Windows Live Sky Drive

I apologise if anyone has encountered difficulties in downloading the free texture and tutorial I posted links to yesterday. MediaFire, where the files were stored seemed to be very slow at loading and intermittent. I have now resolved matter by moving the files to my public folder on Windows Live Sky Drive.

If you don't already have a Windows live I.D. you may find it a very useful tool, for accessing your hotmail, photos, files and much more. With sky drive you get 25GB of storage making it a very useful tool for sharing files.

To find out more about Windows Live Click Here

Another Texture To Try Out

Back in August I posted a tutorial on using textures in PhotoShop together with a free texture created by me. Below is another of my textures for you to try out and an example of the result you may get.

In this instant I used the overlay blend, reduced the saturation of the texture and changed the hue slightly.

To download the texture just click on the texture image below and you will be redirected to the download page.

If you missed the Tutorial and the last texture giveaway click here to download.

Scenes from Alberta

Having routed through my archives lately I came across a few hidden gems from my trip to Alberta in 2008. I have now uploaded them to my Red Bubble Site where they can be viewed and/or purchased. A sneak preview can be found below.

October Poppies

My latest Landscape October Poppies is now available to buy on my Red Bubble Site.
This poppy field in at Melbury Down in Dorset, caused a a bit of a stir recently and featured on the front page of the local paper as it is pretty unusual to see a field like this in late October. Such a beautiful scene. The day I went the weather wasn't great, chilly and gray in the main, but it didn't deter me or many others from venturing out to capture the spectacle.

Mister Retro

If you are looking for a handy alternative to textures to age and weather your images, you might want to check out Mister Retro.
Amongst a whole host of other things, they have a range of 'Machine Wash Image Filters' each plugin contains 60 filters and will set you back $49.95 per set There is also a bundle pack available for $185.00

You can test drive each set by clicking on the links underneath each set.
See what you think!

From Photoshop to Flickr

Some of you may already know and be using Flickrshop from Pixelnovel, but for those of you that haven't heard of it, it is a wonderful little plugin for Photoshop CS2 and above; Best of all It's free if you only want to upload a maximum of 3 images per day to flickr. If you want unlimited uploads then you can buy the plugin for just $19.99.

Just download the exe file and install, then when you have finsihed editing your masterpiece in Photoshop, just go to file>automate>flickr shop. The first time you upload you will be asked to authorise the the app with flickr, once done, you will be able to upload straight to your sets, add tags and descriptions all without leaving Photoshop. Brilliant!

Flickrshop is available for Mac and PC.

Stourhead, A Garden For All Seasons

Stourhead Gardens in Wiltshire has long been one of my favourite places. It is the most photogenic of places at any time of year. Some of my favourite shots of Stourhead are now available on Red Bubble and in my new Imagekind Store



The gardens were designed by Henry Hoare II and laid out between 1741 and 1780 in a classical 18th-century design set around a large lake, achieved by damming a small stream. The inspiration behind their creation were the painters Claude Lorrain, Poussin and, in particular, Gaspar Dughet, who painted Utopian-type views of Italian landscapes. It is similar in style to the landscape gardens at Stowe.

Included in the garden are a number of temples designed to show off the Hoare family’s education and wealth. On one hill overlooking the gardens there stands an obelisk and King Alfred’s Tower (a 50-metre-tall, brick folly designed by Henry Flitcroft in 1772); on another hill the temple of Apollo provides a vantage point to survey the magnificent rhododendrons, water, cascades and temples. Amongst the woodland surrounding the site there are also two Iron Age hill forts: Whitesheet Hill and Park Hill Camp. The gardens are home to a large collection of trees and shrubs from around the world.

NEW! 2010 Calendars Available Now!

My 2010 calendars are now available to preview and buy on Red Bubble. There are 6 titles to choose from:

Rural Alberta, Atlantic Canada, The Canadian Rockies, Floral Wonders, British Beach Huts and the newest addition to the range, Dreamy Nature.

The Great British Beach Hut

Brightly coloured beach huts are an essential part of the British coast. They go together with ice creams, sandcastles and the unreliable British weather to form part of our experience of summer by the seaside. In recent years the spirit of nostalgia for the British coast has meant that beach huts, in some locations, can sell for more money than houses in other areas and given that you cannot stay overnight in them and many need annual maintenance, this is really saying something!


West Wittering Beach Huts

Whilst taking images for a competition at my local camera club based on the Great British Summer I became a tad obsessed with Beach Huts. You can find some of my best in my Beach Hut Collection on Red Bubble including my latest image (featured above).

If you like Beach Huts as much as I do (probably unlikely :o) you may be interested in my Flickr Group Beach Hut Elite with features some of the very best Beach Hut images on Flickr, so do drop by and take a look.

Honey, I Shrunk Toronto!

Tilt-shift miniature faking is a post-processing technique, which involves selectively blurring a photo to simulate the narrow depth of field found in macro photography and some tilt-shift photography, making the image appear to be of a miniature model. (Description from Wikipedia)

If you fancy having a go at making a miniature, Tiltshiftmaker.com is a site does all the hard work for you, upload your image or use the URL of your image location to create a miniature in just a couple of clicks, preview, then download the full size… Job Done!

I tried out this site for the first time yesterday with some of my images and got a couple of quite pleasing results, (click on the images to view larger). The hardest part was finding images that this treatment might suit, and in my opinion it works much better if you are looking down on a subject in the original shot.


Gargnano, Lake Garda, Italy

If you would rather have a go at making this effect yourself in Photoshop, here is a tutorial I found. Also check out 50 great examples of fake miniature photography here.

New Additions

Below are the newly added images in my Dreamy Nature Collection, these are now all available to buy in various formats on my Red Bubble Site.

Wix.com - Flash Websites for the Non-Technical

In all honesty I am not usually a fan of Flash based websites, for one they usually take too long to load and secondly, in some cases they tend to be more gimmick over content. That said they can be very attractive and what I am a fan of, is free stuff on the web. So if you are looking to create a Flash website and know nothing about Flash, here is a superb place to start.

Wix.com offers a free service to build and host your flash website. No technical skills required, (currently running in Beta), there are a selection of very appealing templates to choose from and the interface is extremely user friendly. With the free account your site will include ad banners for Wix, but you can upgrade to Premium at anytime, which opens up a range of extra features including unlimited pages, using your own domain and removing the ads.

I decided to give it a go, with a view to using mine as a mini portfolio and platform to link to my online store at Red Bubble check it out here and see what you think.

Adding Textures in Photoshop

I really enjoy enhancing my images by adding textures, nearly all the images in my 'Canada's Atlantic Provinces' book have had textures added to give them a more story book/vintage feel. My ongoing 'Dreamy Nature' collection are also texutured lightly to create a slightly softer feel to them.

I have put together an easy 6 step tutorial that you might like to follow if you are new to textures. Also included with the tutorial is a free texture created by me and used in the the example image here. I would be most grateful if you use the texture if you would credit me and kindly link back to this blog so that others can use it too. Click here to download the zipped file.

If you are feeling more adventurous and fancy having a go at creating your own textures from scatch in Photoshop, then here's a great little tutorial for making paper textures.

New Additions

Below are the newly added images in my Dreamy Nature Collection, these are now all available to buy in various formats on my Red Bubble Site.

Just for fun I have again compiled a few of my favourites again into a group which I think might look good hung together.

MediaFire

Just came across MediaFire, a very handy little site for storing and sharing all your media files across the web, you can direct link to files for others to download. It's very user friendly and offers a free account option or a paid Pro account option with extra features. Definitely worth a look.

Glorious Nature Art Overlays and Textures

If you fancy enhancing your nature shots with some seriously attractive overlays and textures then you might be interested in checking out Susan Gary's Glorious Nature Blog. On the right here is a sample image of what is included in the collection.

Some beautiful examples of work created using these overlays and textures can also be found the the Flickr Glorious Nature Group.

Light, Camera and Actions!

I have just acquired Bärbel's PS/PSE Actions and I have to say I think they are fantastic! There are three sets to choose from:

B's XPro 10 Variations
B's CrossColours
B's B&W Splittone

I chose the XPro 10 Variations which come with 14 extra colour overlays all of which are all highly customizable to your own individual taste.

They are all compatible with Photoshop 7 - CS4 and Photoshop Elements 5, 6 and 7 and come with an installation PDF.

Below you can see of some of the XPro settings applied, the original is on the left. Click on the image to see a larger version.

If you are interested and want to see more please visit Bärbel's Website
Also check out other people's results in Bärbel's PS/PSE Actions Flickr Group

For those of you unfamiliar with actions, you can either install action sets like these or have a go at recording your own, here's a tutorial on how:

Photoshop Actions and You

Dreamy Nature

My new 'Dreamy Nature' set is now available to buy in different formats from my Red Bubble Site. I will be adding more over time so please do check back and keep an eye out for new additions.

My intention was to create a vibrant 'mix and match' collection that would look good when hung together as smaller groups. I hope I have succeeded! I have grouped together some of my favourites here.

Hot off the Press!

My new book 'Scenes from a Small Island' is now available to buy at Blurb. The book features a selection of my favourite images taken around the South of England, divided into 3 sections it includes rural, coastal and urban images.

Please visit my online bookstore where you can preview the first 15 pages.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my new blog, some random musings and blatant advertising promoting my photography and design services.

To view my latest photography you can check out my Flickr Page

To buy my images as cards, prints, canvases and much more, please head to my Red Bubble Website

I currently have 2 books (a third one coming very soon) available to buy and they can be found by heading to my Blurb Bookstore where you can preview before buying:

Canada's Atlantic Provinces
Picture Postcards from Alberta