Paper and wall backgrounds

Yellowed and chapped

Brown and clean paper texture

Wall painted with grunge colors

From the cover of an old book

Backgrounds are available already to buy on DepositPhotos and other microstock agencies.

Here are some brand new, high resolution backgrounds created with my new processing technique. As typical photo textures, straight from the camera may seem easy to get, they need to be -found somewhere-  and differ from all that stuff which already exists in microstock libraries. And because in my work I use different tools to achieve some specific results I decided to merge several of them to create better quality texture with less camera noise or distorsions, higher resolution and more original look.

To create those four backgrounds I started with plain photos or scanned images of paper. Then in Photoshop I’ve created an Action to save the time. That action rescales the image to larger size, performs some cleaning and image enhancing operations. Then it scales back the picture to the previous size or a bit larger depending on the quality.

Normally I would stop at this moment. Thus to improve the picture and change the perspective to “could it look better?” I load it into Lightroom and try to use some of filters already created thanks to my Project 365. Few clicks and it’s clean and ready. Because all the new textures are also additionally digitally painted and textured, this step is necessary for me to mix between a photo and graphics look.

Now straight from the Lightroom back into the Photoshop, to check and balance some incidental levels or sharpness changes, switch to 8 bit,  sRGB palette and save.

Still I haven’t used my magic weapon ;)

Battle of Grunwald – the biggest medieval battle reconstruction

A second event I have had pleasure to watch in July 2009.
About 1400 knights, 100 thousands viewers in 599th anniversary. July 18, 2009 in Grunwald, Poland.

► High resolution editorial photos from the events in 2009, 2010, 2011 on Shutterstock and other photo agencies
► Video at the bottom
► more on Grunwald Battle, the living history event, enhanced source

It wasn’t easy to find the best place to take photos. Every photographer would like to have closeups, wide panaorama shots, various angles and proper sunlight. But with that thousands of people You have to find the best place You can and stay there. Especially when people have to sit on the ground cause otherways it would be almost impossible to see anything.

Knights had been fighting for real – no pretending, but not to the death.

Quick edit of the July 2009 – Battle of Grunwald 1410 – reenactment real battlefield panorama

At the time I was using a Canon 40D plus Canon 500D  and what can I say is that 500D performed really well and I had no issues with any excessive noise as some pople state.  Great, lightweight camera, good for women’s hands also.

Dice-o-matic

From time to time I update my dice designs with new one. There are about six new illustrations with die as a subject not only conceptual also typical isolated.

Besides of metaphors those cubes are useful as  pure objects so I do supply such  type of image.  Available in green, white, red and also single big green/red dice cluster (as an update of previous three illustrations).

Also the Craps Table illustration, my all time WIP (work in progress)  got the new third version with shallow DOF (Depth of Field). Slightly changed lights and colors (there is completely different light environment used) and  different objects arrangement. I changed the dice material to look more glassy.

I’m sure the next image of that series will be available soon with different view angle , arrangment and few other effects.

There is also virus related metaphorical stuff updated, with gadgets like syringe and baseball bat.

New abstract dotted spheres, new SEO metaphor variant with floats instead of empty menu frames (see previous post). High resolution images available.

And what I  found is that great Dice rolling machine, almost nothing happens here but it’s  fun to look at and that thing works as the random dice rolls generator for play-by-email games:

Thanks for reading and see You soon at the monthly photo stock report.

Tag: dice, game of chance, craps game

Virus – exploring the subject

Systematically updated commercial collection of illustrations

Dreamstime: Virus in blood
virus images collection

Taking the Swine Flu Vaccine: YES or NO?!

Above several  virus fighting visualisations @Dreamstime
with vaccination or specimen syringe

Virus graphics @ Shutterstock

Viruses
Scanning Electron Microscopy stylized images
@Fotolia

First version @BigStock

This is an universal and wide subject to cover,  so there are plenty of ideas and concepts possible.
High resolution creative raster images available at Shutterstock, Dreamstime, Fotolia,  123RF, BigStock and others – see full portfolio

Viral images collection of images on IStockPhoto – different artists.