Creating an image

For those of you that know me you know I won't do any more than I have to to get an image, so here is probably one of the longest jobs I've done working up an image in photoshop.

The finished image first.

Now how it looked straight from the camera, quite a huge difference, don't you think.

So I cropped it, lifted it from it's background and got rid of the stem, giving me this

Then I dropped in a black back ground.

Then I applied a massive curve change which caused the colours to shift dramatically but not to seem fake, obviously that cat is out of the bag now.

But unfortunately I felt this was too dark so I applied a small adjustment in levels giving us the finished image (again)

I hope this has been of interest, if so do let me know and I might show you another some time

Until then, be well and enjoy

Seamus

On fire

For those of you aware of John Blakemores obsession with tulips I thought it about time to confess to my obsession with them also, to that end here is the latest one I have done, enjoy

Coming full circle

The first question I am usually asked by aspiring photographers is "What sort of studio/lights/equipment do I use?". I've thinking about it a lot recently having just started teaching 2 adult education classes in photography. In the good/bad old days of film I used one camera (Horseman LX), one lens (Schneider 135), one film (Polaroid Type 55) and one paper (Kodak Ektalure).

Mushroom (Doh!)

Now I find that I use one camera (Sony Alpha 350), one lens (Sony 50mm Macro), one film (digital) and one paper (Hahnemuhle PhotoRag 308). So no matter how much things change they also stay the same (relatively speaking of course).

Golden Tulip

Oh yeah, the one thing I forgot from that list is my fabulous lighting setup, natural diffuse daylight from my kitchen window.

Be well and enjoy

John Blakemore

Most of the time this blog is about my work but once in a while I will include something that means a lot to me and boy does John Blakemore mean a lot to me.

I first came across John's work in a pair of books, The Still Gaze and Inscape. To say the work blew me away is an understatement. It opened my eyes to a complete new way of seeing what a BLACK & WHITE image could be. The reason for the CAPS, well when I looked at John's work I was struck by the idea that the image didn't necessarily need either Black or White. I am fortunate to have been on 2 courses down at Duckspool with John where I learned so much..... oh enough from me check his new book out at Amazon or at the publishers website Dewi Lewis

Enjoy