Wood-fired!

Remains of the bunch

As the day fades away so do the gerberas. Once tall and alert, their stems now trimmed. They try to hold up their heads as sleep encroaches on us all. One quick photo before we retire for the night.

Add comment November 15th, 2008

No thorns go as deep as a rose’s

Our roses have survived the recent high winds and are in their showing off phase.


This climbing rose grew so much in early spring that it completely subsumed the handle that deploys the sun umbrella. One painful attempt to wind the handle by reaching into the roses made it clear that extensive pruning was required. So we now have an abundance of apricot-hued roses inside as well as out. A quick photo session ensued.

This is my assistant gardener, Finn.

The huge red roses on the opposite corner of the deck are also in full bloom. This shot has been filtered to preserve the reds only.

“No thorns go as deep as a rose’s” - from Dolores by Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Add comment November 2nd, 2008

More filter fun

Here are a few results of spending the afternoon playing with OnOne’s PhotoTools for Photoshop (instead of doing the chair design I was meant to!). Nice to have an excuse to re-visit some old favourites.

These are the originals:

2 comments September 21st, 2008

(Pre)set the controls for the heart of the sun!

I’m a big fan of Adobe’s Lightroom - a great piece of software that makes managing and publishing your photos almost¹ enjoyable. There has been a recent proliferation of third-party plug-ins and presets for LR and today I played with the (free) WOW presets by Jack Davis.

I tried these out on some old pics of California poppies that self-seed in our back yard. This simple poppy is one my favourite exotic flowers. It’s a close call against a single Ranunculus and a dog-rose. (All very simple blooms I now notice - what is that saying about me?)

The first pic is a black & white conversion that emphasises the difference between yellow and white, with a slightly warm tint and a strong vignetting.

The colouring in this pic is the result of nothing other than applying LR’s auto white balance - misguided in terms of real colour but interesting for this image. Presets in LR don’t do anything you can’t do using the built-in controls (unlike Photoshop plugins and filters) and the usual selling point is that presets streamline your workflow. The benefit for me though is that other people’s presets adjust settings in a way that I might not try. In this case I never use auto white balance and would never have seen this great colour effect. More generally presets make use of multiple adjustments that you might not try in your normal workflow. The implementation of presets in LR means that you can just move your cursor over each preset and see the result in the navigation pane.

This is another B&W conversion that picks up a very subtle difference between yellow and orange bringing out the contrast along the edge of the stamens. A slightly cool tint and some light vignetting is also applied. I love the way the background has been rendered in this version.

In case you’re wondering, the title of this post is a tribute to the recently departed Richard Wright. Set the controls for the heart of the sun is a favourite track from the Floyd albums, A Saucerful of Secrets and UmmaGumma.

1. there has to be some room for artistic angst [↩]

2 comments September 19th, 2008

Ripe roses

The rich colours of these roses intensified as they dried. Nice colour mix for an ice-cream! Thanks to Vanessa for the flowers.

1 comment August 18th, 2008