High End and fine art retouching

Retouching is all about making the impossible, possible. Its a meeting of creativity and technology, its taking the best elements of all the most engaging photography and turning it into a beautiful image, one that stays with you, evokes great memories and fills the senses with a uniquely natural look.

Behind enemy lines

Travelling with my friend and colleague Roy out of Reykjavik and along the south coast of Iceland, I was reminded of a DC-3 that crashed landed after running out of fuel in 1973. We took a lonely unmarked road off the main highway and came upon the wreck. To help tell the story I created my own homage to the stricken plane..

Piscis Metallicum

Piscis Metallicum is a very Steampunk driven image. Each cog needed to have some interaction with the body of the fish. In my mind the mouth parts work and the canvas fins actually help to propel the fish through the water. But cogs need power so the lightning conductors drive electrical power deep into the heart of the workings.

I built the fish from scratch in Photoshop using many metallic finishes, cogs, screw heads and metal plates all of which I obtained from Adobe Stock.

one last fish

I found the elements to this image on a royalty free stock site. I had always wanted to include a dry riverbed in an image, I love the shapes of the cracks in the mud and the delight on the faces of the boys, finding and spearing one last fish contrasts beautifully with the desperation of their surroundings.

Castle on the hill

This is a test of light and shade and the ability to shoot my own images and put them into a composite. There are many elements in this image most of which was found on stock sites. The image of my wife was shot in our conservatory and I made the most of the front lighting to help as I retouched her into the composition.

wave hurricane

The shoe is the Wave Hurricane. Once again I found the background shot on shutterstock and created some custom brushes to paint in some dust and debris. The colours of the background works well with colour of the shoe.

thunderblade

I used an image of the background which was taken from a stock site, there is a nice juxtaposition of the brightly coloured shoes against the flattened grey of the wooden background. Adding some light also created some much needed modelling around the shoes.