Sweet and Sour - High Key

Sweet and Sour - High Key, originally uploaded by marush1.

Experimenting with High Key.
Attempting to capture High Key in camera rather than induce it during post processing. Bracketed shots at +1, +2 & +3 to find the best starting point. Decided +2 was the best option then switched to manual using the +2 speed and aperture and experimented around that point. Minor tweaking in Lightroom to finish off.

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.