Showing posts with label digital darkroom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital darkroom. Show all posts

Thursday, 17 July 2014

more from the digital darkroom - the plumber is back.

Welington skyline © caroline fraser

Experimentation is the task this week. Expressing first the word sharp, and then reinterpreting in different ways as a challenge from The Arcanum.

While the plumber fitted a new boiler, I have whiled away some hours experimenting with achieving different emotions from one image.

Plumber told me he was incredibly bored sitting watching a hose pipe while my radiators were flushed out and cleaned.

I offered to find him some other jobs, as there are plenty more plumbing tasks in the house waiting to be tackled.

He replied ' I'm not that bored', and I responded with 'I didn't think you would be'. End of banter and time for another cup of tea.

So he sat and watched his hose while I worked on these images.

Wellington skyline - the starting point



Using Nik software I tried a multiple lens effect

experimentation station

and then an analogue camera effect


analogue effect with double exposure


All good fun.

And a lesson in how much impact different ways of processing an image can have on the outcome and mood evoked.


Next stop 'delicate'.


grape hyacinth seedheads on a piece of plain white paper


I tried to create a light mood in monochrome.

But felt that it lacked the X factor.



high key monochome processing

Next I went for a more graphic approach by creating a multiple frame image and playing around with placement of the stems and seedheads until it felt right, and adding a pink toned effect.


pink and delicate

Finally I attempted to escape the delicate feel by adding one of my favourite colours - shocking pink.

'its a shocker' © caroline fraser 2014

Meanwhile the house is back to a dust laden mess, and the plumber has gone home, having carefully spent long enough watching his hoses so that 'he doesn't have to go and do another job'.

He may be a bit lazy, but he is not stupid!


Friday, 13 June 2014

playing in the digital darkroom

redwoods

It has been a busy week.

Home from New Zealand and back to suburbia, with a quick trip to Scotland and tea at Buckingham Palace thrown in.

Why Scotland?

Number 1 child, currently living in Canada, has recently announced her intentions to get married, and for the wedding to be in Scotland.

Wonderful news on all counts, but there are some disadvantages to the scenario for your truly as "mother of the bride" which I will not trouble you with, related to the distances involved for all parties.

Suffice it to say that I am already having wedding nightmares and there is more than a year to go.......

I will keep a nightmare diary to amuse myself.

Nightmare number 1

The first caterer, when asked how much they charge for corkage coolly replied "£35,000".

It will get worse. Of that I have absolutely no doubt.

Up on Deeside, acting as venue scout, I bumped into Prince Charles driving his Range Rover just outside Balmoral. I was in a custard yellow hire car photographing trees; the best way to keep calm that I know. I didn't get to tell him why I was photographing trees, or why I was driving a yellow car, but I am sure he would have approved of my deep communion with nature.

The forests in Deeside are lush and green. I allowed myself 10 minutes with my camera before pressing on to visit a potential wedding venue.

Forest, Deeside © Caroline Fraser

A welcome sight after a 4am start from Gatwick.



green green grass

The grass is certainly greener and lusher up north.

Deeside



And the roads quieter.



"River Dee"

River Dee

Job done. Progress made. Details secret.


So here are a few more trees.

My current desire is to improve my monochrome photography, so I have had fun playing in the digital darkroom that is Nik Efex Software.


Today I have selected  one image to see what might be done with it.


unadulterated original


the trees are prickly 


vintage camera effect with 'light leak'



 
double exposure effect



Triste 2 effect

Triste seems the most appropriate right now, for I have just become a world cup widow. By the time it is all over I will probably have about 35,000 variations on a theme of trees.