March Musings and April Aspirations

As usual, it's been far too long since I last wrote anything - a combination of lethargy, laziness and general lack of inspiration.

I was however raised to the point of incandescent rage by that advert which has the precocious little brat who wants a poo at his friend's because they have infinitely superior air freshener . Leaving aside the smacked arse and potential early death he would get if he were mine, do the ad agency really think that it's going to make me rush out and buy the product? "Ooh, that must be so good if the kid wants to leg it over to his mate's for a crap. Must try some!" No, as far as I'm concerned he can go and pee all over their carpets and do a number 2 on the hamster's head - I care not one jot.

Whilst we're on the subject of adverts, what's all this Tena lark? It's only relatively recently that the subject of female incontinence has become high on the marketing list so does this mean that evolution has only just created the problem? Is it only in the last couple of years that (if the ads are to believed) a 40 something female laughing heartily creates an inundation similar to the Severn bore? I've spent ages telling my best jokes to middle-aged ladies and peering furtively at their lower regions for tell-tale signs of dampness - all in the cause of research, you understand. What about pre-Tena? The mind boggles at the urological mayhem that was going on a short thickness of material away from us mere males' gaze.

Just one final whinge advert-wise: why does it appear that every beauty product seems to have been voted "Best" in some poll/magazine or other? Call me pretentious (moi?) but I wouldn't buy anything that's been recommended by people that fill in such questionnares anyway. Have you noticed the small print that appears for 3 attoseconds (yes, it IS a word) at the bottom of the screen during such adverts? L'Oreal CreviceFilla - voted best product 2009 (small print = As voted by a survey of 17 readers of Surgical Appliance Modelling Monthly).

Other matters now: I expect you are all agog as to how the PhotoShop tuition is going? Well, it's starting to come together a bit more now and I've moved on a step or two. I'm still enjoying the 21st century version of colouring books and here are a couple of before and afters. The first is merely a picture of an Edwardian lady taken from the 'net. As usual, double click on a photo to enlarge it.

The second attempt is a photo of Ma and Pa. There is a date of 1943 on the back of the original which makes them 22 and 21 respectively. I think they look a lot older - how think you?

As you can see, there was not way I was going to colour the original background so I merely removed this and chose a new one - If only real life were that easy!

The next one sort of pulled a lot of threads together; working with linked layers, dodging, burning, masking, histograms, filters, hue and saturation etc etc. All pretty basic for a pro but to little old me it was a quite satisfying experience. I had a photo of Shoreham Airport I took last autumn so decided that was as good a place as ever to start. This is it - pretty boring and colour/contrast was not great.


I needed to change the blue of the sky and the grass so used the wonderfully easy quick mask mode and also decided that the final composition would be better if the photo was reversed. This, of course, mirrored the registration letters of the blue aircraft so I had to do a nifty bit of cutting, pasting and resizing to correct the problem. Some final tone adjustments, removal of a few extraneous bits and a quick tweak with the histogram and sharpening mask and it became this:


Incidentally, the building behind is part of Lancing College and very beautiful it is too.

Right, foreground subject time and I had chosen a Spitfire - specifically this one:


OK, off with the background and then it's merely a case of masking piece by piece, colouring, tweaking and Bob's your parent's brother. There's loads more I could play with on it but, by and large, I'm quite pleased. Sorry if it's boring for you, dear reader, but for me, who longs for achievement in even small ways, it's been well worth it. Welcome to "Spitfire on a Summer's Day"


The only other achievement of note (for me anyway!) is composing some educational worksheets for Newhaven Fort which will be available as PDF downloads for school visits and a commitment to evolve and construct a couple of exhibitions. One concerning the 1923 inflation crisis in Germany and the Weimar Republic which will enable me to show dozens of the issued notes and the other, a display of pre-decimal coinage and banknotes for younger people to appreciate our old coins. Part of it will be a pile of pre-decimal coins required to buy a packet of crisps at 2009 prices - I'll leave you to work out how big that pile could potentially be!