A Tribute

After a few wee issues with Photoshop.... it finally started working again, so I figured it was time to try and get my head around using it again!

I had great shot of the Mk IX Spitfire taking off at Yealands Classic Fighters.

That led to a bit of inspiration for a couple of ideas....

Numerous layers later these were created..... I suspect I may have made them a little harder than really needed, but was good to try a few things by adding / deleting layers or parts thereof.

"Alan Deere"

A tribute to one of our Battle of Britain pilots Alan Deere. The connection here is that his relative (Brendon Deere) owns and operates this Spitfire. It is painted in the colours of one of the Spitfires that Alan Deere flew during WW2.

"5 Minutes"

This was the original idea which came after watching that great war movie "The Battle of Britain". In the movie there is a line where Air Vice Marshal Sir Keith Park comments that the squadrons must scramble in just a few minutes....! A quick bit of research and the maximum time allowed was 5 minutes to scramble. Some squadrons were much quicker. I've been in a Spitfire and I'm amazed they were up in under 5 minutes. Since Sir Keith Park was a Kiwi, and his leadership was instrumental in winning the Battle of Britain, then it seemed fitting to incorporate him into the image of the Spitfire taking off. 

Thoughts, feedback, comments welcomed.

Thanks for stopping by.

Trying a few things out

Over the course of the week, I've been spending more time on Photoshop to continue my learning journey and generally just having a play around with different effects.

I decided to start with this photo:

The aim was to turn it in a 1940's shot. This would involve me playing around with adding in a number of texture layers.

How did I get on? Well, here's my final result...

To create the effect I've added in an old paper texture along with some scratches / dust textures. Finally, Lee gave me an old Kodak border frame to try.

Overall I'm pretty happy and it was a good bit of learning.

Then today...

The sun was out, the birds were out (encouraged by some stale bread),,,

So I figured I'd spend some time out in the back garden trying out different AF & tracking settings with the 70 - 200mm.

Spring is definitely in the air. The local Silvereyes, Blackbirds and Thrush were pretty active and provided some good shots.

As for the AF / tracking... still really not sure on the best settings here. More practice required.

Trying something a bit different

I've been playing around with a few images in Photoshop through following a few tutorials.

Mainly to try and get my head around using Photoshop a little more.... as there's so many options, it's hard to know where to start! So I tend to either get lost or give up and just stick to basic adjustments in Lightroom.

Still, I'm slowly getting there and the working through the tutorials is helping :-)

Here's one I worked on the other day. Aim was to convert the image to a sketch.

Here's the original image -

And the image after a bit of Photoshop magic to turn it into a sketch -

Am pretty happy with the result. Layers are starting to make a little bit of sense now! :-)

As always, happy for any thoughts or feedback.

Learning an arcane art

I've always been a little in awe of those who have mastered Photoshop and it's magical abilities.

For me though, it's always been this confusing jumble of weird names and tools, so it has always gone into the too hard basket.

Until this week.

The Warbird open day on Sunday was a great day, but the weather was crap. It meant most of the photos were like this....

Just flat and white due to the cloud and glare. Normally there is little I could do to tidy these up even with the skills I have picked up in Lightroom.

Luckily though, I have a good mate who is a Photoshop wizard. He is well versed in its mystical ways..... Lee has spent a lot of time using Photoshop and was more than willing to provide some tutelage. (He's actually since posted the process on his blog here - check it out!)

So after a few emails with some detailed steps... I was able to create this:

Not perfect, but pretty cool none the less. I'm really happy with the result (and am also glad I shot in RAW format instead of Jpeg!).

Once I got the hang of a few of the details around layers etc, I found it wasn't that hard or time consuming after all. Something I should definitely try again.

Thanks for the help Lee! :-)