Paul Grand Image

Luminar ai sky

Luminar ai sky

Before the bleak mid-winter sets in, or high summer for our lucky Oz/Nz fans, we thought you’d like to hear about this fab new Luminar ai app which is a stand-alone app and/or works with Photoshop and Lightroom to breathe new life into your boring or blown-out skies, filling negative space from a list of included skies that come pre-packed inside the app or upload your own skies

Provencal Fountain

Provencal Fountain

Whilst picking up my first two swarms of honeybees in the Provencal town of Bollene I spied this typical French village fountain, I quickly took this picture and dismissed it as I thought I could never use it as it was too cluttered.

Only after we released our Provencal pack did I look again and started playing with it.  I chose one of our last years Nik Fly Pastel presets which blurred the edges, pulling it all together beautifully.

I then tried a very grungy zinc based texture from the Provencal pack and

On Frozen Pond

On Frozen Pond

I believe this is the first Flypaper Edges 3 blog so Im pleased to be able to post an already popular image I posted a couple of days ago on my Face Book and Flickr accounts! Captured a few weeks ago in the coldest part of winter when the farm pond in the field next door had been frozen over for weeks, much to the annoyance of the 3 ponies and the black waterfowl that live in these frosted brambles overlooking its banks.

Horse track into mist

Horse track into mist

Great to be back to almost normal after moving house a few weeks back.
We’re now in a rural area, away from the mountains and near the famous river Soane which is but a few fields away.
We’ve moved to a 300 year old half timbered farmhouse with a large treed garden and swimming pool. The best part is it’s a totally new area to photograph

Road to Carcassonne

Road to Carcassonne

Welcome to the first blog with the new Ethereal Textures used!
They say all roads lead to Rome, well this one more so as its a typical Roman road that leads from Carcassonne to Rome.
I just shot this quick view on my Iphone from the roundabout at Capestang, it was captured in a bitter north-westerly lunchtime wind but the processing makes it look like evening!

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.

Annecy Canal

Annecy Canal

Just back from eastern France, where we visited Annecy, the ancient lakeside mountain town on the Swiss border which, coincidently, during my time as a freelance Getty curator, whilst selecting mostly French imagery, I was delighted to finally visit the actual location of the famous Palais de l’Isle canal prison that I saw images of nearly every day whilst looking through Flickr.

Bell Tower

Bell Tower

’ve recently started using my Lensbaby again, with the Optic 80, ideal for tilt shift effects looking down from the mountains, and frankly a lot lighter to carry! Its also great for capturing a moody, painterly effect. Enhanced by the painterly filters in Topaz Impression and finishing with our Flypaper Textures.

Canal walkers

Canal walkers

Low winter light with its dramatic long shadows can be fabulous, it can also be very hard to process. Here’s one of several I shot just before Xmas at our Canal du Midi’s head of the UNESCO protected 17th century Five locks, i’ve photographed it many times, in fog, mist and even rain when it had its beautiful rows of Napoleonic ancient marching trees along each bankside, unfortunately this is all that’s now left, as they were all cut down last year because of a fungal infection spreading though the canal water all the way from the Atlantic coast, now finally reaching here in the Mediterranean coast after they think the