Amber bridge

[JemRaid]

I walk around the areas not too far from where I live and find the most attractive scenes opening out in front of me as I do. I like the small if it can be called that, the landscape where the subject becomes more personal and not one taken a thousand times at some famous spot or other.

A footpath and bridlepath that was once a proper field road leads down steeply to the river. As well as the footbridge there is a ford crossing for horses and they can splosh through the water to the right of the picture to access the path again.

I took the photograph in the Spring when the light was still able to penetrate the newly leaved trees. The vegetation grows profusely racing to flower and seed before the trees shade out the light. During the course of a year I make this walk lots of times and always stop to look into the river and sometimes sit and contemplate. It is a delightlful place to do so.

I use my Only Black technique to make the image, it will print beautifully at A4 on my cheap £30 Ricoh Laser printer. If anyone would like the TIFF file I would be honoured to send it to you.

J

 

[Designer]

I agree about the "small landscapes".

I was wondering how you got these "posterized" images. I had not heard of the "only black" technique.

I'm interested in what the colors would look like.

 

[JemRaid]

Hello Designer,

Thanks for the message and for your agreement. The Only Black is my name for it, I use Ps7 and Ps11 to do it, it pivots on the Shadow/Highlights tool lots of steps either side of that include Unsharp Mask, Gaussian Blur and some of the arty filters. Mostly though suck it and see and start again from scratch. The colours were mostly green this is the OOC image needs lots of work on it;

Cheers

J
[edit] Just remembered there is a technique called Adaptive Threshold and as I recall a Japanese site where you can load an image to be rendered online. It was in 2015 though when I first started fiddling with it and I can't remember how I found it.

 

[Fred von den Berg]

Very nice, a bit like an etched plate used to create a print.

 

[JemRaid]

Hello Fred,

You're quite right, when I had my first success with one I thought 'Woodcut'. Did a bit of investigation and found that they were were only about 3" x 4", the endgrain boxwood is scarce very slow growing and in some countries protected. [edit] Once I'd found out that I thought sod it why should I bother about what they look like they are mine, and I really enjoy making them.

These will easily print to 18" x 24" I've had one done on Hahnemule Photo Rag it's lovely, I like the way that from a distance it looks very good but as you approach it disintegrates into black blobs (Rowan Atkinson)

Cheers and thanks

J

 

[Jeff G]

Very nice effect! will make lovely prints.

 

[RVT1K]

The b/w reminds me of something M.C. Escher might have done.

 

[K9Kirk]

Cool looking! I used to do ink drawings so it really grabbed me. It inspires me to do some more but nothing quite that difficult to draw.

 

[JemRaid]

Hello Jeff,

Thanks for the nice comment, it does make nice prints even on a cheapo mono Laser printer.

Hello RVT1K,

Thank you for the name, I've been pointed to Mr Escher's work before I wish I had a tenth of his talent.

Hello K9Kirk

Wow! Fair play to you for doing ink drawings I wouldn't have a clue. I do hope I have given you some impetus to continue, we all need encouragement.

Cheers all

J