The façade is a difficult one. Further away with a narrower lens like the 28 from across the road, gives a shot with trolley bus wires running across the façade. With the 15mm I get the strange perspective of the two towers and just a couple of wires.

Gluringen

Still sifting thorough holiday snaps! The tiny hamlet of Gluringen sits in the top of the Rhone valley in Switzerland. An overnight stop meant I was exploring the streets around sunset, leading to some challenging light conditions. Imagine the sound of bells - cowbells, churchbells,

In Switzerland, everything comes to halt while the cows come in for the night 😊

Yes, the lighting isn't ideal but still enough to give a feel for a pretty town.

I'm getting a fish eating a water melon.

I don't know. I'm not sure I see it. I will have to look into it. I didn't actually post last week because I was taking my mom to a Christmas concert all day, but I assume you mean two weeks ago.

I see what you are talking about. It doesn't look that way in Lightroom. I will have to investigate.

"The Queen has been conquered"

This i like most, great scene and even greater background.

I personally don’t like the yellow cast from these sodium vapor lamps (?) but as there were in some shots also other light sources I decided to keep this cast to keep consistency. And it hides this dirty snow on streets better...

Those raccards are great photo subject, love them...

And Now For Something Completely Different(ish)

I haven't been able to get out with the camera this week, but I have been processing one of my photographs from last year in a different way. By painting it!

I was inspired to have a crack at this by the work of a local artist named Mike Lord, who has now painted a number of my photographs on canvas in oils. As I used to draw quite a bit, I thought I should give it a go myself and see what I could come up with.

Back in the day, I used to do a bit of water colour painting, but never felt I was particularly good at it, but I was reasonably good at pencil and ink work, although more in a comic book style and I never really took it beyond a hobby. Ultimately it devolved into occasionally drawing my own Christmas cards for family and friends before fizzling out to the point where I haven't really drawn anything for the last decade and was beginning to wonder if I still could!

Anyway, here's my digitally painted interpretation of my own "sunrise on Withnell Moor" photograph. This was a rare sunrise shot, taken in November 2022 of the lone Beech tree at Botany Bay farm on Withnell Moor. It's been painted digitally using Procreate on an iPad Pro, drawn with the Apple Pencil.

I used a JPEG of the original photograph for layout reference and palette sampling. The painting employs a number of media, including brushed acrylics for the main colour washes, dry brush for the grass and the tree is a combination of various pen and pencil techniques with an underlying acrylic fill for the bulk of the colour. There's probably a bit more work to be done on the clouds and background trees, but I'm reasonably pleased with this as it stands.

For comparison, here's an A2(ish) print of the original photograph.

Steve,

As darn well you should be.

That's nice work.

Steve Thomas

"An Impression of Beauty"

Sure as hell better than I could do.

"Lo0k"

Nice!

Andy Warhol: Self Portrait (?)

Nope. A version of my wife's face is superimposed in there, however.

"Black Swan"

"Starry Starry Day"