Latest Cover Design: Memory's Vampire

Here’s the first cover completion for the month. This one is for a short horror story by C.M. Simpson. It’s called Memory’s Vampire.

Photographs were sourced from dreamstime.com as follows: Frederico Marsicano for the vampire (taken from his image "Two elegant handsome vampires looking camera"); Oleg Zabielin for the soldiers and the flame (taken from the photograph "Black silhouettes of soldiers"); and Ivan Vander Biesen for the graveyard (which this cover does not show to its full glory, but which can be seen in the photograph "Langemark WWI Cemetery, Flanders Fields, Ypres, Belgium"). The cover image was created using GIMP, and any manipulation misjudgements are mine.

This cover was a little difficult to complete. I wanted fire and vampires and a female character for the front, so my first idea was to have a slightly angled rear view of a woman with a flame thrower. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one. I also looked for a woman with a grenade launcher, and a woman in body armour, but there were no satisfactory images. Point to note – why do almost all the pictures of women with military hardware look like they’re using the hardware as a prop in a photo shoot for a sexy magazine. I mean, sheesh!

I wanted a picture of a woman handling a weapon like she knew how – because that’s what the female characters in the story’s I design covers for do. They’re tough, smart, and they dress for combat, not like combat kitten sex symbols at some photo shoot. The gals I need images for are proficient, efficient, and know their soldiering, but finding pictures depicting capable combat-ready women is almost impossible, regardless of whether it’s for science fiction, fantasy or contemporary settings. I spend a lot of time looking for (and often not finding) those images.

Anyway, with a lack of side-angled rear-views of a woman operating a fire-spouting flame thrower (or any other suitable substitutes), I had to take a different approach. In addition to not finding a woman with a flame thrower, I couldn’t find a decent gout of flame-thrower flame, which meant I had to find my fire in another form, hence the picture of soldiers against a backdrop of fire - a choice I do not regret.

The next difficulty I had was in finding the kind of garden I had in my head. I wanted a palace courtyard garden, preferably with a fountain, or weeping willows or a view from under a weeping willow or from beneath a large tree looking across a formal garden. No real luck, although I had the privilege of browsing some very nice shots. In the end I decided on a most excellent grave-yard.

The final problem was the vampire. I was hoping for the classic vampire with a woman carried in his arms across his chest – and I came across an unexpected problem: most of the vampires were snarling, or in arms askew positions, or in the about-to-pounce pose. I wanted one that was dignified, sinister, and not a comical caricature - also one that did not have blood dribbling down his chin, and did not look like a madman.

There were a few that fitted this description. There were also a few that looked like zombie-vampire crosses. Anyway, I finally found the vampire in the picture, and just had to isolate him, and layer him in. Okay, and maybe rotate him a little, but he suited the image, and the story, quite well.

Steps to the design?

Well, I started with the short story template, and altered the descriptive text and the title to suit, then I added the background, deciding what portions I was going to keep in the frame, and making sure the title, by-line and short description were over the base layer. After that I darkened it a very little, and gave the contrast a slight tweak.

After that I had to decide whether or not it was going to be the soldier silhouette or the graveyard that was placed on top and made slightly transparent. The picture on the left, has the graveyard layered over the top of the soldiers with an opacity of 63.9 per cent. The picture on the right has the soldiers layered over the graveyard with an opacity of 45.5 per cent. I chose the picture on the right to serve as the base for the next stage, just because the definition was a tiny bit sharper on the soldiers.

The final stage was to slide the vampire face in between the top and bottom layers, rotate it because to have it the size I needed meant it ended before the bottom of the cover, and that ending had to be off-page—and I had to isolate the image from the background and the other vampire in the picture. This isolation required selecting the section of the picture containing the vampire I wanted, reducing it so that the longest side was 525 px in length, outlining the vampire and then cutting him away from the background, before pasting him back into the image, blanking out the background and resizing the image to the original height. After that, it was a simple matter of opening the isolated vampire as a layer in the cover image being created. It took me a couple of goes to get the angle of the face where I wanted it, with the entire cover creation process having to be repeated between attempts as I played with positioning. In the end, I chose the second-last trial run (the picture on the left, below).

 
All in all, this was a relatively simple cover to put together, once the images were found, but I spent quite a few hours trying to find the images I wanted, as well as reworking the cover concept when I initially couldn't find what was in my head... and now I have some more photographers I can go to when this kind of image is needed.

Getting Back into the Swing

I know I've been away a while; I've been trying to balance things out so I get done what needs doing most, but I've been neglecting all my blogs - and this one most of all. I've also been neglecting my photography, so I'm going to try to stop doing that, mostly because I need good photos for things like Linked-In articles and book covers, but also because I really need to brush up on my art skills.

First things first, though, I'll start with the photographs, and then try for regular sketching. After that, we'll see. Baby steps, right?

Today, I started in the garden. It's autumn in Australia, my favourite time of year, but I was surprised by the sight of one of my rose bushes covered in more flower than I've seen for a couple of years, and decided to start there.

My first few shots were fuzzy, but three yielded this surprising shield (or stink-) bug. I'll be using it as a reference photo for sketching. We'll ignore the fact I'm rusty and was aiming at the roses, okay?

After that, I spotted this bud, all by itself.

That was followed by the discovery of this budding Molongolo grevillea flower - for the first time!

And I decided that the birds visiting my garden needed to get used to seeing me around with a camera. After this afternoon, I have hopes they'll relax enough to let me get closer. First, the magpies came to visit.

And then this rosella came, and surprised me by stopping long enough to visit the seed box, even though I was outside, and then it hopped down to forage in the grass. By far the most relaxed little bird of the afternoon.

Later, this sulphur-crested cockatoo stayed around for a few shots

 ... and the seed.

But the yellow-rumped thornbills were not at all cooperative, so I had to content myself with this lovely array of autumn foliage, instead.

And that's the start of it. Wish me luck.

Daily Photographs - June 2015

Well, they happened - again, not every day... and my camera decided to not record the exact date, so I'm going to have to guess the order, but there was a nice variety of things to photograph.

Daily Photograph, April 13, 2015 - Red Wattlebird

And today's photograph is...

First Night Shots of a Spider - January 2015

I won't go into the stupidity of the last four months, but you have my apologies for the break. Even with an internet deficiency looming, I'll try and get back into the swing of things with the following pics of a spider weaving its evening web.

This is the first time I've ever shot at the darker end of dusk - and managed to get results. I tried a couple of things.

I'm not set up to shoot insects or spiders or other little things. I don't have a macro. What I have is a zoom lens and a little Canon DS. I'm still learning.

And, last night, I learnt a little bit more. I saw this little beauty weaving her evening web while I was out watering the garden. From what I can see on Alan Henderson's photograph on the 'Minibeasts Wildlife' site, this is a garden orb weaver (possibly an Eriophora biapicata) - and she stopped  me in my tracks and made me completely forget I needed to close the windows against the sprinkler I'd just set.

For those interested in the technical side, these shots were taken using a Canon DS126151 and a Canon EF75-300mm Zoom Lens. Here is a chronology of shots and what I learned along the way.

First shot was a massive failure, because I tried the sports setting and the light was too low.

Like I said - massive fail.

Next, I tried using the flash and the close-up setting. My first shot was blurred because time and spiders busy weaving their webs wait for no man, woman, or camera. This is my second shot.

And this was my third shot.

 They're okay, but I didn't like the way the spider looked so shiny in each shot, or the way the light reflected off its exo-skeleton. Take a look at the next shot and you can see reflections on both the forelegs and fangs. I get the impression she wasn't too happy with the flash or camera, but she kept right on weaving.

I remembered reading somewhere that you can diffuse the flash using tissue paper. Being a little short of tissue paper and time, I grabbed a tissue and gave it a go. The first shot held some promise for getting rid of the reflections.

It was difficult to keep the tissue in place, focus and keep track of a rapidly moving spider in rapidly failing light, but I kept trying and eventually took these, much clearer shots.

I'll try for more night spider shots over the coming weeks, and we'll see how they come out. Wish me luck - these little suckers are quite hard to find.

You can find out more about garden orb weavers at the following sites:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_garden_orb_weaver_spider
• http://australianmuseum.net.au/Garden-Orb-Weaving-Spiders
• http://www.spiders.com.au/garden-orb-weaving-spider.html
• http://www.mdavid.com.au/spiders/orbweavers.shtml
• http://www.findaspider.org.au/find/spiders/105.htm
• http://museumvictoria.com.au/spiders/detail.aspx?pid=5&pic=1
• http://www.spiderzrule.com/orbweaver.htm
• http://www.ozanimals.com/Spider/Garden-Orb-Weaver-Spider/Eriophora/transmarina.html

Sunday Walk Feature - Paths and Byways in the Early Morn

It's hard to fit these walks in, but I'll keep trying. This is taken from one of the walking tracks that criss-cross Canberra at around 06:30 in the morning. I was hoping to catch the local bird-life at breakfast, but that's not quite how it turned out.

The day was overcast, lending atmosphere to the pines overshadowing the path. Spring blossoms lightened the day, even without the morning sun to brighten them.

I like the idea of frames and reflections and look for shots that allow me to experiment with both. Tree trunks  and branches can lend some structure, and drains provide urban sources for water reflections.

The first birds I see are these two crimson rosellas, but they're cagey and don't sit still, and I botched most of these shots. This is the clearest of them.

Wildflowers form a muted splash of colour on a dull day. These Ipheon uniflorums look like they've escaped someone's garden. Originally transported to Great Britain from Brazil, they are a native of Argentina, although now naturalised to Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

This usually busy road was completely empty, and made me think of abandoned cities and zombie apocalypses.

Bridges were an exercise in horizontals, with the culvert providing contrasting curves... of course, I'm going to have to work on straightening my aim.

Focusing more closely didn't seem to make too much difference, although it did cut out some foreground and side clutter.

With an almost complete absence of birds, paths became the main focus of the day.

This one winds through a small stand of beech trees (possibly Fagus grandifolia... possibly).

No birds, but some unusual tree features, caught my eye.

The path seemed to change as I walked along it, and new shoots announced the arrival of an Australian spring.

The same trees take on a different character in isolation.

The birds started appearing towards the end of the walk. Take a close look - there are two crimson rosellas in this picture.

They remained elusive and uncooperative, but there were still some shots to be had. These superb parrots flew into a tree just as I rounded a corner in the path, but they steadfastly refused to go down to feed while I was there.

The zoom lens was helpful in identifying this species.

I saw this rather sinister-looking bird by the path. It's a white-winged chough (pron. 'chuff'), often confused with crows, ravens or currawongs because of their colouring.

They travel in family groups and, sure enough, this one's family was foraging under a tree not far from the path. (There are four birds in this picture.)

And I couldn't resist the opportunity to use the tree as a partial frame.

or to try to catch the white on their wings, which is only truly apparent when they fly.

 

Magpies do not like them and these spent a good five minutes swooping the family. (You can seen a chough sheltering under the tree on the right.)

Birds continued to be difficult to photograph. These two Eastern rosellas took off the minute I turned the camera towards them.

Something tells me, I either need more practice taking this kind of shot, or a different piece of equipment. So far, I'm not sure which.

With the birds temporarily gone, I turned to the challenge presented by the nearest pine tree.

I'm not sure what I was looking for, here, but I probably have to some more shoots to work it out.

Just when I gave up on there being any more photographable birds on this shoot, I saw this little fellow, preparing to follow its mate down for a drink from another culvert. To the best of my knowledge, it's a striated pardalot.

None of my attempts at using branches to frame it, seemed to work.

So I took a more classic shot.

Next week, well, next week I'll try a different walk.