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This image was taken from the passenger seat of our car in India. On looking at the image I had taken, I was fascinated by the man’s eye and the way he was looking so I decided to build the final image around that. The original (see below) was very cluttered and had clashing colours.

After cropping the section I wanted to use to a square format, I used Photoshop Transform to straighten everything up. This was followed by Nik Pro-contrast and Viveza filters to adjust the light in the image, and I converted the background to monochrome. I then brought the colour back slightly using a layer mask on the monochrome layer.

The NIK Polaroid Transfer filter was used, followed by reducing the saturation before applying the Midnight filter. A layer mask was used to bring back parts of the image, particularly the man’s face.

The rest of the manipulation consisted of various layers to adjust the lighting to darken down parts of the image which were still distracting attention from the man’s face and eye. Finally ‘high-pass’ filter was use to sharpen just the man’s eye.

This image has had 12 international acceptances including the RPS International Print Exhibition (2012), The London Salon of Photography (2012) and 66th Bristol International Salon of Photography (2012). It was awarded the Graeme Webb EPSA, EFIAP Judge’s Award at the Solway Salon (2012)

Nikon D700, 70 – 300 mm Nikkor lens at f/4.5, ISO 1000, 1/1000sec.

This was taken in Barcelona. The sleeping couple were lying in the middle of a plaza and the crowd were milling around them – just ignoring them. I wanted to create an image which depicted the movements of the people around the sleeping couple.

The image consists of 8 shots taken a few seconds apart. Each was put in a separate layer and the opacity of each higher layer was reduced so that all the lower layers showed though. In each case, a layer mask was used to bring through the sleeping couple from the first layer (see the original image below).

The Nik Paper Toner (Sepia) filter was then applied followed by a series of Viveza filters to change the lighting to the way I wanted it and to bring out the areas of the image I felt were important. A Darken/ Lighten Centre layer, clone layers to remove minor distractions, levels and curves and Hue/Saturation layers were also used. Finally, the image was sharpened using the high-pass filter.

This image has had 5 international acceptances including the 120th Toronto International Salon of Photography (2013) and 68th Bristol International Salon of Photography (2014)

Nikon D700, 28-300mm Nikkor lens at 112mm, ISO 200, f/5.3, 1/1000 sec

This was taken in a store in Florence. There was a beautiful staircase made of steel and glass and I really liked the reflections and being able to see the people going up and down the stairs. I took several shots and chose this one because of the way the woman was framed in the gap and the because of the legs of the man coming down the stairs, which I thought made a good composition. (See the original image below). As I was working on it, the title ‘The Encounter’ came to mind as it implies a relationship between  the man and the woman, which may or may not exist.

Post capture treatment consisted of cropping the image to a square format and using transform to straighten everything up. The Nik Paper Toner was then used with a layer mask to bring back the colour on the woman and the man’s legs. A series of Viveza, levels, curves, hue /saturation, brightness / contrast and Darken / Lighten Centre layers were used to adjust the lighting to the way I wanted it. The texture was of some dry, cracked clay ground.

Finally the image was sharpened using high pass filter.

This image has had 17 international acceptances including the 103^rd London Salon of Photography 2014 (England), the 152nd Edinburgh International Exhibition of Photography 2014 (Scotland), the RPS International Images for Screen Exhibition 2014 (UK), 121st Toronto International Salon of Photography 2014 (Canada), 96th Scottish International Salon of Photography 2019 (Scotland), Malmo International Exhibition of Photography 2019 (Sweden) and a Ribbon at the Tallaght International Salon of Photographic Art 2014 (Ireland), 

Nikon D800, 50mm Nikkor Prime lens, ISO 200, f/3.5, 1/250 sec.