Vesna Armstrong Photography

It has been very cold with a lot of wind, snow (not settling) and rain. Not very motivating at all to go out with the camera, so I thought I would edit an earlier photo for posting to Flickr, and, of course, here on my blog. I like the simplicity of the composition of this image with the remains of an old wooden gate giving it an unusual interest and contrast of tones. Also the lovely low sun casting a beautiful warm glow onto the snow. I felt the image would benefit from deeper, more colourful sky so I added a brownish "grunge snow" texture. It also created a nice soft vignette and made the sunlight golden. These days I try to use textures more carefully. I believe gone are the days when strong textures were a fashionable style of processing. It is good to use textures to enhance images but overuse can easily have a detrimental effect. It's all about measure....as always for that matter. AFTER BEFORE

I have always loved low key still lives but have only recently bought some dark background cloth. I thought if you applied a dark texture in post processing you got dark results no matter what the colour of the background. But it can be very difficult working that way, and often it is impossible to get the richness and crisp contrast of tones a dark background allows you to achieve. I shot this image last October wanting to create an interesting and different autumn still life. The colourful and luscious dahlias must be the most beautiful  blooms at that time of year, and I had found some unusual looking autumn plants to team them up with. I hardly did anything to this image in photoshop, it just did not need much. You know you have a good shot when you can show it virtually straight out of camera. All I did is slightly deepened the colour of the background to make the set up stand out better, and I slightly decreased the highlights to get better detail in them.

I am a very very happy woman who has had a great start to the New Year learning I have sold a license for my first ever book cover at Trevillion Images. I have sold images before but I have always wanted to get a book cover being a great fan of books and literature. Now it has finally happened I am over the moon! The title will be released mid September so there is going to be a long wait before I can get my hands on it. In the meantime I can start saving for a camera upgrade.

I am pleased that my first post of the New Year involves snow. It was a lovely and refreshing walk between Christmas and New Year on a cold but beautiful winter day. It snowed on Boxing Day evening so we were not lucky to have a white Christmas but as far as I am concerned it is better late than never. And of course, Chevin Forest Park being so much higher than where I live there was a lot more snow there. I walked along Dales Way with its breathtaking birds eye view over Otley and Lower Wharfedale.