Crossroads

So this week, the sun came out! Only for a bit, but long enough that I could actually get out into the forest and take some pics. I have taken a few recently, which you can see on my flickr, but the one I’m most pleased with is my panorama of the crossroads:

Crossroads (click to enlarge)

I think the thing I love most about it is the light leaking over the horizon, which is a result of it being sightly misty in the distance im guessing. I love how the colours have come out, although I had to work quite hard to get end result, especially from the sky.

This is HRD’d from a single exposure, which didn’t really bring out much in the way colours in the sky. If you’ve ever tried HDR you’ll be familiar why the GREY SKY OF DEATH, which is just devoid of colour, becoming an overbearing grey mass over you’re actual shot.

Trey Ratcliff has a good technique for getting over this, which I recommend you go and read. Just Google “Stuck In Customs” and look for his HDR tutorial.

There is a little bit of texture in this shot, but not much, a little bit of high pass overlay to bring out the detail and a tweaking of the colours. All in all I think this was about 2 hours from start to finish, which is quite a long time tbh, but those colours are worth it ;)

Grrr, moody Shed

It’s been a long while since I’ve done any kind of self portrait. I tend not to do them, mainly cus I don’t really know what sort of picture I want to take. I’m not a moody person, but I can’t seem to get a good shot of me trying to smile. I just look like I need a shit, or want to be somewhere else, itching to leave and wipe the smile from my obvious face. So, I end up looking at the camera straight, and seeing what it looks like.

As it turns out, I look pretty miserable. Although, in this case I look kinda raggy as I was having a lazy day, so looking a bit moody seemed to fit.

me (click to view on black)

It’s pretty clear that I need a haircut, but Josephine insists she likes my hair longer, so I’m going to keep it for a bit longer.

Tried some new textures out on this one too (there are 2 on there), and also a new grunge set I found the other day. I quite like the washed out colours, reminds me very much of Skeletal Mess. Google for him if you don’t know who I mean, he goes some very cool / dark stuff.

Grrr moody Shed.

Mountains

This picture is amazing. I didn’t take it, but what I have done is tweak the colours slightly using some actions and some easy methods that help bring out colours in images and, in my opinion, make them a bit more interesting. The contrast between the blue and the green post colour tweaking is just amazing.

But, photography is subjective, and you may drastically prefer the original! However, I find the colours to be much more interesting in the post colour tweaked version. It does however depend on your goal. If you want to make it look realistic, then potentially colour tweaking like I have will not help you achieve that. However if you simply trying to give the image an edge, or make a stunning desktop just that bit deeper in colour, then its a good thing to have a play and see what you can come up with.

See what you think:

Mountains Post Process (click to enlarge)

Mountains Pre Process (click to enlarge)

Apologies if you read this and it’s your photo, I cannot seem to find where I got this from! It’s an amazing shot though, so kudos :D

Russians in Shirts

So, after doing the artwork for Pixel I then put together some t-shirts based on the design for his 18th birthday, et voila!

Pixel's t-shirt design (click to enlarge)

And then here we are with Pixel (on the left) and other Russian dude in the shirts! Please note the cleanliness of the shirts in this picture. I’ve seen what happened to them later on…. holy crap.

Russians in shirts (click to enlarge)

Awesome! Always cool to see work when it’s made into something tangible :D

Crysis 2 Artwork

Just a quick update this week with some artwork from Crysis 2 that I have been working as part of an upcoming promotion with Multiplay. Crytek sent me through some utterly awesome media pack graphics, so I pieced together some artwork. The last two were essentially put together straight from the assets, but with the first one I spent quite a lot of time tweaking the colours and the lighting.

If nothing else, this game is gonna be pretty ;D

Crysis Desktop 1 (click to enlarge)

Crysis Desktop 2 (click to enlarge)

Crysis Desktop 3 (click to enlarge)

Pixel Style Concept Art #1

So, I’ve been working away on a new style for a chap I know called PiXel from the Multiplay community, who does various club promotions and music in Moscow. He wanted a style from which he could get posters and t-shirts created, so I started working on something that would reflect music / club style posters, that could easily be translated into similar designs for other things, like t-shirts.

Anyway this is my first fully produced poster, and luckily he loves it!

Pixel Style Concept Art #1 (click to enlarge)

I think I might have to get this printed up myself on A2, I think it would look great in a frame on the wall of my study!

Whoop, featured on Abduzeedo in Daily Inspiration 719! *\o/* Awesome, thanks guys!

Just a little experiment…

Had a play with some new techniques for creating cross processed effects.
Threw some pink in there to how it came out.

field in 1972 (click to enlarge)

No real goal here or anything, but then there doesn’t always have to be, right?

FYI, im looking to put a tutorial together for road through the forest, so check back!

theA34 Mini

Midway through December in the UK, the snow fell, and it fell a lot. Being British, we didn’t deal with it very well, least of all the transport system. As a result, our journey north for Christmas was delayed slightly. I say slightly, we spent almost 17 hours stuck on one road, just south of Oxford; the A34.

So what else was there to do but… take pics!

theA34 Mini (click to enlarge)

With this image I had a play with some HDR, but ended up using it layered over the top of the original so that I could remove the sky from the HDR layer, as it simply made it LUMINOUS ORANGE, and looked totally out of place. I had to work quite hard to get the final colours in this pic, as the original was very orange due to the minimal lighting that was present.

I brought colours out using Lab Colour mode & Curves, and then changed back to RGB to tweak the Red down slightly, and the Blue & Greens up a touch. The final result I’m really quite pleased with, although it take quite a lot of playing. I also used Noiseware Community Edition for the first time in a long while, which gave it a really nice finish.

If you’ve never checked out Noiseware, have a look here

EDIT: This got featured by the awesome dudes over at Abduzeedo in their Daily Inspiration posts, which means I’ve been in two on the trot! Rawr, thanks very much guys! *\o/*

Snow, Panorama’s and HDR

It was sunny today, for the first time since…. well, 2010. I’d been out and about in with the camera to various locations over Christmas, but the light had just been crap and I hadn’t managed to get anything that I really wanted to take any further, until today!

I’m still loving panorama’s, so I’ve been working on a few to try and get better at them. One tip that was given to me by Ash our events photographer was try doing the individual shots as portrait, rather than landscape. Even though this seems counter intuitive as your moving on the X axis, it actually makes perfect sense as you are moving along that axis anyway, and what you actually get is a shot with a much greater depth to it.

My first proper attempt at this was to catch the Multiplay Offices in the snow:

Snow @ the Multiplay Office (click to enlarge)

I was really pleased with how this came out, especially as I managed to capture the light quite well. The detail in the snow also looks awesome, and the aspect of the scenery really works for me.

Next up it was time to try some more panorama’s out in the New Forest;

The New Forest in the sun (click to enlarge)

Again, loving the aspect that these shots give you, it really works even though it should kinda mess up your eyes. Loving the blues and greens in this shot.

With this next one I decided I was going to try and get a good shot down the straight road. There are a few roads that head east into the forest from the villages by the estuary, and they are dead straight. I wanted to get a shot from the middle, so I waited till there was a gap and got Josephine to keep an eye out incase someone pulled out and mowed me over from behind. When I took the shot I didn’t think that I would work it up as a HDR shot, but I gave it a go anyway as it’s been quite a while since I’ve done any proper HDR work. The result was awesome!

I really love how this has come out in HDR, and renewed my love for the technique. Lesson learned; try any old shot in HDR, cus you never know!

road through the forest (click to enlarge)

Update: This got featured on Abduzeedo’s Daily Inspiration! YEY! Check out the post here: http://abduzeedo.com/daily-inspiration-715

What’s this? A post? Surely not…

Holy crap.

I’m making a post? Jesus. Don’t make any sudden moves incase you scare it away…

I’ve had some time this weekend, so I’ve started putting away some photo’s that I can process when I get a spare half hour. This is hopefully gonna work as a better way to get through my photo’s as usually that’s the bit that takes the time, rather than the actual processing of them. I’ve also put some hours in to learn more about Lightroom. The more I use it, the more I love it, and it’s really helping to cut down on the amount of time it takes to get photo’s done and out the door :D

First up we have a pic of me at Surrey Climbing Centre after leading a 5a route. It wasn’t so much technically challenging as it was hot, high and slightly overhanging, so it took it outa me a bit. Josephine took this as I came to sit back down.

She kinda took me by surprise, I didn’t realise she had the camera until I looked down, which is probably the reason why I like it so much. I don’t often like pics of me, but this one just seems to be these days; knackered after climbing routes! I need to get fitter…

For the post processing I’m still playing around with monotone HDR, which I really love. The noise that you get out of it really adds to the picture, and especially for portraits I think it adds a real air of atmosphere that you just don’t get in colour.

Knackered (Click to enlarge)

There is a bunch more photo’s from that trip which are in the Surrey Uni Climbing set, so check them out.

I also had a look through the photo’s I took from Goodwood earlier in the year, and marked a couple to have a play with. Here is the first; Ferrari:

Ferrari (Click to enlarge)

I know the post processing on this one is a tad weird, but hey you’ve gotta experiment! I like the colour of the car in the end, but not so sure about the border. May change this at some point.

I also put together a panorama today of the view South from Portland, a really cool place for outdoor climbing off the south coast that we went to a month or so back. It was awesome, and we had amazing views. You can check out the set of photo’s here.

Here is the panorama, the view was pretty impressive:

Portland Panorama (Click to enlarge)

More to come!