In France balance is everything, I live near two coastal volcano’s; looking eastward from our beach we can see Agde and ten miles further along the coast on a clear day we can see Sete, which is an island connected by a spit of land.
Back in London we celebrated the 2000 millennium on the Thames riverbanks lit up by an amazing fireworks display, a year later, the French had their millennium, and as I’d just moved to France in Dec 2000 I was in time to do it again! This time I was invited to an all night New Years Eve party thrown by a a wine growing count who’s a family friend in the area where this photograph was taken, his vineyard is at the coast and the family also manage a holiday chalet site popular with Nordic nudists! He asked me as an ‘English’ what should he leave as a welcoming gift in their holiday chalets, red, white or rosé wine?
Flippantly I said ‘rosé of course’! I later felt guilty, and wondered if this was the right thing to have said? I needn’t have worried, as the old cliché of the nudist quaffing a rosé blush proved to be on the money, and he’s now very successful, giving vineyard tours and film shows to visitors, showing wine growing and then flogging his own very good, aristocratic labelled wine to them.
I digress, this cute little lighthouse is one of a pair on the mouth of a wide river, at Agde, it’s on a volcanic spit of rock that is mirrored on the other side by another red topped lighthouse and is beautifully balanced, reminding me of the counts wine bottles with their green and red foil tops!
I shot this with the new lens baby optic 80, whilst walking to the lighthouse, I shoot many photographs as a rule, and it’s wise to do so with a lens baby as so many end up out of focus.
After processing, a friend spied my unfinished image on the Imac, and said;
“I’d remove the couple on the left and that bin behind them” – Sage advice I took, and you’ll see they are now removed, cloned out, from the finished image.
I processed using our superb, free photoshop CS5; Dr Russell Brown script panel which he invented for flypaper textures, and by the way he’s told us the upgraded panel will soon be available to hold many more full size textures! Dr Brown, constantly reinvents himself in his tutorial videos and is quite a comedian, getting his serious software message across in an amusing way, reminding me of my wine growing count who also makes serious wine and now has evolved into a part- time stage comedian, how balanced is that?
Creme Anglaise – Multiply @ 29%
Creme Anglaise – Color Burn @ 29%
Aquarius – Soft Light @ 100%
Touchstone – Screen @ 61% Brushed away from above the water-line
Finally running through Nik colour efex pro to add a rich yellow tone to the stone jetty.
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