Teazel.
Teazels are wildflowers native to Europe and Asia, though I think they are seen as an invasive introduced species in the US.
They have long been associated with the textile industry with their dried flower head forming spiky cylinders about 3 inches long, ideal for teasing out the nap in cloth and straightening fibres.
Uley, the village where I live, used to be much bigger, a town with 14 pubs and four churches (it now has only one of each, though it does have its own brewery too :)). That was in the time of the woollen industry which thrived in the valley due to the natural springs.
Teazels were cultivated in the area to satisfy the demand of the industry, and so you often find them in the local fields, like this one was.
The local Stroud cloth (typically bright red) was famous in its day and popular as trade goods with Native Americans, indeed some of the old photographs of Indian chiefs showed them wearing items made from it. Even today green baize for snooker tables is made locally.
When the woollen trade collapsed a lot of the population emigrated from the local port of Bristol, many to America but also to Australia. The town Uleybury just outside of Adelaide was settled by a clothmaker from Uley (the Bury is the hill behind).
We often get Americans wandering through the church graveyard in search of their ancestors. At least I have always assumed they weren’t ghosts :)
Teazels are a favourite of illustrators and graphic artist because of their dramatic shape. And photographers :) I thought it would make an interesting subject for a Sliders Sunday pic.
I’ll post a link to the in-camera original in the first comment so you can see how far we came.
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image! Happy Sliders Sunday :)
[Handheld in daylight.
Developed and processed in Affinity Photo to emphasise the colour and sharpen the sharp bits.
Most of the conversion was done in Topaz Studio (version 1). The Glow filter emphasises the lines and the cell-like structure in the middle of the flowerhead. One of the suggested presets (Amped Up II) turned the background to black which I quite liked so I went from there.
I tripled the width of the canvas and copied the central teasel twice, flipping both copies vertically and one horizontally. I then moved the copies to each side of the original, but fiddled with the horizontal placement so that they were more connected visually.
Cropped the result.
I used HSL layers to change the hues of the outliers to complementary colours, and increased the saturation and vibrance of them all to emphasise the graphic look.
The usual frame outline and drop shadow to finish. There didn’t seem much point in adding a dark vignette :( ]
Loading contexts...