autofantasia's photos with the keyword: texture

For this week's Sunday Challenge , which was entitled The Writing's On The Wall . Although it can mean that there are clear signs that something will fail or no longer exist, I decided early on to go for the phrase in it's most literal sense. However, I only had an hour spare last week to wander around Northallerton looking for something to shoot and despite going up just about every alley and ginnel l could find there was a real absence of anything suitable. In fact, there was very little graffiti and most of what there was I decided might be, how can I put it, inappropriate for the challenge. So in the end, the best I could come up with was this close-up shot of something sprayed onto an old brick wall after all nobody said you needed to be able to read the writing. I liked the colour of the paint and the bricks lent themselves to some strong processing to bring out the colours and contrasts like I've tried to do here. Not great, but the best I could do this week. I wasn't even going to post it, but have decided at the last minute that something is better than nothing ... so, here it is!

Yet another 'nearly ran' for this week's Sunday Challenge , which had the intriguing theme of texture . This is actually a close up shot of the Kiwi sculpture I chose as my 'official' submission for the challenge and it shows in detail the carving that went into replicating the bird's feathers. Also for Sight and Sound: Pictures & Music . Sorry, but I couldn't resist it folks: youtu.be/52iW3lcpK5M

Here's another of the 'nearly made it' shots for this week's Sunday Challenge which had the theme of trees . Once again the subject is the old elderberry tree that is at the bottom of our garden. One of the larger branches was obviously sawn off in the distant past and this is looking straight on to the cut section. Not quite as sharp as I might have liked so I can see me revisiting this one at some point in the future.

Here's one of the 'nearly made it' shots for this week's Sunday Challenge which had the theme of trees . This is actually an old, make that a very old, elderberry tree that is at the bottom of our garden. The bark is quite spectacular even if I suspect most of the tree is now dead.

So folks, my late entry for this week's Sunday Challenge , which had the theme of texture, features Howard the Hare . I’ve been looking to photograph Howard, perhaps for the purpose of a Sunday Challenge , ever since he was given to me by my wife as a gift. This cold cast resin sculpture is one of a series produced by celebrated artist Paul Jenkins. Many of his pieces are inspired from direct observations of wild animals in their natural habitat and I’ve been an admirer of his work, especially the hares, for quite a while so was delighted to be given this as a gift. As soon as I saw this week’s challenge was texture, I immediately thought of using Howard as he himself has a lovely handcrafted texture. Howard normally lives indoors, but for this challenge I took him out into the garden as I wanted to try and produce a photograph of him that would eventually look like a painting of a hare in the wild. I sat him atop a large boulder and carefully positioned some potted plants around him to give what I hoped would be a naturalistic backdrop. Once I had a shot I was happy with the next challenge was how best to process the shot and what textures to use to give the desired effect. I opened the photo in PaintShopPro X2, which is my weapon of choice in such matters, and used the posterize effect to make the image slightly less realistic looking. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to lose the definition on the plant leaves and so the overall effect was still to realistic. Howard was looking good, but the leaves were still proving problematic. So I created a duplicate layer of the overall photo and treated the top layer to some PSP brush strokes, which really started to make the leaves look like they were painted. Next, I deleted Howard from the top layer to allow the less processed hare to show through from the lower layer. All that remained was to try and do something with textures, an area of processing I have little experience. PSP does have a canvas effect, but I didn’t feel it looked quite right so I got an old bit of carpet down from the loft and photographed the backing. I then copied the image into PSP and used it as a texture on the shot of Howard. It took a bit of fiddling around to get the opacity levels right, but I think in the end I got what I’d set out to achieve … something that looked like a painting of a hare in the wild. Looks better I think when viewed large. Oh, and if you want to know more about Paul Jenkins, follow the link below to his official website where you will find examples of his latest ceramic and resin bronze sculptures: www.pauljenkinsgallery.co.uk