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These chaps were so easy to photograph. As soon as I walked up to the canal near Tonbridge Castle they were everywhere. I was only there for a minute or two but got lots of photos.

I’ve given this one a comic feel with the help of a PS action.

To me this shot looks like it’s an HDR image but I can ensure you that it’s not and most of the processing was done in Camera Raw with some tweaking in Photoshop.

Shot taken with my Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens, which I’ve not used in ages!

A peony in the back garden. I’ve had a little play with the saturation.

]]> http://www.e-lusion.co.uk/blog/2009/02/22/peony/feed/ 2 http://www.e-lusion.co.uk/blog/2009/02/21/drops-leaf/ http://www.e-lusion.co.uk/blog/2009/02/21/drops-leaf/#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:54:23 +0000 koltregaskes http://www.squashyfrog.com/?p=287 In a continuing effort to post something, anything here (instead of just leaving it to collect dust) I’m going to try and post a pic a day from my Flickr stream.  Nothing fancy, but please add your comments here and/or on Flickr.  I’d love to have any feedback on this and anything I post here, on Flickr as well as FriendFeed (which I’m trying to link to this blog as much as possible).  Today’s pic:

High contrast shoot of a water-covered leaf in the back garden.

Click on the image to go to the pic on Flickr.  There you can see the original plus comments already posted.

Dark and dirty (ie. the first photo) can be found here.

I’ve recently been taking him to a new place behind our vet.  It’s near a field of sheep but completely fenced off so he doesn’t cause them any grief.  It’s a long walk to get to it and so is very quiet, though the odd train going by does break the silence.  It’s also near the oh-so-lovely sewage works but I don’t really notice it.

You get a pretty good view as the field is on a hill so I hope to put up my shots from it.

This was taken on my trip to Hampshire and the New Forest where we found some wonderful donkeys . I was visiting my Aunt who lives with her dog in a mobile home very nearby. The couple in shot are my brother and his girl friend. As you can tell it was cold but you don’t know the half of it – it’s was really cold. We were having a quick wander around while my Aunt had a rest and over the hill we found a few horses and gusts of winds only normally found in the Arctic.

I took this shot and a closer shot but went with this one. From the original I tried to up the mood and atmosphere here.

Vote for the shot on PictPicture.

Flickr entry is here. And bordered is here.

During one morning the light outside our house was amazing. It was very moody and mysterious, so naturally I fired off a few shots. This is one shot which I’ve toned in sepia. I changed the tonal colours as the original lacked colour anyway and so thought the image would work in a sepia-style. Other than that I’ve not changed anything, so that is what the light looked like. Cool eh?

What you’re looking at is the view outside my office window. I’ve set myself up in a small downstairs room – nice a cosy. I saw this light just after getting up and logging on in the morning. The fencing you see is the basketball court that is mainly used by the local kids on the estate as a football pitch. It’s a big bone of contention it being their but if the kids didn’t have such things then they’ll be causing trouble on the streets elsewhere so we shouldn’t complain. The court is built in the middle of the housing on a small patch of grass and you can see the trees on the remaining part of the field.

It was amazing, not sure what caused it, was it the low light coming through the gap in the houses or something else? – but it only lasted 2 mornings and it’s not happened since.

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

Flickr entry is here. And bordered here.

A shot of my Golden Retriever, Kaz. He’s a poser as you can tell.
Seriously though, it’s very hard to capture him as he doesn’t stay still for more than a few seconds. At just 3 years old he’s is so full of energy especially when I take him out for his walk! I reckon he could keep going all day long!

But luckily on one of my early morning expeditions I caught him here. He was standing up on a mound near a pond while the Sun was coming up and the sky was a wonderful yellowy-orange. I think he might have heard a train coming and so went into ‘alert mode’ – Kaz loves to chase the trains, but so far he’s never caught up with one.

Again this is Edenbridge and at a place called Prettymans Pond. I’m not sure what it’s called that but it’s fantastic little pond and I’ve spent many an hour here practicing my photography and taking shots of the pond and the trees in every way I can think of. I’ve found that by going back to the same place over and over again you eventually see different angles for shots and find different ways of capturing the same subject. I’ve also tried to go here at different times of the day in different weather conditions. It’s been very interesting to see the changes these bring and I’ve certainly learnt how to look at things with a ‘photographer’s eye’.

This is a slightly adjusted photo (see below for original). I’ve cropped the top and left a little and increased the saturation throughout. Also I’ve lightened Kaz a little as he was a bit too dark. What does everyone think? I still think the sharp foreground branches are a little distracting?

In the process of creating this photo I thought of two questions:

Question 1: What is the best way to convert an image from Photoshop (PSD, TIFF) to JPEG? What I normally do is save the PSD as a TIFF then go into ACDSee and convert it there at max. quality to a JPEG (thus keeping the EXIF data). But this photo really highlights a problem (or two) I’ve noticed in that converting to JPEG reduces the saturation and darkens the brightness. Is there a better way to convert to JPEG to keep the exact tone of the image as well as the EXIF info?

Question 2: I had to refine and touch up the selection of Kaz in Photoshop as left alone he stuck out too much and his hair (especially his underneath) had a nasty line where one part of the image was dark+saturated and the other was bright+lightened. What’s the best way to blend these areas? I used the smudge tool on the selection layer and the result seems OK but is there a better way?

The original photo has been printed in the UK newspaper, Kent & Sussex Courier on 01-Feb-2008 (my first print!) and made it to onto Flickr’s Explore on Jan 8, 2008 at #434. The scan of the newspaper print is below:

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

Shot taken near Boxham Farm in Edenbridge, Kent (UK) and not too far away from my previous shot. The light was amazing that morning!I had scouted this area out previously and knew I had to be there for sunrise. So on the next occasion of a bright morning I was up and out the door at about 6:45am. I trekked up to here in the near-dark (which was a good half hour) and then basically waited for the sun to come up through the trees.

When it did, I was up and down this hill over and over, taking lots of different shots from different angles and of course with different light. If anyone saw me they would have thought I was a right nutter. But it was all worth it and got this and many other wonderful shots.

Second entry on Dark Matter Magazine’s web site. Blog entry is here.

Shot from 2007′s Wimbledon tennis championship. What I’ve done here is converted from an original photograph into a painting-style piece. I wasn’t too happy with the original – it was basically a reflex shot and not particularly in focus. But I thought the composition was pretty good and took the option to play around with it a little more and perhaps give it another look. I’ve tried many variations but thought this one came out best.

The player is Klara Zakopalova from the Czech Republic in her game with Hana Sromova against Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Tatjana Malek of Germany where she and Hana eventually lost. The part of the match we saw was great, even with a small rain break in the middle but this is Wimbledon so you wouldn’t expect anything else.

I went with my brother and it was our first time at the tournament. It was a superb experience and we’re hoping to go back in 2008. My brother has this idea of tenting outside the grounds overnight to get centre court tickets the next day, but will just have to see about that.

For a more detailed report on our day, head over to his entry and head here to find the better pictures of the day. And it’s well worth looking at a larger version of the picture to see the painting detail.

Here is the original has and it been used on a home page for a outside television broadcasting company:

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

I’ve been selected to post on the Dark Matter Magazine site. I feel very honoured to be among such fine artists so have a look. So here’s a copy of my first post there.

This is my (currently) home town of Edenbridge. A small place in the UK county of Kent, bordering Surrey and Sussex. This particular shot was taken near Boxham Manor which is found near Marl Pit. I get a lot of my shots from walking the vast amount of farmland here. It generally means very, very early mornings to beat sunrise, scouting around a bit then picking my spot. Sometimes, though, the spot is already in my head from previously seeing it but this shot was a ‘there and then’ and happy how it turned out.

If anyone is interested I used this picture to create one of my first HDR-style images. It’s an interesting way to create a picture but I’m not quite there with the technique yet. Have a below (second image). To me the photo becomes more like a painting?

As a second attempt I also produced the picture below (third image), but felt that the top left part of the image was too dark (and dark in general). Again, each had slightly different tonemapping settings. Let me know which one you prefer? I’m quite keen on the original myself.

Eventually I plonked myself in what I thought was a good position, a clear view of the riders coming round a bend with a bit of straight before me. Yep it was good, got a lot of good shots of riders practising. But I later found I was right next to the hospitably area and once the procession (a load a French cars and float-type trucks coming down the road at 100mph throwing all sorts of promotion junk at you or some nice ladies dancing for you – see below ) and the time trials started I saw very little. Hiding in their posh exec room they all flew out and completely blocked my view of the bend and straight.

So I was left with small gaps in the crowd, hence why my pics are of the cyclist side-on. I had to time my shots very well to get anything. And the resulting images are just a “handful” compared to what I did take – I got so many photos of just tiny bits of the cyclist in shot where I was either too quick or too slow with the release button. It was a good test though and luckily we had a nice policeman nearby and people seem chatty.

I didn’t stay all day, my legs and feet were aching from standing in one spot for hours but it was very cool and hope they do it again at some point.

Quick tip to the organisers though: more bridges over the track. I had to queue to walk over one and was there for 25mins!

More pictures came be found here.

Tour de France:
www.letour.fr/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France

Tour de France London:
www.tourdefrancelondon.com/