Vesna Armstrong Photography

This is my second post today. I finally have found time to catch up on my photo processing and posting. I shot this beautiful pastoral scene while walking around  Bishop Burton, a lovely old farming village in East Riding of Yorkshire, not far from where our friends live. They introduced it to us inviting us to the local pub for a meal, their favourite eating place. When I first came back to photograph the place I could not take a single shot as my camera just would not switch on. It appeared the battery was not working which I could not understand as I fully recharged it the night before. It takes nearly an hour and a half to drive to the village and I felt like crying standing there trying to get the camera to switch on. In the end it started raining which meant I could not take pics anyway so I felt a bit better about having to come back. I got there again about a month later and was treated to beautiful sunny weather. This time I had a newly bought spare battery too but my old ...

A belated post I only had time to quickly upload on Flickr. A quaint flower shop on a picturesque parade of shops at the village of Bramhope. It was a beautiful winter day. More shots from this village will follow when I have edited them.

I created the still life with a Brownie camera almost a year ago. But there was something missing, it just did not feel completed and I could not figure out what it was I needed to do to finish  it off. Then I looked at it again the other day and I realized that it is conceptually very similar to the "Still life with Cup & Saucer" I made in 2009 which was very popular on Flickr. They both speak of things that I cherish and that mean much to me and also they are probably the best example of the sort of still life I try to create. It suddenly came to me what to add to the Brownie camera image to be happy with it - simply some faded birds in the background. While the "Cup & Saucer" symbolizes my love for still life, texture, cottage lifestyle, nature and reading the "Brownie on an old cake? plate" stands for my love for photography, still life, villages, antiques and the outdoors.

I must say I do not get any time for photography at this time of year. Work gets very busy and I end up doing extra days and hours, and what with preparations for Christmas all I can hope for is a few minutes to process something I have taken earlier. I do get very frustrated because I would love to go out there and capture some of the Christmas atmosphere or shoot a nice Christmas still life. But regretfully it will not happen. The day I took the photos of this charming church was also the last time I took photos and I expect it will not be before January when I am out with my camera again. I struggled a bit with the first image because there was no sky detail in the original and I thought it was not needed. But after a first processing attempt I decided the image does need a cloud detail in the top left corner so I added a new texture layer. It looks better for it but the church walls appear perhaps a bit too soft now. I applied the same sky and cloud texture to the second photo. I...