the setting colours

the setting colours (click to enlarge)

This shot was taken last August, in the skies over Birmingham in the UK. Id forgotten all about this sunset, which I managed to capture a day or two before we moved house. I came across them by accident this evening, and spent a rather relaxing hour or so sifting through them. I just love the colours, its just how I remember it.

One thing I think im going to do with this shot is work up a tutorial on how I got from the original to this. I was quite shocked when I looked at the original RAW file once I was done, and I’d only done some very basic stuff in Camera RAW and PS, so I’m gonna put together some steps on how to get much more colour and detail out of RAW shots.

I also had a play around this week with some textures from a guy called Skeletal Mess, who does some truly awesome work. Essentially at the moment there are two directories in my textures resource; “Skeletal Mess” and “Everyone else”. You can find his stuff here and all of his texture sets here. As always, if you use any of his stuff make sure you credit him :)

silhouette (click to enlarge)

path (click to enlarge)

is this art?

is this art? (click to enlarge)

This is part of a much larger peice that I have been doing at work for one of our promotions, but I thought it worked quite well as a minimalist desktop. I suppose the title is quite is quite double edged in many ways; maybe is should say “What is art?”

Christmas! With no Internet!

So its the 18th December. Im all set for some nice time off work, some relaxing, some DVD’s, some photography, some games… No. The internet dies. The one thing I actually need to do any of the stuff I wanna do! Great. But finally, now im actually BACK at work the net seems to have some back to life. Hurah!

Once again I am a bit fed up with how little content I am uploading these days, but I think im going to also post some of the work iv been doing at MP as well as just my photography stuff.

So what have we got this time round? Well, as you may guess: Christmas!

santa clause (click to enlarge)

Jo has these little santa claus dudes that she puts up around the house every year. They hang on the door handles and constantly irritate by stopping the doors closing. Quite like them though ;) This one is called Bert. Yes I named them all. Yes, I may have had a glass of wine or two.

the tree (click to enlarge)

And this is our tree! It sits right opposite the sofa in the other room, so you can see right through the house to it. It’s really quite nice, and framed nicely by the curtains to the back garden I think. Shame we’re gonna have to take it down this week. Was nice to look at for a while!

I really like how this image came out. It was a long exposure of about 10 seconds, which i’ve HDR’d with no saturation, and overlayed on top of the original image. I also played around with the Reticulation filter in PS (with a soft light blend mode) and adjusted the colour slightly using A and B channels in Lab Colour mode to get to final colours to work out. I also carefully cut out the curtains on the HDR layer, to get the colour to stand out more around the tree. I also added a very small black border to frame it slightly.

So there we go, thats my nights work! As I said im going to be uploading some of my design work from Multiplay to my blog as well now I think (the stuff I can put up anyway) and try and keep some photography work coming.

My mission this year is to get better grips with Illustrator, so hopfeully I’ll have some work posted from my adventure learning that soon too! I’ve also recently booked a trip to the Swiss Alps to go boarding in Feb, so hopfeully I’ll have some really nice work to post then ;D

nigel the pony

nigel the pony (click to enlarge)

We came across a little gang of wild ponies whilst walking round the fields near the office at lunch, and id just so happened to bring my camera along to get some snaps whilst the last of the 09 sun was out. This pony just stood and stared at me for ages. It didnt move. I walked right up to it and just continued to stare at me relentlessly. I took loads of photos, but this was the first image I took. There is something about this shot that is kinda haunting, maybe its the lighting, but when playing around in Lightroom the Selenium tone preset seemed to work quite well, so I left it. Haven’t really had much of a play with the Lightroom effects, but they are actually quite good for fairly basic stuff! Other than the Lighroom effect I just added a high pass over the top to bring out some more detail and gave it a slight border.

This looks really good when viewed large so make sure you click to view big on Flickr!

I think I’ll call him Nigel. That seems like a good name for a Pony.

dave, beaches and washed up size 9’s

red (click to enlarge)

So finally I’ve had the chance to take some more photography! Finally! So what have I been up to? Well Craig and the rest of Multiplay crew are keeping me rather busy, not only in work but also in planning things in the evenings and weekends that have been keeping me away from my camera! On the plus side iv been up to some fun stuff, which is great, and this weekend gave me the chance to get out and about on the south coast with some friends of mine who came visiting for my 27th birthday. How depressing. 30 is seriously looming now :/

The first pic is of my friend Dave climbing around on some beach debris we came across on Lepe Beach. The land you can see in the distance in the Isle of Wight, as we were literally on the bottom of the country. I really like this pic for a number of reasons, not least of which the sun starting to burst through the clouds to left of the image.

washed up size 9 (click to enlarge)

The second is a pic of an old washed up trainer, that Im guessing had washed up on the beach courtesy of one of the yaughts out to see. I really like how dramatic this seems to be, and it works really well in black and white, esp after some slight HDR’ing. It almost says that someone may have recently drowned, but I thought that naming it something like that was a little TOO dramatic!

brummies on the beach (click to enlarge)

I know, Iv gone into a full blown black and white mood. But I really love coastal shots in black and white! This one I feel I should have done more with maybe, but sometimes I guess less is more, so I let it be. Again, the sky plays a big part in this shot, along with the wooden pole in the water. Im almost tempted to put some colour back in this, but maybe on another day.

I feels really good to post some photography again! I know this will probably fail, but im going to try and get back onto some regular pictures from now on, esp now I’ve settled into the new job etc. We have an event coming up in a couple of weeks, so expect more LAN photography goodness! :D

the day we moved out

the day we moved out (click to enlarge)

So, after a month off it’s back to the grind of this blog eh? Hey ho. I didnt think id have been gone for quite this long, but truth be told it was quite nice to have some time away from the internets at home, and with my internet only being installed in the new house yesterday, it seems like its never been away already! Now that im sorted at home and in the new job, I guess its time to start working on some new stuff again :D

This is the field behind our old house on the day we moved out. It was a scorcher of a day (thankfully) and the field had only been harvested the day before, so it was a sea of wheat stalks. I sat here for a good twenty mins snapping away, but this was my fav. I love the texture in the crops, the sky was an awesome colour that morning too.

Hopefully I’ll get chance to go out and about more in the New Forest now that im down here, so expect plenty of me trying to get better at nature photography! This might mean I have to invest in some bigger lenses tho… oh well.

Also, thanks to everyone that took a look at my “life needs colour” peice that went on Abduzeedo; it had an insane amount of views and loads of nice comments and emails, so thanks a lot! :D

life needs colour

life needs colour (Click to enlarge)

I love the Daily Inspiration posts on Abduzeedo, if you have never been on this site then make it the one important thing you do today. This site is one of the main reasons I got so passionate about graphics design. The work that is showcased on there, not only by the guys who run it but also the people they find all around the world, is truly incredible. One of the recent Daily Inspiration posts got me looking through some of the more retro work they had found, and I couldnt help but LOVE some of the colours on them. I have a real thing for grungy type art, and combine this with a retro feel and you’ve got a style that I completely and utterly adore.

I had an idea for creating a kind of patchwork quilt of colours, which got me tinkering in photoshop and Kuler (see one of my previous posts on this awesome site) to try and come up with some combinations that worked. The key to this I found is not to go too overboard with the amount of colours you use. Its important to keep a kind of colour “theme” when finding a colours for your work, but without going too overboard as to flood your audiences brain with too much at once. In this instance I have 8 distinct colours to start with, but with lighting and texturing there are actually way more in the finished product.

I think im going to put together a tutorial on how I did this one, as im really proud of how it came out. Seriously though, if you’ve never been on Abduzeedo get your ass there right now :)

insomnia lan #i37

As I type this I have a huge cup of black sugary coffee, which is just about keeping me concious. I am SO tired. But i37 was worth the sleep deprivation. It was a fantastic weekend, with over 2000 gamers packed into the biggest LAN of the year in the UK. Much of the fun was had, with tournaments running for the 3 days solid, tens of thousands of pounds in prize money given away and much beer was consumed (altho some people need to learn there limits!). Radio 1, More4, and BBC1 all came down in some form to cover the event, as well as countless gaming websites, so thanks to all who showed their support! Also a big thank-you to Radio1’s DJ Dev, who was an infinately nice guy, and even came back for a second day at the event to play some more Street Fighter 4 against the masses.

the main gaming hall @ i37 (click to enlarge)

It was also quite a surreal weekend for me, with a random thumbs up outtake from one of the iLive coverage video’s being made into a water mark of approval on my behalf, that then ended up all over the LAN. Apparently it even made it onto 4chan, but I havent seen it.

This was the moment:

I approve of this blog

This ended up everywhere, even to the point where a very talented chap called Snakebyte in the main gaming hall took time out from his case wrap illustrations to do this awesome drawing of me:

awesome drawing of me by Snakebyte

Of course I had to approve this:

Shedboy approves of this drawing of Shedboy approving

Im hoping to get a copy of this at some point, although I didnt get to meet Snakebyte at the LAN myself as I was only shown this after he had left, which was a real shame! He did do some really awesome work at the LAN, which you can see here. Make sure you check out all over coverage of the events, including all the photograhy which can be found on the Multiplay i37 coverage pages, and all the iLive video bytes that we did, which can be found on the Fileplay site in HD.

To all those who took part in the world famous i-Series quiz this time round (at least 500 people); you tried your best but we just rocked all night long ;)

Team "In range of Craig" celebrate their win (Click to enlarge)

the xrayed console round was inspired (Click to enlarge)

the quiz is as rammed as ever (Click to enlarge)

Also commiserations to the punters in the Staff vs Punters boat race, who once again fell at the hands of the mighty staff in the only competition that really matters at any i-Series LAN :) Despite the blatent CHEATING which can be seen below (shame on you punters; you can only start drinking once the person before you has finished and placed their glass on their head! tututut) you got well and truly served!

FLAGRANT cheating from the punters (Click to enlarge)

the glass is placed on the head once done (Click to enlarge)

the boat race is much of the fun (Click to enlarge)

Elye's mouth is clearly not big enough (Click to enlarge)

Thanks to everyone who came and made the weekend so awesome, and see you at the next one!

go walk about

go walk about (click to enlarge)

Every so often, you should go walk about, just because you can.

insomnia 37

insomnia 37 (click to enlarge)

It is offially mere. *\o/*

LAN time is upon us once again, and so I have put together this poster to commemorate the impending 37th installment of the Insomnia LAN this weekend. Might produce a different poster for each LAN from now on, might be quite fun!

Tried experimenting with some light painting for this one, although iv never really tried any before I discovered that its very easy to get carried away! In the end I toned down the light to something a little more simplistic. Im very pleased with the background in this peice, I think it came out at around 40 odd layers!

For all those going this weekend, have a good time and see you there; il be the one shoving the camera in your face all weekend :D