The Late Sheep

From enchanting Poland to sheep? Yeah why not! Ok so I am struggling a little with a picture to post today, but can't help but find it a bit fun to combine sheep and HDR. I doubt it will be going in my portfolio section, but hey these guys deserve some 'air time'! I'm worried that if I'm not careful, I'll develop a reputation for pictures involving sunsets and farm animals (such as this picture as well), but how often do you see the 2 in a photograph?

As well as acquire a decent flash, another thing I would like for the new year is to improve my timing for capturing sunsets. I have previously been very guilty at thinking 'well the sun is going down at about 7.30, so I'll make sure I'm there by 7.20', which of course leads to rushing around convincing myself I'm an idiot for missing a great sunset again. This happened when I was in Eastbourne a few weeks ago. Being well away from the cliffs, this was the best opportunity I had for a sunset picture that evening. The sun was going down at such a rapid speed (as it does in the final minute) you could literally watch it move over the horizon. Therefore, I did not have time to set up a tripod, but just fired off some bracketed shots handheld at these sheep while I still had the time. I would file that under the 'if all else fails' section of an HDR tutorial.

Due to that mad rush, it was never the sharpest picture, so I used a couple of filters (such as Glamour Glow) in Nik Color Efex Pro, but still quite happy with the final result.

The new look Halewood Photo

I know I have beaten the drum a little bit over the new look to my HalewoodPhoto.com website, but just thought I would post a picture of it here, to show you the look in case you hadn't seen it for yourself yet!

The Lighthouse at Beachy Head

Last time I blogged (Thursday) I displayed a picture with a couple of textures blended in, something I went onto describe is an aspect I do enjoy adding to pictures in Photoshop. I have again used a texture in today's picture but to a much subtler and softer effect. I used the same sea texture I described on Thursday, though have only used it much effect on the sea itself in this picture, and some of the land. This picture is actually more a combination of HDR and texture, than just texture itself. Although the picture on itself was good (and to most old school photographers, probably how they would say it should have been), again I wanted to make it a bit more interesting and make it stand out a bit more. Creating an HDR (from a single RAW file), layer masking it with aspects of the original RAW image, and then gently blending in a texture, helped me get the look I was after with this scene.

This is the famous lighthouse off the Beachy Head cliff, within the South Downs National Park in East Sussex. Sadly, Beachy Head is famous for being a notorious suicide spot, but the natural landscape surrounding the area is a wonderful opportunity for photographers. I was delighted to spend a day here taking pictures of the landscape, my only regret being that I was somewhere else for the evening. I'm sure there would be great pictures to get in the sunset period, so a good reason to go back in future.

Eastbourne Pier at Night

Photoshop is not something I consider a strong skill of mine in my photographic toolbox. I work mainly in Lightroom, but I normally use Photoshop for basic editing that it handles better such as sharpening, noise reduction (via plugins), spot-healing, clone-stamping etc. Of course I also use it a fair bit for layer masking with HDR and the RAW files, but I really don't consider myself knowledgeable on any unique skills within Photoshop. One thing I do like to work with now and then though is textures. In the same way I like HDR for it's ability to give a photo an artistic or painterly feel, the use of blending in a texture can have the same effect.

Today's picture was taken a couple of weeks ago at Eastbourene pier. It was a long exposure (30 seconds) that I originally wanted to keep just as that. However, despite the sea looking nice and smooth, and the lights from the pier having a nice glow to them, I still felt that the picture was a bit empty (especially the blank sky) and needed more to make it interesting. So I started to see how it would look with a texture blended in and I began trying a few out. In the end I have used 2 here. First of all, I have used a sea texture (from a photo I took at Durdle Door last year) for the sea itself. Mixing the smooth sea with the sea texture gave it this impressionist kind of look that I really like. I was going to use the sea texture for the whole picture but I felt it didn't work so well with the sky, so I used a second texture, a rock from the czech republic (I also used it in my Torcello picture), that made it look a bit more appropriate for the night sky.

It really isn't that difficult to blend textures in, you simply have your main picture as 1 layer and the texture as another and then reduce the opacity to about 50% (or however much you like) and then change the blend mode to Overlay, which I feel works the best for textures. You can then use the Eraser tool, again at whatever opacity you feel works best, to eliminate parts of the texture where you do not feel it is necessary (for instance in this picture I kept the sand in the lit foreground largely texture-free). I don't do many tutorials, but I hope that small one helps!