A foggy day

A foggy day, originally uploaded by marush1.

The sun never broke through the fog today so I made the most of what i had.
The original was almost monochrome so I put it through Silver Efex Pro and gave it an antique look. I then added a texture of 'old canvas' and what was a mundane image of the track by my house acquired a strange ethereal look.

Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice, originally uploaded by marush1.

Trying to get the two components together was a big challenge. In the end I suspended a match in an ice cube tray and froze it. The next step was to work out the lighting. I decided that any form of side lighting I could produce wouldn't work and the ice cube had to be lit from below. To achieve this took a flashgun and covered it with a Honl blue gel. To this I added a Pringles tube which focussed the light on to the transparent lid of the tube. The lid acted as a support for the ice cube.
A few test shots with the match unlit to get the flash balance correct and then light the match and take the shot. To deepen the colour in post processing I duplicated the original image layer and set the blend mode to multiply. Sharpening took place on the upper layer only and the opacity was reduced to 80%.

Slow Burn

Slow Burn, originally uploaded by marush1.

One advantage of photographing incense sticks is that the room smells wonderful.:)
I wanted to get as close as possible to show the textures so instead of using my macro lens I put the Canon 50mm f/1.8 on a full set of Kenko extension tubes.

Smoke Trails

Smoke Trails, originally uploaded by marush1.

I tried for several years to photograph the 'bomb-burst' finish to the Red Arrows display but something always went wrong. Planes were out of focus, out of frame, or obscured by smoke from the others. Fortunately on this attempt I nailed it.

Tulip

Tulip, originally uploaded by marush1.

This is a reworking of an old image. What surprised me was how far I have come in my post processing since this image was take 5 years ago. A few moves in Photoshop and what would have taken me hours took less than a minute.
The image was taken in 2005 at the Chelsea Flower Show. It was a technically correct, but pretty average, close-up record of a tulip.
I needed an image of this type for a Flickr group I use so I went back to the original Raw image and opened it in Photoshop. A few touches in ACR with my current workflow and I already had a more satisfying image than the original but there was still something missing. I added a touch of vignette but it still needed a lift so I duplicated the image (after saving as a PSD and then flattening the working image in Photoshop) applied a fairly large Gaussian blur to the duplicate and set the blend mode to Multiply. Setting the opaciry of the duplicate layer to about 80% gave me the look I wanted and that you see here.
Believe me when I say It has taken longer to write about than to do.

Split Tone

Canon EOS-1D Mark ll N, EF 24-105 f/4, 1/250, f/11.0, ISO 320

Been getting a lot of good reports about Lightroom 3 so I am giving it a try.
This is an image from the archives taken in Spring last year which i decided to give a new treatment in LR3.
In the Development module I chose a Split Tone preset which I wasnt quite what I wanted so I tweaked the toning saturation and the balance between highlights and shadows to get it to my liking thenI added a vignette. Not earth shattering but a pleasing result.

Imminent Danger

Canon EOS 5dMkll, EF70-200 f/4.0, 1/400 sec, f/9.0, ISO 200

A few seconds after I took this the kite surfer jumped a wave and was blown by the wind into the rock on the right. His rig, lines and kite, were wrapped round the rock. With the heavy sea running he was lucky to survive.
Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight.
Converted to Black and White with SilverEfexPro