Oh my goodness! Picking just one 30 minutes from this last month has proved really really tricky!
We spent a little over two weeks of this month relaxing and sightseeing in the French countryside. I’ve been feeling disconnected from my camera over the past (goodness) ten months due to the stresses of our relocation back to the UK, so this trip was the perfect opportunity to get reconnected and reinspired. I told myself I was going to pick up my camera every day, just like I have done for the past three years but haven’t felt compelled to do hardly at all in 2019. So as you can imagine, I have a lot of images from this trip. A. Lot.
And so for a trip that was about reconnecting and getting inspired, it seems fitting that I share with you my go-to technique for getting myself out of a rut: trying something new!
I’ve wanted to attempt the Pep Ventosa Technique for a long time, but the time and the inclination and the subject haven’t ever aligned. Until now! One morning in France everything came together and this is the result:
It was 6.30am and my bladder decided I should get up. A quick trip to the bathroom and I thought I’d be straight back to bed. But before I made it back into the dark of my bedroom (thank you shutters) I caught a glimpse through another room out to the garden and field beyond. The sun was just rising and the land was awash with gold. I knew instantly what I had to do. Still in my pyjamas, I grabbed my camera and my crocs and stomped down the garden to the maple tree bathed in golden light.
For those of you who don’t know, the Pep Ventosa Technique is taking photos from every side of your subject and then compiling them images in Photoshop. In this case I used approximately 60 images layered together with varying degrees of opacity to create one single image. The result is almost like that of an impressionist painting. The techniques I usually use and that have become my “style” are exclusively done in-camera, so sharing this on-the-ground leg work and post-production manipulation is a little outside my comfort zone. But the reason I use those in-camera techniques is to create a dream-like, impressionist or abstract look and feel. So I feel bizarrely comfortable and complete out of control all at the same time! I have expanded my box of tricks and I certainly plan on using the technique over and over and over until I master it!
I took a few more pictures before I headed back inside. Not many, but the light was too gorgeous to just leave.
This last one is actually one of the 60+ frames for the Pep image, but the flare is too gorgeous to not share on its own in its own right.
It took me another 15 minutes to wind down after I went back inside. I did some crochet while I looked out at the view. And then I went back to bed. It was a pretty glorious way to start the day!
Thank you for joining me again this month. Up next in the blog circle is the very lovely Kim Sidwell Photography. Please click here to visit Kim’s page. Want some more amazing inspiration? Keep following the circle to see what other photographers from around the world have shared this month – and don’t forget to leave a little love on their pages!
Until next time,
~Ceri
