Aged, distressed look

I have been working on aging or distressing some photos recently and thought I would post this example. There are some good presets in lightroom for an antique look but these rely on usually lowering the saturation of a photo, adding a brownish tone and a vignette. It is a reasonable effect but to take it a step further you need texture. This image has 3 textures layered in various blend modes to give a decent aged effect. I also reduced the saturation with a Hue/Sat adjustment layer. The textures can be anything from old brickwork, woods or metals. The texture used in this one was from an old wall with decaying plaster.

Emley Moor Mast

I've recently been asked by a few people if I had any shots of Emley Moor Mast so I thought I would head up there and see what I could get. I did have a few older shots but wanted some new ones really. These were two of my favorites.

The first was my standard 16mm wide landscape that I like doing, with a 3 stop graduated filter to keep the sky from being blown out. I really liked the sunburst but wasn't a great fan of the bits of glare here and there so I had to clone out a couple of spots. I did have my polariser on which isn't much use into the sun, these add to the glare so I've only myself to blame. The second one was a telephoto landscape taken at 100mm, it has the effect of compressing the elements and obviously the mast is more prominent.

Abercastle harbour, Pembrokeshire

Thought I would post another from my trip to Wales. This is a small port (or harbour, not sure what the difference is) called Abercastle in Pembrokeshire just as the sun was on it's way out. I wasn't using a tripod so the exposure was a bit of a compromise, not made any easier by adding my polarizer, which will get rid of 2 stops of light at it's full effect. So I needed to get decent DOF, decent ISO and a shutter speed I could keep steady, and I don't trust my hands to stay steady as I grasp onto a cliff face above a harbor so I ended up with ISO250 1/80, f/7.1 at 16mm.

More War

Another one from my forthcoming war collection which I'm tinkering with as releasing as limited ed prints (bit pretentious I know). I'm going to do a total of 25 images with a run of 25 on each image. I've brought in a few props, in this one we can see the famous Sherman tank bearing down on the Germans. Anyway the partially complete gallery of these shots can be seen here. Take a look if you have a spare few minutes.

One Man and his Dog

Granted the man and his dog are a fair way away in this photo but I had my wide lens on so this is the best I could do. This was taken during a nice spell of hot weather in the Pembrokeshire National Park. I'm endeavoring to do more landscapes using the sun as a focal point in the harshest of conditions (in lighting terms) for no other reason that the sun gets up far earlier than I do. I'm still getting shots during the golden hour at sunset though. The sky was kept from being blown out by my trust 3 stop graduated filter, I really liked the star burst effect this gives. There was minimal processing with this shot, just a quick mono conversion in Lightroom and a few dust spots cloned out. Taken in full manual mode. ISO320 1/100 sec f/11 at 17mm.

Another Little Planet - Leeds

I was in Leeds yesterday trying to do some more 'little planet' shots and came up with this one outside the Queens hotel. I was going to do one from millennium square but it had been closed off because of some concert or festival. These are really quick and easy to do, just set up a tripod and spin round taking snaps, ignoring the bemused look of people who are certain you are tracking them and only them! I used PTGui to join them then in Photoshop make a square canvas and rotate the image 180 degrees and use the polar coordinates filter, and thats it, you might want to clone in a bit of floor or even better take a snap of the floor when you are done and use that.

Marco Soldier Art

I'm doing a small collection of images using old toy soldiers and this was one from the first batch. Pretty simple set up, one light coming from the left and a small amount reflected off a white board on the right, quite a dramatic result.
I used a 50mm macro lense and set the camera to full manual and dialed in ISO200 f/16 1/100sec. I was also using a new border style today, more to try and define it as art rather than Haribo toy product shots!