Textures - creating a fine art feel.
Unfortunately our third speaker was unable to give his talk on the "Art of the Zoo photography", but we had the pleasure of hearing instead from another great photographer, Jane Lazenby.
Jane gave us a fantastic talk about working with textures, something which may either make people scared or inspired about the use of them! A painter as well as a photographer, Jane has a degree in fine art and uses her skills within her images to create a final piece with fantastic artistic and creative qualities. She specialises in portraits of humans and animals, in particular horses and in her own words:
"My background as a painter allows me a unique artistic interpretation and style to my images which have met critical acclaim both nationally and internationally!"
Processing in Photoshop by using textures involves the use of a photo layer and then changing opacity or blend mode to create the final image. Jane explained that this method is great for empty areas or areas that lack interest, or for developing composites. Textures can be created by taking images of various surfaces such as stone, rust, peeling paint, slate, wood, fabrics, wall paper, antique paper; they are literally everywhere. Or you can make use of websites such as www.dailytexture.com and download any particular textures you want from them.
Jane explained that she loves to create a different feel or emotion in her images, to give more narrative, to change the story, or accentuate pattern, light and colour. After showing us some of her amazing work, which I myself loved to see and I am sure all our members enjoyed as well, Jane went on to give an informative tutorial using live editing to explain how she created the final images using the three techniques below:
Texture top layer and blend mode
Texture sandwich and masking
Painting out the background then texturing over
A truly inspiring and fantastic talk by Jane and a chance for members to see her beautiful images and perhaps give them a taste of what they could achieve themselves in their own work.
Another brilliant night !
Take a look at Jane's website and see for yourself her whole collection of photographic wizardry!
https://www.ejlazenbyphotography.co.uk/
Our next talk will be "Life" by Dave Mason on 19th October. We look forward to another entertaining evening.
