Paul Grand Image

Paint it Black!

Paint it Black!

by | Nov 19, 2014 |

My first apartment in London after moving south with a college friend after graduating in the 1980’s was in the Hasidic north London Jewish area of Stamford Hill. Our charming Anglo German landlord and his wife we discovered to our embarrassment as we were hiding our pet cats, were drinking tea in our apartment on arrival! whilst meeting we noticed that they both had faded blue German WW2 ID numbers tattooed on their wrists, which we’d seen before on Holocaust survivors up north. On departing his final friendly though bizarre words were;

Lonesome Bison

Lonesome Bison

by | Nov 7, 2014 |

After an unusually warm autumn up here in the French Jura, we were finally blessed with an overnight snow fall and so we drove up early into the
nearby ski resort and snapped away until lunch time, passing a bison farm en route and shooting them eating fresh hay, all the other cows having being taken indoors and finally buying a load of freshly churned mountain butter and their local Comte cheese to take home with us.

Snow Trees

Snow Trees

by | Mar 27, 2014 | ,

Welcome to the first Paper Painterly Textures Blog Post! Im currently delighted to be staying in the French Jura again, near the Swiss border as a returning guest of my art college friend I recently re-discovered living right here in France;  Amanda!
This image was from my last trip up here, but as ive just arrived we’ve not been back up to the snow line above the town yet so it may or may not be still like this when we plan to take another cross country ski trip over the weekend.  As you can see from the original image, it was purposely exposed quite dark to get a nice full range of tones around the watery sun

Martello Tower

Martello Tower

by | Feb 5, 2014 |

his Martello tower is the most northerly of the original remaining 103 towers erected and is situated in Aldeburgh on England’s east coasts Suffolk county, built around 200 years ago to defend England from Napoleon, for which happily they were never needed. But later used in WW2 for various gun postings.

sunrise through the pines

sunrise through the pines

by | Jan 25, 2014 |

Had to get up at the crack of dawn or with the lark as we English say, with the intention of trying to catch any morning mist whilst staying at my sisters house which is situated in woodland in Surrey, England.

Dock Surfers

Dock Surfers

by | Dec 2, 2013 |

Perhaps its sacrilege to say but sometimes you’ll have a batch of images that don’t suit textures!  They might already be busy enough or too dark, flash images or like the one above where I just wanted to keep it clean so you can still see the water splashes clearly. Its sister image ‘Jump’ that went viral on the net was slightly textured, but only to rebalance and colour, though that was way back as these days we’re cooking with gas, we love Nik color Efex pro here at Fly central and we love Flypaper Textures, put them together and you have a marriage made in heaven!

butterfly and view

butterfly and view

by | Nov 17, 2013 |

As its now cold and wet outside its nice to revisit unprocessed images from back in june whilst traveling in England. I stayed overnight at Leeds Castle, confusingly located in kent where I stole this shot of their cottage gardens looking down over the lake towards distant woods. You can just catch a glimpse of the lake between the topiary hedges

Prickly Pears

Prickly Pears

by | Sep 22, 2013 |

It’s a little known fact, but whilst at school I was a nerdy member of the South Yorkshire Cactus and Succulent Society, and wore a cute little prickly pear opuntia sticking out of a house of York white rose enamel badge, unkindly abbreviated to… well, we wont go there!

Medieval

Medieval

by | Sep 8, 2013 |

Another image from the grounds of Leeds Castle in Kent, I came across this interesting themed hillside camp-site situated beyond their large vineyard which can be glimpsed in the background, and found they’re now running a new Glamping site!
All these lovely fresh new tents with their different primary colours were glowing in the morning sun, however, some were occupied so I didn’t like to get too close!

The Lake House

The Lake House

by | Sep 3, 2013 |

If like us, you’re just back from holidaying  you’ll also have reams of new images to process. So with this in mind we’ve come up with a new idea, to help you on your way we’ll give you a head start with our Nik Color Pro free Fly Preset download, just hit this LINK and you’ll have the preset I created yesterday when I processed this English holiday picture, it’s a good all-round preset, and it compliments our Flypaper Tin edges beautifully. If you guys approve and we get some nice feedback, we’ll then be encouraged to share more of our Nik Presets!