastic bands around the edge of the PL for a better grip, Its a great tip I wish I had known back in England!

For the processing, I wanted to enhance the gloomy feel, so I started with the soft grunge from Flypaper pack 2, moving on to Summer Painterly for the Stygian tin edges and finishing with Nuriel clouds, to give the sky a bit of oomph!

Burnished Clay - Overlay @ 100%
Lime Plaster - Multiply @ 73% flipped vertically
Labyrinth - Overlay @ 100% Desaturated
Stygian tin - Soft Light @ 100% Desaturated with bottom brushed away.
Lime Plaster - Multiplied @ 55% flipped vertically
Nuriel Clouds - Soft Light @ 100% Desaturated
Nuriel Clouds - color @ 21% Desaturated

Some grunge was gently brushed away from the pier and its legs, to allow more light through.

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A new dawn

During the midsummer, having just lost my Internet connection,
I discovered I had much more time to get out there and take actual pictures! This was one very early pre-dawn rising, I drove towards the local beach and decided this wheat-field with it's ruined stone barn might be a good spot for a sunrise.
The actual image was much darker but with the help of the new CS5 fake HDR facility I was able to boost the dark base of the image.
The base image above has already been lightened, but it was much too saturated so I used the original darker raw base image on top to tone it down.
This and the rest of the recipe is as listed, if its not too clear, please feel free to ask below!
When I had almost finished I decided it needed more 'elements', so I added the birds on the horizon and a mist to soften the horizon line and add, as the local French say, Je nes sais quoi? or in English - I don't know? - a little bit of atmosphere that was lacking!
Please note, all textures used here were blurred, except the Pans Sky texture.

Base image HDR over-saturated
Raw base image - Colour - @ 100%
Matmos Lake - Overlay @ 100% Desaturated to an Aubergine colour, flipped vertically to darken the sky.
Rose Blush - Overlay @ 100%
Aquarius - Overlay @ 27% Desaturated to a pink/green tone with the sliders
Sky layer; Pans Sky - Multiply @ 21% - warped, compressed 50% upwards.
Birds layer; Darken @ 48%
Horizon mist; a fingers-width of Lavender Skies - blurred - Screen 70% slightly brushed from front of barn.

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French farmhouse

This is one of those lucky shots that came about from shooting a blood red poppy field. Its just the horizon, with the foregrounds over-bright poppy field removed. That cloud is as it was, where it was, and I just left it hanging pensively in the corner!
From Summer Painterly;
Verdigris Overlay @ 44%
Copy of base image, desaturated with more contrast.
Iridescent Brush desaturated, Soft Light @ 100%
Matmos Lake - flipped vertically, desaturated and blurred, Soft Light @ 100%
Labyrinth-desaturated, from flypaper set 2, Overlay @ 100%

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Another Flypaper publication!

Before I start blogging again I thought I'd share this new French book cover publication of mine! Its interesting to show here because the texture I used was one of the first prototype Flypaper Textures!
Its now included in the very first Texture pack and is called 'necropolis'
Unfortunately I cant share this recipe as in those pre-Flypaper days, I didn't save all my layer info.
However, I do remember achieving this effect by applying Necropolis, desaturated and doubling up the base image with a B/W copy.
Photoshop Poster edge filters were also used to give that graphic hard edge.

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Sweetheart

A recipe for this one was requested by Debbie over at flickr so I thought I'd do a quick blog entry for anyone else interested.
The roses are Cecile Brunner commonly known as sweetheart roses, I love their tiny perfect buds and blooms. I took many photos of them yesterday but this one was my favourite of the bunch.

Archival Canvas @ Soft light 68%
Mulberry Silk @ Screen 25% removed slightly from the focus flower
Peach Blush@ hard light 36% desaturated and lightened slightly using a hue saturation adjustment
Peach Blush @ Soft light 24%

Archival canvas and Peach blush are from Tex Box 2, Mulberry silk from the painterly set.
See it bigger on Flickr

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Daisy

Paul is away on holiday in the UK at the moment and I'm sure he'll  come back  in a few days with some wonderful photos to texture  so in the meantime you're going to get yet another recipe from me.
I am slightly guilty of using the same textures over and over in my photos, this isn't a bad thing when you know the combinations work, but in this photo I decided to try and use some I don't use quite as much, try being the operative word!
Pistachio @ soft light 38% masked from flower
Basalt @ Overlay 60% masked from flower
Archival Canvas @ Soft light 29%
Verdigris Mist @ Overlay 32%
Copy of Background @ Soft light 52%
At this stage it looked okay but to my eyes anyway needed something to pull things together so....
Concorde @ Overlay 32%
Curves layer to tweak tone and contrast.

Pistachio and Verdigris Mist are from the Painterly set, Concorde, Basalt and Archival canvas from Text box 2.

See it bigger on Flickr

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Misty morning

This image was done for a texturing challenge over on Flickr, the starting image was kindly  provided by flickr member  Adrigu . Misty landscapes are always great to texture so I jumped at the chance to do this and thought I'd share my recipe here.

To start with I cropped the original rectangle square and roughly added some extra sky.
Serafina Sky @ Soft Light 100%
Concorde @ Overlay 100%
Copy of background @ Overlay 46%
Iridescent Brush @ Subtract  52% (subtract is a new blending mode that appeared in CS5, if you don't have CS5 you're going to have to experiment with some of the other modes)
Then I added the birds.
Brown blurred texture from seriykotik1970 @ overlay 83% this added warmth but didn't do all that much texturally. A warm colour blending mode would probably have achieved the same effect.
At this stage my photo looked like this

It was okay but needed a bit of "life" so I lightly used the fake HDR adjustment (in CS5), this brightened things and especially accentuated the painterly sky textures.  A careful curves adjustment may have achieved something similar.
Iridescent brush and Serafina Sky are from the Painterly pack, Concorde is from Tex Box 2.
See it bigger on Flickr

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Pretty Bells

Sometimes when you're using textures things come together perfectly first try. This is what happened with this image. Only a few textures were used too, and if I take a similar photo I think I'll be trying this combo again, in fact I might try it on the daisy photo I'm working on at the moment :-)

Ming @ Soft light 100%
Cobalt cloud @ soft light 100%
Cobalt cloud @ Screen 25%
Mulberry Silk @ Soft light 86 %

See it on Flickr

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