December 2009 - Landlord needed (HTCIPS)

The original:

The brief:

It's always tragic when a pub closes, especially this close to the festive season. It seems to leave a hole in the community. Do you think you can get this rather sad establishment up and running again in time for Christmas? 

Finished work:

Click to view full.

December 2009 - Challenge 9 (TIPF)

The original:

My version:

Click to view full.

November 2009 - Challenge 7 (TIPF)

The original:

My version:

Click for full version.

November 2009 - Sarkozy in history (HTCIPS)

There was no starting image this week.


The brief:
During the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, French president Nicolas Sarkozy posted images on his blog showing him to have been present on the day, chipping away at the wall with a pickaxe. But was he really there? It seems he may be distorting the actualité just a little. You can read the full story here and here.

Of course, it's possible that Sarkozy was present at other groundbreaking historical events as well. Would you like to suggest a few appearances he might have made? You'll have to source your own Sarkozy images. There's a good selection here to get you started.


Finished work:

Click for full size picture.

November 2009 - Fill the moat (HTCIPS)

The original:

The brief:

I'm grateful to Nick Curtain for this week's Challenge. Nick's just spent some time photographing Hampton Court Palace (you'll see a number of his photographs on thefullmontage soon). 

One of his images shows the original moat, now dry and empty. Can you fill it with water? As it's surrounded by walls I wouldn't expect much turbulence on the surface, so we might expect a degree of transparency in the finished result... 

Finished work: (you have to know me to get the full significance ...!)

Click to view full.

November 2009 - Queen's Grove (HTCIPS)

The original:

The brief:

Queen's Grove is a street in Hampstead, London. The road sign has been in place for at least a hundred years, and it's clear that when it was placed here the builders had run out of the correct letters, and had to make do with odds and ends. 

Can you rearrange the lettering to make a phrase more appropriate to the location? Or could you just correct the missing characters? Any other embellishment you care to add would be of interest too, of course. 

Finished work: (based on an anagram)

Click to view full.

November 2009 - Challenge 6 (TIPF)

Starting image:

My version:

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November 2009 - Challenge 4 (TIPF)

The original:

My version:

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October 2009 - Halloween! (HTCIPS)

The original:

The brief:

Looking back through the archives, I see the last time we tried pumpkin carving was a full five years ago. Time to refresh the vegetable! Here's a classic complete pumpkin. Can you carve this into a design more suitable for the Halloween holiday this weekend?

Finished work:

Click to view full.

Shameless bit of self-promotion here; this is the comment I received on the forum:

Seriously clever stuff from katew, both in inspiration and in execution. Her jailed pumpkin is a tremendous and lifelike achievement: if I didn't know better I'd thin you actually carved this. In fact, the closer I look, the more I can't believe this is all Photoshop... tell us your secret, Kate!

October 2009 - Challenge 3 (TIPF)

The original:

My version:

Click pics to view full.

October 2009 - Challenge 2 (TIPF)

The original:

My version:

Click pics to view full.

October 2009 - Challenge 1 (TIPF)

The original:

My version: 

Click pics to view full.

New Challenges

As well as the How to Cheat in Photoshop site, I also belong to The Independent Photography Forum. The latter has now introduced a weekly Photoshop challenge, in which a member posts a photo. Members then 'Photoshop' this in any way they like, and post the results in the thread. The person who posted the original picture then chooses a winner; the winner then posts the starting picture for the next week's challenge. 


I have been taking part in this challenge for 3 weeks, so I'll post my entries so far, and then update them weekly along with the HTCIPS ones. From this week, I'll label each title with HTCIPS or TIPF accordingly.

October 2009 - St Martin's in the Fields

The original:

The brief:

The view from the top of London's National Portrait Gallery shows the rooftops surrounding Trafalgar Square. The spire belongs to the church of St Martin's in the Fields, and when it was built it truly was out in the fields. 

Can we restore it to its former appearance? All I could photograph from here was the spire, so you'll need to find your own base to stick it on...

Finished work (with apologies to Andrew Wyeth!)

Click to view full.

October 2009 - Down in the Crypt

The original:

The brief:

I photographed this crypt in a church in France in August. It's lit by lamps placed in the floor, but I think more subtle lighting could show this scene off rather better. And I'm not sure about that section of wall over on the left - it would look better if this was cloned out, I think. The cables are also a little distracting. 

Anything else that might enhance the scene would be welcome! 

Finished work:

Click to view full.

September 2009 - The movie game

The brief:
A slightly different type of Challenge this week. I thought it would be fun if you could think of a movie, and create an image that sums up the whole film, or at least its title - without including any stills from the film itself.

To make it more interesting for the rest of us, don't include the title in the image or in your post. Instead, include it as part of the image name, so if we can't guess what it is we can click on the image to open it in a new window and see what it's called.

Does this all make sense? Does it seem interesting?


Finished work:

Click to view full.

(Answer: Moonraker)

September 2009 - Turning out the lights

The original:

The brief:

High power incandescent lights are about to be banned throughout Europe, for rather spurious energy consumption concerns. This is something Deborah Morley noticed in the Friday Challenge a couple of weeks ago, and it seems a shame to let the event slip by unremarked. 

The trouble is, what are we going to do with all those old lightbulbs? Surely we can find a fitting memorial for these beautiful and iconic objects... 

Finished work:

Click to view full.

September 2009 - Open house

The original:

The brief:

I photographed this rather uninspired new house before anyone had moved into it. The exterior may be rather dull, but I think if we open the door and the windows we should be able to see its full potential. 

The trick here will be getting the perspective right. There are enough clues to work with, I think... 

Finished work:

Click to view full.

September 2009 - Performance space

The original:

The brief:

There are four plinths in London's Trafalgar Square, one in each corner. Three hold statues of famous people; the fourth has been empty since the time it was put up. Currently, the plinth is occupied by members of the public: following a ballot, they get an hour each to climb up there and do whatever they like. 

When I went past yesterday evening, however, the occupant was a woman in her pyjamas drinking a coffee from Starbucks while talking on her phone. 

Surely we can devise a better entertainment than this? 

Finished work:

Click to view full.

August 2009 - Digging in

The original:

The brief:

Those of you who have visited thefullmontage may recognise this scene - it's one I photographed in Shrewsbury last year, showing a Tudor house on a rainy day. 

What interests me, though, is the idea of all that history doubtless lying just beneath the surface. I've got permission for a week-long architectural dig here: what do you think might be revealed under the pavement? 

Be careful lifting those stone slabs, though - they'll need to be taken up undamaged so they can be replaced later. 

Finished work:

Click to view full.

The original:

The brief:

I photographed this reconstruction of a 1920s photographer's studio in a museum in La Rochelle last week. Well made though the scene is, it lacks the human element. Can you populate it with appropriate characters? 

Finished work: The Arnolfini Wedding Video!

Click to view full!

August 2009 - Making bread

The original:

The brief:

This is a derelict bread oven I photographed in France last year. I’d like to see how the room might have looked when it was in its prime - with a roaring fire, a baker and some freshly baked loaves.

White sliced, anyone?

Finished work:

Click to view full.

The original:

The brief:

A bit late with this one - the 40th anniversary of the moon landing was last week, and I really should have seen it coming. I was intrigued by a radio interview I heard with some professor of something or other, who claims the landings were all faked. Something to do with the angles of the shadows not being right, or the quality of the light.

So I thought: how easy is it to fake a moon landing? Can you take this classic shot, and add or remove elements so that we can't tell the real image from the fakery? Pay close attention to lighting and shadow this week!

Finished work:

Click to view full.

July 2009 - Classical architecture

The original:

The brief:

Here's a classic Ionic column from the British Museum, with a section of pediment and a chunk of wall. Not a huge amount to go on, I admit, but is there enough raw material here to build something magnificent? The choice of building is up to you.

Finished work:

Click to view larger.

July 2009 - Five years on

The original:

The brief:

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Friday Challenge, and I thought we'd mark the occasion by repeating the first-ever Challenge.

The task was to take the lid off this boiled egg. The question is: five years down the line, are our Photoshop skills any more proficient? Have advances in Photoshop versions made the job any easier?

This is the original text:

Here's your first challenge, Photoshoppers. I placed this raw egg in an egg cup, and I want it boiled. I'd like the top sliced, cracked or broken off - whichever is your preferred method of opening eggs. What you do in the way of runny yolk, bits of shell and even toast fingers is up to you! You'll find a high res version of the egg here. Good luck!

You might like to include objects or people that could not have been in the scene five years ago - or, alternatively, things that we saw five years ago but which are no longer in evidence. How you mark the passage of time is entirely up to you.

Finished work:

Click to view full.

June 2009 - Shade and texture

The original:

The brief:

I was walking through a graveyard recently (the way one does) and I was struck by this impromptu still life. Not so much the arrangement of the miscellaneous items, but by the way the elements - the headstone, the watering cans, the pipe box, the statue - have all taken on the same texture and hue, almost as if they were all cast from the same substance.

So I'd like you to add a few more items to this group. The only consideration is that they must blend into the scene: I should not be able to tell at a glance what has been added and what was there originally.

Finished work:

Click to view full size.

June 2009 - The staircase problem

The original:

The brief:

Here's a shot I took in a French chateau last year, which I've just uploaded as part of an update to thefullmontage. I photographed this during the day, of course, and it's just occurred to me that the scene would look very different at night: darkness on the ground floor, with a light coming from the top of the stairs.

Is this too difficult a task for the Friday Challenge? And what might be lurking behind that mysterious curtain?

Finished work:

Click on pics for full size.