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Here in the Languedoc, where the fauvist artistic movement made its home we’re blessed with over 300 days of sun, unfortunately many of those days are windy! It’s that same wind that keeps the clouds away and also makes my job as a landscape photographer harder as the light is very hard.
However, on the few autumnal or winter evenings when a sea mist rolls inland and just before the sun wakes up the wind, we sometimes have this lovely etherial combination of bright blue skies and thick sea mist. These mornings are the best for photography and I normally rush out of town with the camera as quickly as possible, as it only lasts an hour or so as the strong Mediterranean sun burns it off.
So here I was just outside Beziers, looking back in, I live on top of that hill, behind the Cathedral in the ancient quarter.
You wouldn’t believe it from this peaceful image, but this river is a killer, once a year or so the river swells up an extra 20 foot and just touches the tops of those Roman bridge arches, flooding all these bankside houses, school and ground floors, thus many don’t use their ground floors, no point. I say this as it happened again just last week!
I tried processing these images when I first shot them, but the top was too pale and the bottom too dark, it was before we had our Nik Colour Pro to rebalance, and I gave up, just couldn’t get it to work, so the other day when I rediscovered these files I thought, why not give it a go in my fab new Topaz Impression plug-in and see what happens? The result was a bit of a revelation, I didn’t even use the paint preset I created at full strength, as I knocked the opacity down to 50%.
I then ran it through Nik Colour pro to lighten the water and slightly darken the sky.
I then beefed it up in curves and finally to both warm and add our own Flypaper textures, I used just two, Sakura Skies, and Cassanova – totally colour desaturated.
The Sakura skies gave it a lovely warm pink Mediterranean glow, the Cassanova adding a rough but stylish grunge paint effect, the result im so happy with, I’d almost go as far to say, imho I’ve re-discovered and brought home Photographic Fauvism !
Topaz oil paint filter @ 50% opacity
Casanova – Overlay @ 65%
Sakura Skies – Overlay @ 66% – totally desaturated colour.
Casanova is from the August Painterly Pack and Sakura skies is from the Spring Painterly Pack
Please visit our Pack page or Combo Pack page to buy Flypaper Textures. Or our Preset Page to buy Nik Presets.
For information and more plug-in products please hit this hot link: Topaz