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Sat on a bench for a while watching the people go by, trying to capture the motion of the feet. I liked this result with the H&M bag and the red colour. Did some layers work to bring out an interesting texture and contrast from the pavement.
Tried something else I've not done in a while, today - smoke photography. Got some fairly good results, but it appears that I need a new black backdrop, as the current seems to have faded somewhat, and looks almost brown in the original shots...
Still, a bit of work in Photoshop sorted most of that, and the colour gradient map to transform the smoke to this lovely red colour took care of the rest...
There's something about fun fairs... I don't know if it was growing up watching Scooby Doo and films like Stephen King's 'It', but there is something slightly creepy about them.
I'm tempted to say it is an inherent weirdness; there are so many incidences in pop culture of the happy childhood funfair going bad that it must be prevalent in all our psychologies - remember the clown at the end of Poltergeist; Bart Simpson "can't sleep, clown will eat me"; The Joker in Batman; all those haunted amusement park stories we told as children? It isn't coincidence.
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#385
Remember 1998, when I would fill the universe's email boxes with surveys like this? I haven't done one in about 7 years, so that's why I am doing this one. That and I enjoy jumping off cliffs only if everyone else is doing it.
WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
My middle name, Leigh, was the middle name of one of my mom's best friends at the time. Amber was "just something she liked"--yeah, she and a billion other people who decided to name their kids Amber that year :P
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
Yesterday after breaking a bottle of olive oil all over our groceries/my feet/the pavement in the Trader Joe's parking lot. :-/
DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
Yes, though I am out of practice with it these days. My handwriting used to be so good that people would regularly tell me that it looked like/should be a font.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
Avocado (I don't eat lunch meat!)
DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
Not yet.
IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
I hope so!
DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT?
Yes, though people sometimes can't tell. I don't know why people think I am so serious all the time! ;-)
DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes, though I had to fight to keep them. I am prone to throat infections.
WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Only if I were dead! I am really, really, really afraid of heights/flying/falling, so bungee jumping doesn't look good. ;-)
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
I have never liked cereal--I don't like milk, either, so that is part of it, but I've just always found cereal uninspiring.
DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
Not usually--I am too lazy!
DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG?
Yes.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
Kona Coffee
WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
Their eyebrows, if I'm seeing them up close (I am really neurotic about eyebrows). If it's from far away, probably the way they are walking.
RED OR PINK?
Not sure. I look bad in both colors! Probably red, though. I am not a girlie girl :P
WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
My inability to manage my time efficiently, which screws up so many areas of my life.
WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
My dad, who died in May 2003
WHAT COLOR SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
I'm not wearing shoes.
WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
Flavor Blasted Xtreme Cheddar Goldfish Crackers!
WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
Maximo Park - Apply Some Pressure
IF YOU WHERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
Sky blue--duh. That answer's been the same since I was like, four!
FAVORITE SMELLS?
New books, honeysuckle, freshly baked bread, garlic.
WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
My mom.
FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
College football, gymnastics, figure skating
HAIR COLOR?
Dark blonde/light brown-ish...like a russet potato skin. :P
EYE COLOR?
Green.
DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
Nope.
FAVORITE FOOD?
*snort* This would take about a year to complete. The only food I really don't like as a general rule, though, is fruit--I find it really boring and I always have. There are a couple of exceptions, but not many!
SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Happy endings.
LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Sadly, I can't remember the last movie I watched at home! In the theater, it was The X-Files.
WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Purple
SUMMER OR WINTER?
Spring or Fall!
HUGS OR KISSES?
Oh, c'mon. I have to choose?
FAVORITE DESSERT?
Freshly baked chewy cookies :D
WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
Bowls, Polls, & Tattered Souls - Stewart Mandel (it's a great book about college football!)
WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
I no longer have need for a mouse pad.
WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?
Star Trek: Voyager (we are already on season 3!)
FAVORITE SOUND?
Scott's laugh. Srsly!
ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Beatles.
WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME???
I'm not sure what's farther, Paris or Amsterdam, but one of those.
DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
I can remember peoples' birthdays from when I was a small child, but have a lot of trouble remembering short-term important stuff. Last year I sent my grade school best friend an email on her birthday and she wrote back, totally speechless that I could remember something like that. I agree, especially since I can't remember to take something to the dry cleaners or what I ate for dinner a few days ago or something important that I've been told.
WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Los Angeles, CA
The subject is a greenhouse window, covered with varied opacities of white sun screening. 2 inches behind the glass is a rusting greenhouse heater.
I believe the patterns etched into the shading on the glass are made by growing fern fronds, but I may be wrong - possibly left by insects or snails? Mysterious, anyway.
Blue-Selenium 2 Gradient Map at 15% opacity added to the mix here.
So dad decided to move his and mom's closet to the guest room (nobody ever sleeps there. It's the "everything" room) in order to expand their room's space.
So they had to take EVERYTHING out.
Lilo enjoys this. She has more places to sleep, comfortable places, like a pile of dad's shirts.
I would have liked if the ring was more prominent here but... oh well, we can't have everything we want can we?
I tried using gradient maps to edit this picture and I think I have fallen in love with it! wooo, the wonders of photoshop, as always, never fails to impress and excite me!
so anyway, this was taken in taiwan! this friend of mine has appeared in my photostream before! (can you guess which picture?)
I've been quite busy with my final prose assignment, hence the lack of new photos, but I promise new photos soon!
in any case, have a great week ahead, because I know I won't! :o
OH AND I've been tagged! by alec2alec thanks for tagging me! I rarely get tagged, so yay i'm really happy! :D TAG ME MORE OFTEN!!! :p How do you do this anyway? List down 10 things you normally do?
1. I just uploaded a semi-full cover version of Katy Perry's Teenage Dream
here and I know you wanna listen to it so go now!!! :p Okay it isn't that great but do so anyways!
2. I'm really excited about my Print Exchange / Giveaway so go join it okay? :)
3. I've been watching quite a bit of anime lately... I don't know why because I normally don't, but if you do, have you guys watched Fushigi Yuugi (The Mysterious Play) yet? It's fucking awesome.
4. Have you eaten SHAPE biscuits before? I have, I love the Bacon & Cheese flavour... I'm actually eating them now. -.-
5. I'm hoping to get an iPhone 4 soon... or should I get the iPhone 3GS? :p
6. I'm addicted to Flickr, Flickritis! :o
7. I love McFly. They are going to change the world!!!! :D
8. I'm running out of things to say! i love homemade waffles with maple syrup, and bagels from starbucks.
9. This is my favourite emoticon ever
--> -.-
10. Yay, I'm secretly glad that I can tag 10 people to do this hahahaha. (I want to know more about them!!! )
It was late at night and I was about to go to bed when I was surprised to hear the doorbell ring. When I opened the door, these girls were standing there. They said they were soliciting contributions for a school trip to Haiti. They said they went to night school. Nobody else, they said, would open the door for them. It seemed like a worthwhile project so I gave them a donation. They seemed very serious. 😄
Minolta XD-11 camera. Adox Silvermax 100 film. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.
I used a tri-color "Gradient Map" layer in Photoshop - white, red, black - to add a reddish color wash to the image and darken the areas behind the glass door. I then masked out the cosplayer so that she and her ornate costume would not be effected by this wash of colors.
First time using a tri-color gradient map and I really liked the result.
This section of the Deakin University Waterfront Campus has significance as a legacy of the former Dennys Lascelles Ltd woolstores constructed in 1934.
The building contract to convert the wool stores into a campus of Deakin University was granted in 1994. The complete external facades were to remain, including all existing roofs and openings, and the interior fabric of any reuse of the building was to remain identifiable as a wool store. Deakin University's School of Architecture and Building moved into the restructured woolstore campus.
Brief experiment in split toning (the archive original is digital and, of course, in colour - but the colour isn't spectacular and it has those 'sfumato' ridges in fading shades of grey).. Used to do it in the darkroom with paper prints from film, never too late to learn another Photoshop trick :)
Mission to Frascati (RM) - Italy - 3/3
HDR from 5 shots
Santa Maria in Vivaro, o San Rocco, è l'antica cattedrale della città. Accanto ad essa si trova il campanile romanico del 1305, a tre ordini di trifore, eretto sono Clemente V, che faceva parte della più antica chiesa di San Rocco.
Mammatus clouds are some of the most unusual and distinctive clouds formations with a series of bulges or pouches emerging from the base of a cloud. The shape of mammatus formations can vary widely; from the classic protruding shape, to a more elongated tube hanging from the cloud above.
Cumulonimbus clouds are also known as thunderstorms, these clouds are huge and often unstable. Mammatus clouds often form on the most unstable cumulonimbus, meaning that there is also a chance of hail, showers and lightning in the vicinity. Sometimes mammatus may form on other cloud types which produce no rain, though this is far less common.
Mammatus comes from the Latin mamma which translates to "udder" or "breast". Their striking appearance is most visible when the sun is low in the sky and their pouches are framed by the sunlight. This supplementary feature is a firm favourite with many meteorologists and cloud enthusiasts.
There's never a reason not to do this. It takes about 10 minutes to set up, fiddle about and get about 30 shots to pick from. It might take a little more time to post-process, but if you get the drama in the lighting, you don't really need too much.
I shall be awarding marks for identifying the source of these shadows.
Lampist: Desk lamp on the floor pointing up camera right, clip light on the floor doing nothing much camera left. Both full power, remotely triggered with mounted switches.
Mammatus clouds are some of the most unusual and distinctive clouds formations with a series of bulges or pouches emerging from the base of a cloud. The shape of mammatus formations can vary widely; from the classic protruding shape, to a more elongated tube hanging from the cloud above.
Cumulonimbus clouds are also known as thunderstorms, these clouds are huge and often unstable. Mammatus clouds often form on the most unstable cumulonimbus, meaning that there is also a chance of hail, showers and lightning in the vicinity. Sometimes mammatus may form on other cloud types which produce no rain, though this is far less common.
Mammatus comes from the Latin mamma which translates to "udder" or "breast". Their striking appearance is most visible when the sun is low in the sky and their pouches are framed by the sunlight. This supplementary feature is a firm favourite with many meteorologists and cloud enthusiasts.
Mammatus clouds are some of the most unusual and distinctive clouds formations with a series of bulges or pouches emerging from the base of a cloud. The shape of mammatus formations can vary widely; from the classic protruding shape, to a more elongated tube hanging from the cloud above.
Cumulonimbus clouds are also known as thunderstorms, these clouds are huge and often unstable. Mammatus clouds often form on the most unstable cumulonimbus, meaning that there is also a chance of hail, showers and lightning in the vicinity. Sometimes mammatus may form on other cloud types which produce no rain, though this is far less common.
Mammatus comes from the Latin mamma which translates to "udder" or "breast". Their striking appearance is most visible when the sun is low in the sky and their pouches are framed by the sunlight. This supplementary feature is a firm favourite with many meteorologists and cloud enthusiasts.
As the ferry arrived in Ardminish there was a yacht in the harbour. The background was very muggy, so I played around with the photo using GIMP's artistic filters. Basically the light was exactly the same, but the colours are all artificial.
I don't usually go in for heavy-handed post-processing, but today I just "had the urge".
2016-04-27
22nd May 2016
MX, 85mm
Ilford XP2 400bw
This edit is by paul messerschmidt (europe) -- thank you!!
I'm not really quite sure what was going on here but I think I was holding a camera in my hand and pointing it at myself while pretending to be interested in something which happened to be at a 45 degree angle to both the camera and the window.
In this part of my journey did I come to The Place Where The Silent Ones Kill, as it was named in the Maps. [This place was so named, because there, maybe ten thousand years gone, certain humans adventuring from the Pyramid, came off the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk, and into that place, and were immediately destroyed. And this was told by one who escaped; though he died also very quickly, for his heart was frozen. And this I cannot explain; but so it was set out in the Records.]
So I observed a very wondrous caution, and went away from it a little to the North, where I did see the shinings of fire-holes at a distance; the which did promise me warmth through my slumber.
The Place Where The Silent Ones Kill was an utter bare place, where all did seem of rock, and no bush seemed to grow thereon, so that a man might not come to any hiding. Though, in truth, there might be some hole here or there, none was shown on any map within the Pyramid. Neither did there seem to be any such to me, as I did creep there among the moss-bushes to the Northward of the Place, and looked constant and fearful towards it so that I should see quickly whether any Silent One did move across all the grey quiet of that rocky plain.
And concerning this same Place Where The Silent Ones Kill, there was always a little and far-spread light over all that lonesomeness; and the light was something grey-seeming, as it were that a lichen might grow upon the rocks, and send out a little uncomfortable glowing. Yet was the light exceedingly weak, and very cold and dismal, and did seem truly to show naught with a sureness. It would appear to the eye, if one looked fixedly, that there were shadows that moved here or there, as they were of silent beings; yet none might know, in truth, whether this shaping of the greyness was come from the clouding of the Reason, or the eye did see of Reality in that uncomfortable Place. So you shall understand that I did slide very quiet from bush to bush. I had always - in all my life - had a very dread fear of this place; and so did I peer out often into the dim grey light of the lonesome plain there to my left, and would think sometimes I perceived the shapes of the Silent Ones standing vague and watchful; yet, the next instant, see nothing.
And thus I did go onward...
I came presently to where the grey plain did stretch out its bareness into the Night Land to my front; so that my way forward ended, unless I would make a long passing 'round.
I sat there among the moss-bushes, considering, and lookt out cunningly through a spy-hole of the bush in which I did sit. At this, I perceived that the part of the plain which did jut its bareness into the Land before me had no greatness of size; but that it might be passed through swiftly in but a little running. And this thing should save me a wearisome going round; so that I made to consider it with a serious mind; and all the time did I search the plain's bare greyness before me, and presently saw that it was surely empty. And I made to adventure myself across, running very swift until I had come to the far side.
Then lo! as I did go to rise up out of the bush, mine eyes were opened, as it were, and I saw that there was something amidst the constant greyness! I fell quickly backward into the bush, and did sweat very chill. Yet did I haste to look out.
And I saw now that there were, in truth, matters that did show vague upon the part of the plain that was before me. I peered very constant and anxious; and, behold! I saw...
I saw that there was facing me, a great line of quiet and lofty figures, shrouded unto their feet; and they moved not, neither made they any sound; but stood there amid the greyness, and did seem to make an unending watch upon me so that my heart went unto weakness, and I did feel that there was no power of the moss-bushes to hide me; for, in verity, they that stood so silent were certain of the Silent Ones; and I was very nigh to the Place of Destruction.
I moved not for a time. I was made stiff by the greatness of my fear. Yet I was grown aware that the Silent Ones came not towards me, but stood quiet, as that they did mind not to slay me, if I did but keep from that Place.
And there grew from this a little courage in mine heart. I obeyed my spirit, and taking a hold of my strength, went slowly backward in the bushes. And presently I was come a long way off. Yet was I troubled and disturbed, so was very strict to my going.
I made a great circling about that place where the plain of the Silent Ones did come outward. In time did I gain to the North-West away from the plain; and was thence something the happier in my heart; and went easily, and oft upon my feet instead of hands and knees. Yet I did make a strong watching to every side.
~from Chapter VII of William Hope Hodgson's novel The Night Land
A note about the passage: I made a number of small edits, smoothing some of the more awkward faux-olden grammar Hodgson uses, while still retaining the character of the style. Hodgson purists, forgive me. I'm presenting this text to a mostly unschooled audience in the bear-of-a-writing-style of The Night Land - a style that I became used to eventually, and I even came to enjoy; but to someone unfamiliar with it, reading a selection cold, I decided it was best to soften both the obtuseness and the clunkiness a bit...
DEFINITELY take a look at the image in the large or - especially - the original size.
Information on the image I created to illustrate this excerpt is posted here with the original composite photo that was the basis of the illustration.
I will say here that the illustration is very close to the image in my mind's eye when I first read this passage. Very close. Not right on, though. I'll do another version in time more closely aligned with how Hodgson describes the Silent Ones in an earlier passage (and another later on):
[Looking from the thousandth level of the Pyramid, far below was] the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk; and I searched it, as many a time in my earlier youth had I, with the spy-glass; for my heart was always stirred mightily by the sight of those Silent Ones.
And, presently, alone in all the miles of that night-grey road, I saw one in the field of my glass—a quiet, cloaked figure, moving along, shrouded, and looking neither to right nor left. And thus was it with these beings ever. It was told about in the Redoubt that they would harm no human, if but the human did keep a fair distance from them; but that it were wise never to come close upon one. And this I can well believe....
And in this later passage (another scene I intend to illustrate), when the narrator is in the Night Land:
Then, as I kneeled upward among the moss-bushes, and made to lay a true course unto the fire-hole, I perceived that there came a Being along the Road unto my right; and I went low into the bushes, and moved not; for truly I had seen that there drew nigh one of the Silent Ones.
And I made a little place that should let me to see; and I spied out, with an utter caution; and lo! the Being came on very quiet, and with no hurry. And in a time, it went by me on the road, and did take no heed to me; yet did I feel that it had knowledge that I stoopt there among the moss-bushes. And it made no sound as it went; and was a Dreadful thing; yet, it did seem unto my heart, as that it had no trouble of Wanton Malice to work needless Destruction to any. And this, I crave strangely that you to understand; for it was so to me that I had a quiet and great respect for that thing; and did feel no hatred; yet was very dreadly in fear of it. And it was Huge in size, and was shrouded unto its feet, and seemed, maybe ten feet high. Yet, presently, it was gone onward down the Road, and I was no more troubled by it.
So you see by these passages that my Silent Ones in the illustration are a bit too human-like. They appear to have human form under long hooded cloaks, and by the varied body-positioning to the left, right, and forward, many appear to have their heads turned. The image is powerful, yes. But it's not the Silent Ones Hodgson describes. My next try at illustrating this scene won't make these same errors...
See related images and text in my flickr set dedicated to The Night Land.
This may be the most complete shot that I got, with stupa, Buddha statute, the sun and Mount Merapi in one frame
Playing around with different layers and ended up with level, colour fill and gradient. I decided that I like this shot because it highlights the clouds
Object: M1 Crab Nebula.
Optic: CA300 (300/1200mm Newton f4), GPU Corrector.
Mount: Skywatcher EQ8.
Camera: ZWO ASI 1600MM-C @ -20°C, Gain 75, Offset 15.
Filter: ZWO EFW 7x36mm, Baader 36mm Filter.
Exposure: total 5.2h, Ha 33x4min, OIII 34x4min, R 7x2min, G 7x2min, B 7x2min.
327xBias, 48x Darks(2min:4min), 31x Flat(Ha:OIII), 25x Flat (R:G:B).
Color: Ha-OIII,RGB .
Capture: SGP (Sequencing, Autofocus, Dithering, FlatWizard).
Guiding: TS-OAG 9mm, ASI120MM, PHD2.
Date/Location: 2018-02-14, Zirndorf.
.
Image Processing:.
Pixinsight:.
ImageCalibration, CosmeticCorrection, StarAlignment, Blink, ImageIntegration, .
BatchPreprocessingScript (for RGB), ChannelCombination, DBE, PhotometricColorCalibration,.
STF for OIII, HT-Stretch for RGB, StarMask.
.
ST: DDP for Ha, Magic.
.
PS:.
NIK Difine2 for RGB, ColorBalance, maskedMinimumfilter, Dynamic, Levels, Blend of masked NB-Channels.
matching visual spectrum according to Debra Ceravolo: Curves, Levels and GradientMap as clipping mask, .
Ha as LuminanceLayer, Dynamic, color Stars in Nebula, masked HighPassSharping
Mammatus clouds are some of the most unusual and distinctive clouds formations with a series of bulges or pouches emerging from the base of a cloud. The shape of mammatus formations can vary widely; from the classic protruding shape, to a more elongated tube hanging from the cloud above.
Cumulonimbus clouds are also known as thunderstorms, these clouds are huge and often unstable. Mammatus clouds often form on the most unstable cumulonimbus, meaning that there is also a chance of hail, showers and lightning in the vicinity. Sometimes mammatus may form on other cloud types which produce no rain, though this is far less common.
Mammatus comes from the Latin mamma which translates to "udder" or "breast". Their striking appearance is most visible when the sun is low in the sky and their pouches are framed by the sunlight. This supplementary feature is a firm favourite with many meteorologists and cloud enthusiasts.
A re-edited Walking Dead promo photo featuring Sasha, incorporating a graphic novel effect.
Created in Photoshop using a gradient map and various filters.
Sasha photo: www.flickr.com/photos/92390205@N06/
This is a rather nice shot from Alex Bone, who has a great collection of images here on flickr. At least, it was a rather nice shot, until she allowed me to turn it into a deranged intensified cold war abstration. With highlights.
The original shot is here, but I've also included it in the comments so you can get a before nafter thing going on. As usual, there's a bunch of edit history in the metadata, but all you really need to know is 'brush tool'.
This image is Copyright Alexandra Bone 2010 and not to be used in any way without prior written permission.
Edit by Tim Caynes 2010.
A shot of Downtown LA, looking south, bokeh'd. My first real bokeh shot.
That's the U.S. Bank Tower in the middle and the Bank of America Plaza to the right in blue/pink... kinda like the Flickr logo!
While my last shot from this waterfall was a little cluttered with details here is a more simple view which I like a lot. It's my favourite from the Kuhflucht cascades . I also didn't need to do much processing with this other than the basic channel mixer for bw + a monochrome gradientmap which I mixed a bit. Then some curves and sharpening.
cheers
Mammatus clouds are some of the most unusual and distinctive clouds formations with a series of bulges or pouches emerging from the base of a cloud. The shape of mammatus formations can vary widely; from the classic protruding shape, to a more elongated tube hanging from the cloud above.
Cumulonimbus clouds are also known as thunderstorms, these clouds are huge and often unstable. Mammatus clouds often form on the most unstable cumulonimbus, meaning that there is also a chance of hail, showers and lightning in the vicinity. Sometimes mammatus may form on other cloud types which produce no rain, though this is far less common.
Mammatus comes from the Latin mamma which translates to "udder" or "breast". Their striking appearance is most visible when the sun is low in the sky and their pouches are framed by the sunlight. This supplementary feature is a firm favourite with many meteorologists and cloud enthusiasts.
Ok, so I never, ever, ever engage in school rivalries and such. There's just no point; there are excellent and horrible students at every school in the country. (And I don't care about sports.) But my five-year-old nephew and I have developed a rivalry thing -- and since he enjoys it I'll keep it up.
Here's what I did today in response to the drawing he had his mom sent me (see the drawing below).
Taken by Vic with my camera.
Flickr's scaling of this makes it look granular. I'd recommend viewing this photo in Lightbox mode.
Now... when that I was come properly a great way up the Gorge, and had come among the fire-holes, there was no more an utter darkness, for the dull red glare of the pits beat upward upon the black sides of the rock-mountains, that did make the sides of the Gorge; so that oft I did see both sides very plain in the lower parts; yet of the height of the Gorge, who might know aught; for the black sides did go upward for ever into the everlasting night....
~from Chapter IX of William Hope Hodgson's novel The Night Land
This is an illustration I crafted based upon the early-20th Century science fiction novel that established the "Dying Earth" genre, The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson.
Sometimes called a "flawed masterpiece" - and there are valid arguments on both counts - "The Night Land" surely is a great novel. I can't think of another novel I've ever read where the protagonist skulks and hides in abject fear, even literally crawling on hands and knees, as a normal condition of travel throughout the quest. That taps into primordial depths of absolute terror - the kind that pervades my being with full, thickly-rich horror that freezes action and makes me incapable of rational thought. Yet the protagonist does think rationally. It's his accepted reality, that environment; nothing more threatening not only to life but to the eternal existence of personal awareness as the soul - or worse, the eternal enslavement and demonic possession of the personal awareness of the soul. This is the world of the Night Land... the world where a knight in shining armor (literally) sneaks and creeps his way at times to rescue his damsel in distress. (A damsel who, once rescued, proves to be something more than a helpless damsel.) The accepted normalcy of this world that is a hazard to life - and to eternal life beyond death - allows the character to experience the full range of human emotion, including - incredibly - curiosity, and ACTING ON its impulse! Skulking on hands and knees in abject soul-risked fear and following through with the impulse of curiosity! Is there a genre of Heroic Horror? This would be its definition... :)
The image began as a long-exposure shot of lights at night on the highway. Through application of Photoshop's gradient map filter, Genuine Fractals (to increase the resolution to 530 pixels/inch), honing of the randomly-produced image of an armored figure (including adding a weapon from the novel, the Diskos, a sort-of mini-buzz saw on the end of a retractable pole), applying another Photoshop filter - craquelure (64,8,10) - and finally selectively adding red tint - what you see here is the result.
(I love Photoshop's random gradient map feature. It randomly applies gradient maps to an image, cycling through them every time you click "randomize". Amazing, artful Rorschach images flicker in front of me and, from time to time, an image is suggestive of something other than the long-exposure light trails of the original photo. The complete randomness of what suggested image may appear before my eyes makes scrolling through random gradient maps highly addictive to me - addictive because my imagination is on high alert, hungrily-receptive to what might next be presented to it, knowing full well that experience has proven that creative visions and rich, colorful tales have been born through this activity.... Yup... I love Photoshop's random gradient map feature...)
Take a look at the image in the large or the original size.
Oh - btw - I now have a set on my flickr site to collect anything I post relating to The Night Land.