my photography blog

I have build up a library of images of rusty, corroded metal sheets of lichen encrusted masonry and many more and am just starting to play with incorporating them into pictures to give an aged or distressed look. Here as an early example using a picture from a series showing the Barcelona skyline using a riveted rusty door as a background.

Been one hell of a week add to by fist full week back at the gym this year, exhausted. Couple of things I came across this week are a free ink texture pack from adobe and vintage paper textures also via adobe, more to play with!

Christmas decorations down to day so been busy but I found time to do my first full size sheet, will let it dry and post an image later

Tried out some ideas using brushing and stippling techniques. Wet the paper first then apply ink to wetted areas. Ink tried to fill the wetted area resulting in muddy puddles!  If you allowed the ink to dry you could build up layers but there was no feathering around the edges. Could do better! Next, I tried spraying the paper with a fine mist of water. Then using the ink bottle droppers I dropped small amount of ink in spots across the sheet. To diffuse any spots that remained I sprayed more water across the sheet. Then added more spots of ink and sprayed sheet again the lifted and tilted the sheet in different directions to allow the ink to flow. I still haven't achieved the effect that I was aiming at but this could be interesting. Will leave it for 12 hours or so to air dry.        

First attempts at watercolour backgrounds not particularly inspiring, need to have a think about exactly what I am trying to achieve, and once I’ve got it clear in my head start experimenting again. Some of my first attempts! Invested in a large sable watercolour brush, aim for the weekend, master watercolour! Have done a lot of drawing in charcoal, pencil and ink in the past and quite a bit with oils and acrylic so how hard can it be........ its alright, I'm not expecting miracles. Many thanks to Nobel Art Supplies in Winchester Street, Salisbury, for their help and guidance and materials. Just redone the background picture for this blog and am liking the un-cropped image a lot. Have change layout of blog to make if flow better since this post and had to do away with my old background picture.

Looking to develop some more backgrounds. Am going to experiment with coloured drawing inks on  water washed watercolour paper to see if I can get the inks to smudge and stain somewhat like the effect seen with chromatography. Time to start experimenting.

looking to develop ways of ageing and distressing images.  This project came about as a result of a post on LinkedIn from Tony Brandstette, a photographer based in the Greater Boston area who posted an image called “going to Rosedale”.  An autumnal suburban scene of a back alley, early evening, raining, stormy sky and an ominous glowing light in the background reflecting off standing water in the mid and foreground. Since then he has sent me a copy of the raw image which he describes as a mundane shot that would not be too interesting but with this technique you can jazz it up. Anyway this got me thinking about texture and pattern filters that could be used to enhance, for want of a better word, an ordinary or unexciting image. I looked at adobe filters and decided it would be interesting to develop some my self Spent a good chunk of the day taking pictures of decay, rusted steel, lichen encrusted stone and weathered and decaying wood. One of the many images fro