Dandelion.

This is part of a set of variants of an image I took not long ago while walking in the local lanes with the little camera.

I published the first version a couple of days ago as Inner Secrets as a “proper” monochrome. There are two more proper versions in the set today, and the rest are manglings.

I hope you enjoy some of them, anyway. They are always fun for me to do because I’m never sure where I’ll get and ideas come to me along the way. Not that all the ideas are worth much!

This version is for Sliders Sunday.

This is the straight colour version, firstly gradient mapped and then a lot of play with the Curves filter in LAB mode affecting colour and luminosity, and an HSL filter. Sharpening with High Pass and a light vignette and other messings about...

As ever for the Sliders Sunday sets I’ll publish a link to the in-camera original in the first comment so you can see how far we came.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to look at my images. I appreciate it, and hope you enjoy them. Happy Sliders Sunday :)

[Handheld in daylight.
Developed in Photolab 3 originally for the monochrome, taking out the greens in the background, and retrieving detail in the highlights.
Processed in Affinity Photo using various approaches described in the text.]

Tags:   Closeup Floral Summer blooming bright color dandelion fair weather flora flower growth nature no person outdoors petal pollen sun dsc-rx100m5 8.8-25.7 mm f/1.8-2.8 Sliders Sunday HSS

© All Rights Reserved

Ox-eye daisy.

The question was how to create a fantabulous result for Sliders Sunday out of one of my daisy images…

Except it wasn’t, naturally. The real question was how to have fun playing with an average image that I am not going to use otherwise using Sliders Sunday as an excuse.

Corona is Latin for crown and appears in our languages all over the place - from Scandinavian kroner, Corona Borealis (the constellation), to solar coronas, Spanish beer and, of course, a family of viruses including colds and COVID which all are organisms that look like crowns. I thought it was an apt title in the circumstances!

I’ll post a link to an in-camera version 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 in Capture One on auto.
Processed in Affinity Phot entirely on the iPad.
Cropped to 16:9 off-centre to give it some strength in the composition.
Image layer duplicated and blended with Linear Blend and blend ranges to protect the petals.
Depth of Field Blur to soften the petals and take out all the details there/Normal blend mode.
High Pass/Linear Light, aggressively to emphasise the centre lines.
Inpainting to remove spots and blemishes on the flower and sensor.
Minimum Blur adjustment/Normal blend mode. This is the first part of the magic as it creates blocky lumps in the centre of the flower.
HSL Shift Adjustment/Pin Light/63% opacity for a little bit more magic in the centre.
Posterise (24 colour levels)/Negation Blend/95% opacity. This was the second major part of the magic.
Maximum Blur adjustment/Multiply.
Merge result - layer effects to blue the edges
And we’re done :)]

Tags:   HSS Sliders Sunday

© All Rights Reserved

Hay bale.

I’m not sure it’s a good thing when you start taking photographs just so you can mangle them for Sliders Sunday. It seems a bit like planning an accident, premeditating mayhem…

This is a picture of the black plastic wrapping of a hay bale sitting in a field.

Well, in truth it was more of a parkland lawn in front of a grand house, the sort that has huge ornamental trees dotted about in an artistically contrived way, with three finely-bred horses idly grazing in a select corner… a carefully constructed rural vista for the mansion’s windows.

And I wasn’t trespassing, honest. There are two paths that cross the field. These are part of the wonderful English system of public footpaths, which give legal rights to everyone to use whenever they wish.

As far as I am aware, in order to establish a public footpath you must demonstrate that the public had used the path unchallenged every day for a year. That’s why landowners of industrial estates and business parks often close the access roads for one day a year (typically Christmas) to prevent the creation of an ongoing access right.

So new footpaths are rare these days, and most were formed like these in Victorian times when the workers walked from their hovels to the local woollen mills to work each day. The valley is littered with them and it’s part of the attraction of the place.

I’m glad nobody saw me take picture: I must have looked strange in this grand setting, crouching down, pointing an unwieldy lens at the crumpled featureless plastic of the bale temporarily left lying by he agricultural contractor. They would have thought me mad. (I know you already think I’m mad, but let’s try and keep it between ourselves if we can).

Ah, you would like to know the recipe? (And now I know I am just talking to myself :) ).

Take dubious pic. Duplicate image layer and flip one horizontally. Blend with Difference, stirring continually. So that gets you the symmetry. The rest is really just getting the colours and tones.

Merge Visible to get a new layer in the pan. Blend it back with the existing two with Negation - a flavour which seems to favour these ingredients.

Make a copy of the merged layer mentioned above and blend it back with the underlying three, this time with a touch of Reflect.

Merge Visible again a blend this back with what has gone before adding Glow to the melange.

Merge the whole lot again, stirring continuously to thicken the mixture and boil off some of the weaker colours. Duplicate this merge and apply a Curves layer in LAB mode and tweak to taste. Soften the resulting goulash by blending back with the first copy (unCurved) using selective blend ranges.

Serve with LayerFX, a dark Inner Glow with reduced opacity to give a burnt edges effect.

Note that this is all wok cooking and doesn’t involved those pesky plugin ovens :)

I shall post an image of the raw ingredients in the first comment.

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Sliders Sunday :)

[Handheld in daylight.
Processed from the raw using Affinity Photo for the iPad.]

Tags:   nikon z 6 105mm f/2.8 AUTO-TAGGER abstract pattern design texture desktop art graphic wallpaper geometric shape decoration background line colour illustration artistic element construction Affinity Photo for iPad bale Black blend modes bright hay HSS LAB colour processed Sliders Sunday

© All Rights Reserved

Dead leaf.

A relapse. I have fallen. I'm back with my favourite Topaz filter, Glow.

This a picture of a dead leaf off one of my daughter's houseplants. Variety unknown. But certainly deceased though the plant lives on...

Leaves have veins; veins form linear patterns; Glow emphasises linear patterns; so should be interesting... perhaps. Thus the theory went.

Cropped to a cinematic ratio of 2.35:1 to accentuate the horizontal vein.

I'll post a link to the original as usual.

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Sliders Sunday :)

Tags:   abstract pattern art texture design colour magnification shape creativity artistic impression futuristic no person bright HSS leaf plant Sliders Sunday Topaz Glow Topaz Studio veins

© All Rights Reserved

Trinity Lane, Cambridge

Little time for photography or Flickr this week so here is a rush job again using a picture I took in March of last year.

This is quintessentially Cambridge, bikes and all. A lovely place.

We have Gonville and Caius ("Keys") on the right, Trinity ahead and the Bishop's Hostel on the left.

I've noticed before that Topaz Studio works well with this sort of image, and there were lots of great ideas that perhaps I shall investigate and publish just from this one shot... depending on the rapturous applause for this one of course (though, for me, the threshold level for "rapturous applause" has to be somewhere between a plain HSS and a "nice capture" to leave me any chance at all :) ).

Hope you enjoy it anyway. Happy Sliders Sunday....

Tags:   nikon z 6 NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S street architecture old house window building light city no person urban travel town alley brick lamp vintage abandoned door narrow cobblestone Europe United Kingdom England Cambridgeshire Cambridge HSS night Sliders Sunday

© All Rights Reserved