Simon Gladwin

First of all…..many apologies for taking an age to do this…......

1: Tell me something about the image?

I was out walking with friends and family in a local country park. There was this really old and amazingly textured oak door that I thought would make a really interesting study. I took several shots of varying elements of it and had particular results in mind for each part. This image was the result of a what if? and can I? type thinking process. I was pretty pleased with the result. The eye comes from a self portrait.

2: How did you create it? ( you don’t have to give away any secrets ),

Colour fill layer (yellowish as I remember)....reduced the opacity way down.
dodged and burned to bring out the grain,rust and other textures.
Tinkered with saturation
Selected an area around the chain and eyehole…selected inverse…..pretty heavy feather.
tinkered with levels and did a gaussian blur
selected inverse to select chain hole and chain…..used curves to boost contrast.
Cut an eye out of a self-portrait and pasted it as a new layer, resized it and set the blend mode to colour burn. Re-positioned it in the chain hole est voila! Flattened the image…job done!

3: What version of PhotoShop did you use?

Photoshop 7

4: Any tips or tricks you would like to Share?

Play and have fun….google for tutorials…..read the tips and tricks in the camera mags in the newsagent…then put them back on the shelf and keep the money in your pocket. LOL

5: How did you go about learning PhotoShop?

Playing….google…reading mags!