Inshot insight » graphics

Filled with Lightning

Neil — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:40:51 +0000

Once I had put the carbon fibre texture, the line drawings and the photographs into the graphic, I still felt that it didn’t quite “pop”
in the way that I wanted it to. I pondered it for some time, and looked at several options. Finally I took another look at the bus as it was when Steve bought it. The racing car graphics were surrounded by lightning –basic but effective.

I decided that I could generate some lighting using Photoshop, and I also decided that every piece of lightning on the whole bus
should be unique – no copy and paste for me!

My recipe for lightning (there may well be others have a search around but this is what I used for the bus) , simple but effective.

- New image file to your dimensions

- Gradient fill along the length

Filter – Render-Difference Clouds

Image-Adjustments-Invert

Adjust your levels to enhance the lightning effect

And use overlay setting when placed on main graphic

Job done

Still playing with sidecars

Neil — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:23:54 +0000

Steves sidecar went through a complete image change for this season. The new major sponsor from Toyo Tires meant a new fairing design in the same style of other motorsport teams.

Steve decided that I needed a challenge. Cheers Steve! He wanted to do something different and ‘in ya face’ for the swingers chair guard. We got together to go over his plan, he brought with him one of his Valentino Rossi helmets, and with a smile announced that it should look like this pointing to the ‘Dreamtime’ lid design. I, of course, smiled at the idea – then he told the printer needed the file by Friday 10am at the latest – it was now Wednesday afternoon. According to Steve I turned a shade of grey!

Considering copyright issues I generated ‘a time to dream’ taking inspiration from the original rather than a straight copy.

and this is it on the bike

Taken at Barrel 51 turn at Hampton Downs. A single image HDR with a little Topaz Adjust on post production.

The journey to now

Neil — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:59:09 +0000

My wife says that I have a visual brain. I have always had a love of images, not necessarily just photos but graphics and artworks. Since my early teens I have always found the album cover just as stimulating, exciting and interesting as the music I was listening to. A couple of years ago I decided that I needed to change my path. Photography came to my aid. I did a correspondence course which helped to reinforce some knowledge that I had. From there I was up and running. The course had an added bonus of igniting my desire to learn and extend boundaries. Discovering techniques and styles that many other photographers hadn’t adopted. About a year ago I came across High Dynamic Range (HDR) and I was hooked. A technique that seems to have a controversial edge to it; making it even more exciting to me. I love the versatility of HDR. From the artistic styles to subtle, gentle adjustments to create realism.