Distressed Painterly Pack

Pretty

Pretty

It’s been a while since we’ve had some floral prettiness here on the blog!  This was taken in our New Zealand spring a few months back. The flowers grow over the fence just down the hill from where I live and I couldn’t resist picking a sprig while passing, I’ve no idea what they are but they’re a beautiful subject, especially when paired with one of my little oriental styled teacups.

Catlins

Catlins

During the recent summer holidays we paid a visit to the Catlins, a beautiful unspoilt coastal area to the south of Dunedin. The day we visited it wasn’t very summery, but looking on the bright side, the overcast showery conditions did lead to wonderfully moody photos, the kind that are so good for texturing. After a walk to Jacks Blowhole  (stunning coastal views but a fairly chilly walk since I was dressed for summer); we stopped for lunch at a bay at the mouth of the Catlins River

the vacancy

the vacancy

Welcome to our first blog of 2016, here’s to hoping you, our Dear reader, had a good Xmas and New Year? 🙂
Just going through my old external hard drives and came across this Eastbourne shoot I’ve dipped into many times and was even lucky enough to sell a few, the last was to the UK Guardian newspaper.

Hotel Concorde

Hotel Concorde

Welcome to the first Cracks blog, with a bit of a graphical bent, because over the last weekend I found myself both homeless and then booked into this Hotel courtesy of our local Mayor of Beziers, M. Robert Menard who met us outside the house and was both charming and sympathetic after a huge fire in the adjoining property made their towering party wall unsafe and liable to fall and crush our house. I was lucky because I was already planning on driving up to the Jura on the Sunday so only had to rough it for two nights and our two cats were reasonably happy in my renovation project house around the corner.

Winter Rose

Winter Rose

t’s been a while..sorry! Blame holidays and suchlike. You’ll be pleased to know spring is finally starting to spring here in southern New Zealand (though it doesn’t feel much like it today)! There’s not a great deal in flower in my garden yet, but the Hellebores more commonly called winter roses are in flower, they start flowering midwinter and brighten the garden when there’s not much else around. I picked some and discovered they aren’t the best as cut flowers but before they drooped I did manage to photograph them.

Feather Light

Feather Light

I got a new macro lens for my lovely little SonyA7 a couple of weeks and I can definitely say that it’s money well spent! It’s a Sony 90mm F2.8 and the results are beautifully clear and sharp and it has wonderful bokeh. I’m looking forward to having more time to play with it. In the meantime, since flowers are in short supply here with it being winter, I’ve been taking macros of anything that catches my eye, kitchen tools, fences, things from the workshop and feathers!

Hydrangea Blue

Hydrangea Blue

Not another hydrangea I hear you saying 🙂 I’m of the opinion that you can never have too many! They’re such photogenic flowers especially my favourite blue variety. This was textured with a mix of old and new Flypapers, one texture came from our ever popular Summer painterly pack and one from the brand new Distressed Painterly.

Distressed Painterly Launch

Distressed Painterly Launch

Although delayed by server problems, at last, our first new textures set launch of 2015!
Always wanting to give that bit more with each new Flypaper pack, for this new Distressed Painterly pack, think Shabby Chic!:-)
Think of it as a kind of two-part pack with traditional grunge painterly goodness to first texture your images in the time honoured way and then why not go the whole hog and Crackle Glaze them! The choice is entirely up to you, with this packs 45 king sized textures there is something to please everyone, for our loyal traditional grunge texturers and our newer painterly fans who have requested cracks on many occasions!