Annecy Canal
mouse-over for before view. 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 […]
Bell Tower
mouse-over for before view. I’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. […]
Cardabelle
Over the Easter weekend we drove up into our nearby southern Aveyron mountains to visit Auberge owning friends on the edge of a historic Knights Templars village, Commanderie de Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon a place I’d never been to or heard of before but ideally situated for A75 route national motorists, just a few kilometers south of […]
Martello Tower
This 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. These days several […]
sunrise through the pines
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. This occasion happened to be on my birthday, April the 21st – just […]
butterfly and view
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 […]
Prickly Pears
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! Didn’t do much at the […]
Eyam Cows
I’m just back from a rewarding few weeks traveling and this is one of my captures from England’s beautiful Derbyshire Dales. This part of the world was my old doorstep, as a student teen I even had driving lessons around these parts as my driving instructor didn’t trust me in city traffic! He said, […]
Tea cups video tutorial
By popular request we publish the full written recipe as seen in Martine Roch’s YouTube video we taped on sunday. Martine had been preparing a video Art lecture about her surrealist imagery to take to Mexico in June, and already had a bit of practice. So I suggested we do a fun little unscripted […]
a vine road less taken
This week I finally had my car returned from the garage after waiting 2 years to get my front Volvo bumper replaced as I had skidded in the mountain snow and had managed to plough up a stone farm wall and ended up at a 45 degree angle! Thankfully, I had a friend with […]
Chocolate Easter Egg Grunge
Today we have a sweet treat to follow the Paul’s entrée of artichokes! I bought these little eggs especially for photographic purposes -as a popular advert here in New Zealand would say “Yeah Right!” I managed to resist temptation long enough to take photos of them. No fancy lights or lighting for me, just […]
Dino
From central London its just a short overground train journey to get to Crystal palace, or what is left of it, after a huge fire burnt it to the ground in November 1936. Built for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, and later moved several miles south of the London river Themes, to Crystal Palace […]
Lily-of-the-Valley
Another small scented treasure that’s flowering in my garden at the moment. Lily-of-the-valley is one of my favourite flowers and I look forward to its season every year. It’s amazing how such a small flower can give so much fragrance, a tiny sprig can fill a room with it’s scent. Now the processing, I didn’t […]
jug and fresh soap
One of my greatest little luxuries is a really hot deep bath! And then from that bath my favorite view would have to be of freshly scrubbed, bleached pine tops, scented with French hand made lavender soap. So I’m lucky, here in my little French house to have such a bathroom! The thick pastel coloured […]
Roses transformed
This is a photo that’s been sitting in my archives for ages, I didn’t like the dark wood I had shot against so it had been rejected. This afternoon I had a bit of time to play and managed, quite easily too, to disguise the darkness. It’s inspired me, so hope it might inspire you […]
Blueberry
First of all I thought I’d tell you about the Photoshop texture blending scripts created by our friends over at Digital Outback Photo, they’re pretty easy to use and great for the photographer in a hurry! I do have a blueberry bush in my garden but this year for some reason they didn’t crop very […]
my own private little vineyard
Sunday morning was misty with freezing fog. Thus not to miss a perfect texturing opportunity, I drove out of town to get some bleak countryside pics. This cute little scene was glimpsed from the car, and so I did a fast ‘u’ turn to get back to it! The other pictures had the Cabana or […]
orbit around the winter sun
In January we often get these midwinter fairs, we think they all come south to over-winter, only returning to northern Europe in the spring. It was nice to see this fresh white painted Ferris wheel as they’re normally brightly colored. Taken from the ground, with a circular polarizer, the camera turned portrait format. A few […]
The miracle of positive thought
Its always a pleasure to share our published images. This book came out a few days ago, shot last summer, we’ve already shared the recipe, but here we’ve brought the two together! Translation: Where there is a will there is a way! The miracle of positive thought. This was shot a few mins after sunrise […]
Trio
Our country hut (or crib as they’re called in southern New Zealand) is situated beside a river in the midst of farmland. We have sheep on one side and cows on the other so I have plenty of four legged models. These “models” were in a paddock up a hill just a short distance away, […]
Ethereal
Weeds often make the best photos! These are the small flowers from a weedy shamrock leaved oxalis that pops up in my garden every year. I have a garden full of pretty flowers at the moment and then choose a weed to photograph. Anyway as requested here’s the texture recipe. I started by brightening and […]
Berry Christmas!
Who needs Christmas decorations when you’ve got natural ones in the form of berries! These are red currants, the birds get most of the ones on the bushes these days but in the past I’ve made red currant jelly, ice-cream and even wine! We’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a peaceful and […]
Bouquet
As requested by Debbie, here’s the recipe for my recent rose image. The photo is of the Cecile Brunner roses once again, and rather than give them the soft treatment I used last time, I decided to go for a more visibly textured look. The roses by the way are still flowering, might have to […]
Sweet Peas
Don’t sweet peas have the most wonderful fragrance? I wish I could share the scent with you all -as someone on flickr said at times like this we need a scratch and sniff computer screen! I have one of my neighbours to thank for these beauties, they grow in profusion over her fence beside the […]
