My Creative Images Promoting Digital Photo Artistry and Digital Photography
www.mycreativeimages.com
June - 2020
Banish bare walls bring the drama of nature into your home
James Hurley Glenridding Boat Hire, Ullswater
www.mycreativeimages.com/fine-art-prints/
Welcome to the Mycreativeimages Magazine Look around you, both your home and work place, something is missing, but what? The TV provides entertainment and drama, magazines provide stories and insights into areas of interest. Books help you relax and visualise the story that the author is weaving for you. Music soaks the senses with audible stimulation which triggers your imagination and focuses the mind. The internet lets you travel to places that you may never see in person. But what about your walls? They are the main structure of your home or workspace, they are painted to suit your furniture and carpets and they are just there and ignored. You see them more than your TV, more than a book or magazine more than your PC or mobile device. You walk passed them, sit and look at them when you eat, while you do the chores, or whilst you work. Something is missing. Your walls are crying out for attention. Its time to banish those bare walls. Its time to replace those mass produced pictures, its time to bring some drama and focus to your walls. Its time to hang a work of art on your wall. The right image displayed in a prominent position in your home or work space will provide you with visual stimulation, and a focus point. Banish those blank walls, fill them will artwork and images that you wont find
MyCreativeImages.com - Promoting Digital Artists
Featured artists James Hurley 4 Vivien Capper 10 Claude Trew 16 Julie Cowdy 18 David Walker 20 Susan Jones 26 Esta Moon Artistry 28 in high street home decor shops or mass produced prints found online. Reach out to a photo digital artist and find something special, something made for you, something that resonates with your interests, something that will make you smile everytime you see it hung on your wall. Flip through the pages of this months magazine and the back issues, get in contact with an artist or two and banish those bare walls. Thanks for visiting James Hurley
Photo Artist / Magazine Editor Cover Artwork by James Hurley https://www.mycreativeimages.com
All images in this publication are sourced / created by the artists, unless otherwise stated on their websites or social media pages and as such must not be copied or sold without the express consent of the artist. This publication is created and owned by James Hurley, Šwww. mycreativeimages.com 2020. Please feel free to share the magazine but do not make changes to any of the content.
James Hurley
https://www.mycreativeimages.com/
James is a photo digital artist that captures landscapes photographs as well as painterly portraits either in the comfort of his home or on location. He is based in Huntingdon, near Cambridge, and has a passion for incorporating his emotions and frustrations into surreal artwork. James is a self-taught photographer who has learnt Photoshop by taking a number of online courses hosted by Sebastian Michaels. His current focus is to further explore and enhance his photography skills and further develop his own photo digital artistic style which can incorporate lots of colour and textures employing a Chiaro-oscuro style but also a darker monochromatic approach, as with his self-portrait series, the last of which is shown to the right and is titled “Together Forever�. In addition he is applying his fine art styling to a series of dramatic landscape photographs taken around Glenridding and Patterdale in Cumbria to complement a series of landscape images showing the Grisedale valley, focusing on the barren beauty of the wild fells that surround Patterdale and Glenridding. Some of this fine art black and white landscape images are shown here. You can email James if you would like more information about his work: James@mycreativeimages.com
Grisedale Beck 4
Together Forever
Glenridding Boat Hire - Ullswater
Stone Barn - Grisedale Valley
Vivien Capper
https://vivien-jane-c.pixels.com/
Hello my name’s Vivien and I’m from the beautiful county of Kent, England though currently living on the coast near Rome in delightful Italy with its exciting, lively way of life and vibrant colours and designs. I started out as an artist in 1982 developing Indian ink artwork of a variety of subjects especially figurative artwork and abstract floral designs, then progressed into creative photography and digital artistry thanks to Sebastian Michael’s amazing courses at ‘Photoshop Artistry’ and the advanced courses ‘Awake’ and ‘Kaizen’. My inspiration is drawn from my love of nature, figurative artwork and Italian design using many textures, patterns and colours. I’m thrilled to have some of my artwork in various publications including: Living the Photo Artistic Life, My Creative Images and have had various artworks mentioned in the Shift Art Challenge and was thrilled to win the challenge with a piece called ‘The Mysterious Cobbled Street’ in 2018. Now in 2020 I am concentrating on a series of Fresco-style Art taking my inspiration from Italian Frescos. This involves a lot of patterns, swirls, designs and colours and adding them to the model. Most of my models are from my Photoshop Artistry and Awake courses and the Colby Files. If you would like to see more of my art: https://vivien-jane-c.pixels.com/
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The Merry-go-round
Nature
The horse
The Lady in Green
Claude Trew I am a retired lady who is a keen photographer and I belong to a local camera club. However, while I enjoy entering the competitions organised by the club, I feel that the style of photographs that are most successful in club competitions is inhibiting my creative output. I am following some online courses to try to improve the artist in me. So far I have enjoyed every course I have done and hope to share my work with a bigger audience. This is an ongoing process.
Summer Solstice
Cyclops
Sand Storm
Julie Cowdy
https://www.facebook.com/Julie-CowdyPhotography-640242869458291/
I divide my time between North Yorkshire in England and the Occitanie region of SW France. I used to teach art but am now happily retired from paid employment and enjoying my new life as a photo artist. My work covers many different genres, with still life and floral subjects my favourite. I like to create two different sets of images: those which are suitable for camera club and salon competitions and those which push the boundaries more, for personal enjoyment or digital publications. Through post-processing techniques, I often blend original images with my painted and photographed textures. I am aiming for a different approach that combines my love of fine art and the lens. I hope the resulting photo artistry offers something multi-layered, both in terms of what people see and how they respond. You can see more on my “Julie Cowdy Photography� page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Julie-Cowdy-Photography-640242869458291/
Poppy 1
Poppy 2
David Walker
https://www.vista-foto.com/
PhotoArt in Lockdown! I was scheduled to display at three different art exhibitions during the pandemic lockdown, a display, jointly with Ann Slim at the Shenstone Library, a showcase at the Curborough Festival of Artists (jointly with Ann Slim and Colin Brooks and of course the Yoxall Village Fete with the Yoxall Art Group. Ann and Colin are both members of the Yoxall Art Group. My plans were therefore thrown out of the window and I have reverted to producing new images and experimenting with styles and methodologies. All my work is produced from my own photographs, which may have proved difficult during lockdown, I have not taken a single image this year…but I do have a collection of over 115,000 photos to fall back on. This month I decided to concentrate on bird and animal images. Believe it or not these do offer a special challenge to PhotoArtists, how far away from the original carefully taken and processed photograph can I deviate? As a wildlife photographer I was used to dealing in razor sharp focus, especially with the eyes, and finding a background that did not take away from the beauty of the beast! When I look at my photographs I do so in the “space” in which they were created. What did we see when we looked at the scene before clicking the shutter? Does the image match that scene? So often it does not, but as a PhotoArtist I have the power to recreate the image as I remember, so often the colours of a photograph do not match my vision! That is something I can play with and accentuate to show the majesty of the scene I remember. Some may call that cheating…but not me, the artist inside of me wants to share the beauty of the scene I photographed, PhotoArt enables me to do just that
Baby Elephant
Watching & Waiting
Little Owl
White-breasted Nuthatch
Lilac-breasted roller
Lilac-breasted roller American Rhea
Lion
Susan Jones
https://www.instagram.com/sulisloveswater/
My name is Susan Jones I have loved photography all my life, though I was rejected from the photography class at school due to not having my own SLR camera. About 20 years ago a bought a DSLR and haven’t looked back, I love taking photos, mostly studio but as often as possible getting out and about, particularly London. I have been using Photoshop for a few years, and to my joy found Sebastian Michaels Photoshop Artistry courses and then Awake and have learned so much about Photoshop and continue to learn every day. I love the program, I love changing plain photographs into fantasy colourful worlds. I hope you enjoy looking at my work as much as I enjoyed creating it. You can see more of my work here: https://www.instagram.com/sulisloveswater/
Emerging from the deep
Pearl for your thoughts
Esta Moon Artistry
My Cr e a t i v e I ma g e s – B e h i n d the scenes by VivienJane
This month we are delighted to interview Alison Bailey of Esta Moon Artistry for some insights on her photography. ---How long have you been a photographer and what is your main genre ? I have had a camera since I was a teen and have always loved making memories. But when I got my first digital camera, it changed the way I looked at photography. Learning about the settings made me try different things and ultimately, I discovered that I rather liked photographing bugs. ---What are your favourite pieces of equipment? My Canon 5D, my canon 100-400mm lens and my sigma 105mm macro lens. ----
that people knew that I do natural photos and not studio style ones. With wildlife, which is my main subject, I just go with the flow and see what presents itself to me. The main thing is to be patient … very patient! In the field, what are your settings? I always shoot on the manual settings and tend to set my speed to 500 and my aperture to f11 to start with. In nature reserves I can be in bright light one minute and then under tree cover the next minute so I tend to vary my ISO depending on where I am. The first thing I do before taking my first shot is to do a live view to set the ISO. I nearly always use auto for my white balance. ----
What steps do you take as a photographer to make sure that the object, person or landscape you want to shoot looks the way you want it to? I very rarely do anything to set up a shot other than when I did a wedding shoot. (Never again!) Obviously there, I made sure I found out what they wanted and made sure that they got that. I have done various photoshoots but I make sure 28
Which setting do you use for your macro photography? It depends on whether I am using a ring flash or not. With macro photography you don’t always get many chances so I normally find a leaf and take photo to see how it looks and adjust appropriately. I keep my speed around 250 and my aperture to F8 and keep my ISO as low as possible. ----
From your point of view, what makes a good picture? A picture that makes me “chimp”! Many things make a good picture including just getting a photo of something that will act as a memory. For me, photography is mostly about making memories. I don’t set out to please others, only to please myself. ---Nowadays almost everyone has access to devices to take photographs. Do you use any of them? I will use anything I can to take a photo! I have my phone on me nearly all the time and use it a lot. I have my first DSLR camera which I will sometimes just take in the garden and play with. I have a Canon 5D and a Canon 6D which are the ones I take out to nature reserves. I also have a few little compact camera’s but rarely use them now. ---Do you have a favourite photographer past or present? I don’t have a favourite photographer but I have photography friends who I met from “365 project” http://365project.org I love seeing the photo’s from those people as they are so varied and it is wonderful to see the World through their eyes. ---Do you have a special editing software you usually use for post-production? I use Lightroom and Photoshop for editing. ---Do you have a favourite place you visit to take photographs? My nature reserves are not only my favourite places they are also the places I go to to recharge my soul. Is there a question you wish I had asked you about your photography? If so….which? What would you like to do but either can’t, or don’t get a chance to do? I would love to do more landscape photography but my health restricts me from walking up hills and I hate small roads which also restricts where I go. Maybe one day ….. ---You can find more of Alisons work here https://www.instagram.com/estamoonartistry/ and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/EstaMoonArtistry/
Banish Blank Walls Hang Exclusive Fine Art in your home or workspace
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M e t v IImages ae My CCreative Promoting Digital Photo Artistry