This image, blurred, duplicated, layer-flipped, layer opacity 50%, sharpened, texture-increased, desaturated, and vignetted. Improved.
Kolari Sunrise
Bamboozle | Gallery
More ICM vegetation in the custom dark box taking up my desk. A bamboo stalk with just a couple of leaves on. Less really is more with this approach. If there’s more than a couple of leaves or branches, the motion exponentially clutters the image.
Anglesey Abbey | Gallery
Untitled
Plaid EC3
Hypermobility
Palette Knife Effect
Experiment to use over-sharpening for a palette-knife / oil-paint effect. I guess whether or not you parse it as painterly or oafish use of Topaz depends on your photographic experience…!
Tree 23
Ivy Dancers | Gallery
Resonance | Gallery
More ICM practice. This time with a whisk and bi-colour processing.
Brown Rubber | Gallery
These all click bigger, but I am still liking the grid business. I’m thinking of a panel for these…. All ICM images of the same dried rubber-plant leaf.
Green Rubber | Gallery
After Bert Stern
For competition themed “Constructed Beauty” in 2024.
Suilven | Gallery
…and four others.
Wirework II | Gallery
Another go at ICM with wires, this time - SCART!
Christmas Tree
From two ideas - count ‘em: TWO - from Penny Reeves.
Inevitably
Freedive | Undersea Panel | Gallery
Here’s an irritating discovery. If you denoise your raw image in Topaz to start with, then push the texture, clarity, exposure - basically anything - afterwards, it gives you a big ugly grid of artefacts. So denoise afterwards. And hopefully I’ll get DxO for Christmas….
Thanos
Experimenting with extreme close-up of my eye. Learning that the real challenge is blocking reflection while also sufficiently illuminating things. And attaining sufficient depth of field at the same time. And sitting really still.
This is a lesson that should be learned. If I take a bunch of raw images, process one significantly to the point I like it, but still have adjustments I want to make at the point of taking the shot (because the first shot was step one in learning something), I struggle to work objectively on subsequent shots because I want to edge them towards what I achieved in shot one, rather than develop them to whatever they naturally want to be. In shot two (on the right) for example, I controlled the light as far is humanly possible, and lined up the reflection of the camera lens perfectly with my pupil. But…… I still prefer shot one despite everything I sought to correct subsequently…
Curiously my eye is much less moist in shot 2. Probably because I had a megawatt lamp inches from my face frying off the moisture…
Strike 3. Clear your mind and start afresh. The frustration with this one is that (although the lens flare is added in post) the lens in the pupil is genuine, but looks pasted in there! Grr.