Even fairies need them sometimes.
Stock credits listed on the deviantART page.
A lot of my favourite photographs from my travels are now on my RedBubble account. Some of my other creative photomanipulations will also be going up (as soon as I get permission from the stockers to do so).
I actually need some extra cash to buy a lampworking kit to make pretty beads, like this…
If you feel like donating to the cause, please consider buying a print or a card. Every little bit helps.
Alternatively, if anyone’s got any good quality photos of their kids, I am happy to take on a commission or two.
Or design some jewellery…
Noir Magazine - Conceptual mazine and masthead design.
I must apologise for the lack of content here recently. As a design student now in my second year of my course (part time) I am pretty busy with homework a lot of the time. I hope to have a range of different tutorials up over the coming weeks though.
Not to mention photos and assignment pictures.
*** The above assignment features photography by yours truly. The image is one I took of up and coming singer, Katie Weston.
Coastal Woodlands... and not a vignette to be seen.
Vignettes, those wonderful dark edges in photos and artwork alike are the bane of my existance. Why? Because they are overused and they are used in the wrong flippin’ way.
Vignetting should never be used simply “because [you] can”. It should be used to increase the appeal of an image – providing that the image actually calls for for that sort of treatment. Unfortunately many photographers, including my very talented friends, are getting swept up in the evil power of vignettes.
THEY ARE VIGNETTING EVERYTHING.
Always, always, ALWAYS use vignetting sparingly. Think before you use it; “Will this make my image look better?”
Please note that a craptastic photo will always be a craptastic photo. You cannot make a silk purse out of a pigs ear and no amount of digital fucking-with (oops, I sworeded) will make a craptastic photo any better. Believe me, I have tried and tried. Many of my photographs have vignettes but these were all taken long before I learned precisely where vignettes should be applied.
Vignettes force focus to the centre of the image. If the main subject of your photograph is not towards the centre of the image, then for Gods sake, do not use a vignette.
This is something I have picked up from my studies at graphic design school. Product placement isn’t as naff as it sounds. The layout of an advertisement is done in many different ways to provoke many different reactions but all are done in such a way that the viewers eye are led through the image with no bumps or roadblocks to the important information contained therein.
The same also applies to photographs. If you’ve placed your subject to one side of the frame, if all the details are very close to the side of the frame, then you should not be using a vignette. The same goes with images which are absolutely saturated with colour. Do not vignette these. The impact is already there in the colour and hopefully in the image itself. Why add a vignette that will just make it murky at the edges? And why mess with people’s natural discovery of the image itself by forcing them to look into the middle of the photograph when the eye may well lead them there anyway, thus making them appreciate the picture even more for it’s entirety rather than just the bit in the middle? Seriously, if you’re going to add a vignette to an extremely colourful image, set the vignette layer to OVERLAY or SOFT LIGHT rather than leaving it on NORMAL or MULTIPLY blend modes in Photoshop. What this will do is darken the edges by saturating the colour without adding a murky black which kills the colour altogether.
And I have to add this… if your images are white or very light around the edges, for the love of all that is good and right with the world, don’t murky it up with a grey-black vignette. That’s just all sorts of wrong.
Of course, rules are meant to be broken, you can add vignettes to anything but seriously folks, think before you apply. Criticise your work – stand back from it, disassociate yourself from sentimental feeling and evaluate what you have done with it or what you want to do with is. Visualise, apply and, if it sucks, DELETE.
About the photos in this post:
These were taken in July 2009 in the front yard of a house situated just off the beach in Portsea. The light was so beautiful – it had just been pouring with rain and there was a break in the clouds that lasted just a couple of minutes, I just had to try and catch it.
Coastal Woodlands... and still no vignettes!
Christmas at Casa de Mrs E was an understated yet frustrating affair. Christmas decorations were broken. Cooking was started almost two hours late (around the time we were supposed to be eating) due to the inclement weather and cold, cold wind smothering the heat beads in the spit roast (which really pissed Mr Husband off as the cooking is really his thing and he takes it personally when things go wrong). The kids ended up eating McDonalds for dinner. We finally ate at about 9.30pm. » Continue Reading…
It’s Spider Monkey!
Dugite - a living shadow.
“Pussy cat, pussy cat
Where have you been?”
“I’ve been to London
To visit the Queen.”
“Pussy cat, pussy cat
What did you there?”
“I frightened a little mouse
Under her chair.”
(Even when writing about my cats, I manage to get something about London in there. Obsessed. I tells ya.)
Twilight in July
Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
The shooting stars attend thee;
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.
No Will-o’-the-Wisp mislight thee,
Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee;
but on, on thy way,
Not making a stay,
Since ghost there’s not to affright thee.
Let not the dark thee cumber;
What though the moon does slumber?
The stars of the night
Will lend thee their light,
Like tapers clear, without number…
– Robert Herrick
The Regent’s Park, London, 2006
“More than once did Elizabeth, in her ramble within the park, unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy. She felt all the perverseness of the mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought, and, to prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first that it was a favourite haunt of hers. How it could occur a second time, therefore, was very odd! Yet it did, and even a third. It seemed like wilful ill-nature, or a voluntary penance, for on these occasions it was not merely a few formal inquiries and an awkward pause and then away, but he actually thought it necessary to turn back and walk with her.” — Pride & Prejudice, chapter 33.
I’ve got to get back to the UK. I enjoyed myself so much there – and Scotland too for that matter.
More info on The Regent’s Park here.
Grasses at the estuary, Port Lonsdale.
On the 29th of this month, it will be the first anniversary of the wedding of the manbeast and I. It’s been an interesting year. Foregoing the honeymoon, we opted to use the rest of the cash left over from the wedding to put towards a new house. With a little help from Mrs E (my mum), we were able to purchase the wonderful castle we now live in. We’re still getting used to its quirks but it’s home. It’s ours. And the bank’s.
