Digital Expressions

Portraits

2011-07-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

Now as you may have noticed I have never been one for taking people pictures, the world of landscapes and postcard pretty images is where I feel most comfortable. But just lately the opportunity arose for for me to get out and about with fellow photographers from my club with some models. The event was called 'Trash the Dress' where we had models in wedding attire and photographed them in unusual locations. It was great fun, so much so I recently did a second one. Lighting and exposure was definitely a challenge not to mention the endless editing and re-touching, but so worth it, I learned so much and if you do get the chance to expand your horizons and sneak out of your comfort zone I would strongly recommend it! Top tip: Buy yourself a reflector, they don't cost much and they make a world of difference.

Left: Jessica Right: April Jumping

Left: Happy Right: Rebecca

Postcard Girl

Rebecca looking fierce and demure

Happy presenting the perfect model pose

Oil and Water

2011-06-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

A flickr contact of mine recently posted some cracking shots created with a little bit of cooking oil and some water. He had followed a tutorial on You Tube by a very talented chap called Brian Peterson. The process is so simple and so easy to do and the results make such a fun and colourful abstracts. Here's one of my results. If you want to give it try yourself why not check out Brian's tutorial.

A Right Royal Photo

2011-06-18T19:56:00.000-07:00

It's been ages since I updated this blog, apologies for that. There just doesn't seem enough hours in the day!

Just thought I would share a little bit of exciting news. One of my recent images from Stonehurst Cove in Nova Scotia has just been chosen by Canda Post to be featured in a book they are putting together to present to the newly wed Wills and Kate on their upcoming Canadian tour. I was of course thrilled at knowing that my image will be sitting on a Royal coffee table in the near future :o)

Stonehurst Cove

Urban Acid Action

2010-08-04T10:54:00.001-07:00

A contact of mine on Flickr just mentioned an action that I thought might be worth a look.

Here's the description of the how and what the action does:

This action tries to mimic a cross-processing technique used in some glamour, fashion, and urban photography. It skews and saturates colors, while dramatically increasing contrast. The action does all this by creating an aggressive curves adjustment layer (which is user adjustable). Secondly, the action creates a black layer which can be used to desaturate/mute the colors. This can be accomplished by changing the opacity of the layer.

Respective credits and this description are included in the zip file.

Now personally don't really have any urban or portrait shots so I was eager to try it out on something different. So here as you can see is the result on one of my Beach Hut images.

The action is fully customizable at each step of the process and I really liked the results. Of course it's not for every photo!

If you wish to download it you can do so here

Getting Settled

2010-06-29T12:23:00.001-07:00

So I have moved from the UK to Nova Scotia now as some of you who follow me on Flickr will already know. It has been hectic to say the least but things are starting to settle down. I have been lucky enough to get out and about seeing some new places and of course some of my old favourites from past visits.

I hope to bring you a few of these as I take more and of course in time I shall be adding them to my online shop at Red Bubble.

I have joined a local camera club here, and for those of you following the blog that don't belong to one, I urge you to. I was and still am, also a member of my local club back in the UK. I left on a high from that club having won both the trophies for prints and digital images which was a big thrill.

You can learn so much from other members and it's a fun way to expand your hobby!

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia

Moving

2010-05-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know that due to my moving overseas, this blog may be a bit of a dead zone for a while until things are sorted the other end. Hopefully I will be back blogging before too long!

New Additions

2010-05-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

New additions to my Dreamy Nature collection are now available to view/buy in my Red Bubble Store, all the new additions have had textures added from the Flypaper Collection as mentioned in my last post.

Flypaper Textures

2010-04-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

Just lately I have been noticing more and more on Flickr the mention of Flypaper Textures being used on images, so I decided to check them out. There are three sets to choose from Tex Box One, Tex Box Two and a new addition Fly Edges. Having looked, I couldn't help myself! I bought Tex Box One and in my opinion the set is superb, a wonderful collection of subtle textures. My favourite of the set would have to Apple Blush (used on the image below). All the files are large and high quality. Tex Box One and Two are $35 each for a download and the Fly Edges set is $40. CD's can be sent at a small additional cost. Currently if you buy sets one and two together you can purchase the download for a special price of $65.

On the website you can also find some tutorials for getting the best out of your textures.

Delicate Duo, click image to view larger

Fabulous France

2010-04-18T06:50:00.000-07:00

For those of you following me on Flickr you will know that I have been busy uploading my many images taken from my travels around France last year. My trip was split between the Loire Region and The Midi-Pyrénées which is the largest region in France. This area is truly spectacular, there are so many places to see, each one more breathtaking than the last. Some of my favourite shots are now available to buy via my Red Bubble Store. If you would like to see more of this region, click here and view the film.

One of my favourite places Saint-Cirq-Lapopie

Top Marks :o)

2010-04-14T03:54:00.000-07:00

Last week at my local Camera Club we held our last internal competition of the season. It was 'open subject' so the images submitted were many and varied. I, as usual, had difficulty prior to the event deciding what to choose for submission (the decision making involved in selection nearly drives me round the twist as I have real trouble in making up my mind, nothing ever seems good enough to me) but in the end opted for two of my Alberta landscapes in the prints section. I was convinced they wouldn't do so well, but was hugely honoured and pleased when the judge awarded top marks for my 'Autumn on the Parkway' shot and better still I came second too with Spirit Island. For me the highest praise from the judge (well respected in our area) was the fact he said would love to hang the Icefields Parkway shot on his wall.

Autumn on the Parkway (Click image to view larger)

Spirit Island (Click image to view larger)

Vintage Addiction

2010-04-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

...And here's me thinking that colour was my only vice! Since discovering the wonderful 'Hand Coloured Vintage Photo Action' by mutato-nomine that I mentioned a few posts back I have been completed addicted to testing it out on all manner of images. I thought I might share one of my favourites to date. You can click on the image to view the larger version. And if you haven't checked out these actions yet you can download them here. I can't promise this is the last time I will speak about this!!!....Twitch!

Stonehurst Cove, Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia (View the original here)

Butterfly Brushes

2010-04-13T10:34:00.001-07:00

A while back I created a butterfly brush set for personal use and forgot all about them, (example of the brushes below). I thought others may like to use them. You can download the file here. The file is zipped and comes complete with installation instructions for Photoshop. Enjoy! I hope you find them useful!

Brushtastic

2010-04-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

So today I was trawling around the net looking for PS Brushes, several tangents and a couple of hours later I came across a couple of really good sets. (Not what I was looking for I might add), but having found them I couldn't pass up the opportunity to give them a go and see what effects I could achieve.

For my 'Tiny Dancer' image featured here I combined the 'Hand Coloured Vintage Photo' action from the other day with a Dandelion Seed Brush by Redheadstock) and several different brushes from an Old Letter Collection (by Shiranui). (Just click on the named links to go straight to the respective download pages).

Just in case you are not sure how to install a PS Brush file:

Copy the file to the correct directory. If you downloaded the brush set in a zip file, you can just extract the 'abr' file straight to the right place.

The directory you are looking for will be in your Adobe folder under presets then brushes, example path below:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS1\Presets\Brushes\

Simply copy the file there, and the next time you start Photoshop, the brushes will be available from your brush set menu. If you don't want to restart the application to try out your new brushes, click on the brush tool in Photoshop, then load brushes (see ref picture, click to enlarge).

My name is AJ and I am a Colour Addict!

2010-04-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

If you know my work then you will know that I love colour, there's nothing that lifts my mood more than seeing an array of bright colours all together.

So it comes as no surprise that I rarely create anything in monochrome. Quite odd really as I love other photographers images in monochrome, but when I try it myself it just doesn't sit right with me visually. I believe in my whole collection of images there are only possibly five that have passed muster in the monochrome bracket and one of those I simply had to put a hint of colour back into. Ironically two of the aforementioned five were published nationally.

So this month on my Red Bubble Profile I am celebrating my colour addiction with 9 of my loudest and brightest images!

Oh and just because I mentioned it, here also are my monochrome images that were published.

Left: DIY...NOT and Right: Slinky

Gone all Flashy!

2010-04-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

So a while back I talked about a company called Wix who offer 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 was extremely pleased with the results of the free site and I decided it was was time to have another go at this, so this weekend I put together a new website and this time I upgraded the package to eliminate the ads. the combo package which I purchased costs $99 per year. Although I am personally a huge fan of free stuff and it pains me to pay, I thought it was about time I made the investment!

Here is the end result. Below is a screen shot of the gallery page, I like it and would love to know what you think and if you like it, why not give it a go yourself. To visit the new site click here

Another Texture Giveaway

2010-04-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

Here's another homemade texture to try out on your images. This one gives a very vintage feel with its worn edging and faint text.

Below is an example of the result you may achieve. In this intant I used the multiply blend, desaturated and lightened the texture slightly.

To download the texture just click on the texture image and you will be redirected to the download page if you have missed any of the previous textures and tutorial just click through the thumbnails (top left).

Step Back in Time

2010-03-31T08:03:00.000-07:00

I found a superb vintage action today online called 'Hand Coloured Vintage Photo' I thought that some of you may be interested in giving it a try. You can download it here and see my example below. To attain the colour result you must run and complete the ageing first.

If you are unfamiliar with PhotoShop Actions, you may want to take a look at this tutorial which is a basic introduction.

Eye Spy

2010-03-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Following on from my previous post regarding the security of images, here's a neat little way of keeping check of your images and where they are being used online.

Tin Eye is a reverse search engine that hunts down where your image is being used on the web. Although still in development and unable to check every single web page, it does work. I myself search every now and again if an image of mine has received a lot of hits on Flickr from unknown sources. Just a couple of weeks ago I found a European online magazine using my Stonehenge image without my consent, I wrote a strongly worded e-mail to them and they apologised profusely and removed the image.

Sign Your Name

2010-03-27T18:23:00.000-07:00

With the advent of change relating to copyrighting of images published online (and not for the better) we really need to make sure our work is protected. If you are UK based and have not heard about these changes yet please read this article.

There are steps you can take to prevent theft of your images online, but in my opinion none of them are full-proof. That said, digital watermarking does provide some peace of mind. Digimarc (a plugin for Photoshop) have recently upgraded their application and it is definitely worth looking at. I currently use it and find it quick and easy to use, the basic account starts at around $49 per year.

I'm no Tweeter!

2010-03-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

To tweet or not to tweet, that has been the question on my mind now for quite sometime.

Half of me thinks yes what a great idea, I can use it as a subtle marketing tool and the other half of me thinks I don't want to randomly chit chat rubbish with people.

As for celebrity tweeting, it gets me so mad! I like to think of my celebs as detached individuals, untouchable, sometimes elegant, sometimes clever or whatever I choose them to be in my own mind, but honestly, miscellaneous ramblings from celebs about what they had for breakfast, yada, yada, just makes them look and sound stupid with too much time on their hands and further more breaks the illusion and mystery for me.

So although I haven't entirely ruled it out, I shall not be tweeting anytime soon. However, thanks to a friend I have just discovered spnbabble. Now this to me seems a far better prospect. Maybe not as big yet, but geared for marketing, not twaddle! Check it out and see what you think. You can follow me on there if you so wish under the name DigitalExpressions.

United Arab Emirates

2010-03-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

A small selection of my United Arab Emirates images are now available to buy from my Red Bubble site. Click here to go staight to the photo set. A superb trip full of architectural wonders and of course plenty of sand.

If you are ever visiting make sure you don't miss out on a dune bashing trip definitely exciting and the landscape is magical.

Talking Italian With 30 Words

2010-01-17T10:35:00.000-08:00

I was recently approached by a company called 30 Words asking if they could use an image of mine in their newest addition to the product range.

30 words are superb and compact range of language guides for travelers. They are small enough to fit in any pocket and contain over 800 key words and phrases. The accordion design of the vocabulary pages makes looking up a phrase or word very easy. Best of all the guides are very durable, they are waterproof and tear-resistant and should survive even the most arduous adventures.

I think they are a cracking idea and I will certainly be trying the Italian version out later this month! My Riva Del Garda image (below) features on the back of the Italian edition and you can find out more about 30 Words by visiting their website and their blog.

I personally wish them every success for the future!

Windows Live Sky Drive

2009-12-29T16:27:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-28T17:24:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-27T10:05:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-29T09:09:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-29T09:04:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-26T08:22:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-20T05:55:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-31T05:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-31T04:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-24T09:56:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-14T06:38:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-11T16:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

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