I’ve been quiet on the blogosphere the past 10 days – was traveling to visit family – our annual post-holiday gathering of the ‘clan.’ That, and simply being overwhelmed on article and book proposal deadlines left my well ‘dry’ temporarily on thoughts/words – but only until I got back to my image file to look at work again!! It’s funny how a visual cue can trigger creative ideas, whether in the field or on the monitor.

When in Morocco last year, we stayed at a cool kasbah in the central area of the country. Restored to be a B&B, the walls were rich hues or burnt orange, yellow the color of squash, earth tones. During an afternoon rest break (I never rest though) I worked on this composition with two others in the group. I had photographed it the morning before during our breakfast with just the old lamp; this time we added the pot at the top of the steps, and that idea worked, too. Reviewing my images a few days ago, I decided this was a terrific photo to add a texture to. I used a texture from one of my favorite collections by Flypaper Textures and layered it over the original in Photoshop, setting the blending style to overlay and adjusting opacity to taste. Then I took it into Nik’s Viveza to make a few adjustments to taste as well.

Software News:

My friends over at Nik Software just announced Silver Efex Pro 2. Their program is terrific for black and white conversions, and I use it exclusively. This release will make the program even better as you can see in the features listed here at their site. If you order your copy now, using my code BTHARP, you’ll save 15% and, if you already own Silver Efex Pro, you’ll get a free upgrade when Version 2 is released on Feb 11th.

Richard, since you asked, here’s the ‘original’ – I adjusted it in Lightroom, but not Viveza at this point, and obviously hadn’t added the texture overlay.