Welcome to the Anglo Swiss World: Mono Monday Plus

Here is the photo I began with. We were driving into town and this is the main road from our village. Nothing special, I even have the car window on it. So the first thing to do was to crop it as if it was just a street scene. Then I went to work. I decided on an Aquarell filter with grains and brightness (I think I have the correct technical translation, but am not sure - my programme is all in German). I wanted something like a painting. I framed it in Piknik and here is the result.

Baselstr. aquarell

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I then made a sepia version of the original, to age it a bit, in CS3.

Baselstrasse sepia

I twiddled a bit with the contrasts but I found it was nothing special. A bit out of place for an old photo with the electric lamps and the white lines on the road. Now I went to town. I know that Halloween is now gone for a year, but there a some good effects in Piknik.

First of all I applied a filter "structuring grain vertical" - I am sure the experts know which one. This gave it quite a sinister look, so I added one of the halloween textures from Piknik to make the sky a bit more lively. I decided a ghostly figure would be something, so I took a photo of myself, did it in sepia, saved it and cut myself out with the magic wand. I then moved myself onto the photo of the street with all the effects and made myself a bit transparent. I gave the photo a thin sepia type frame in Piknik and there we have it - The Swiss Witch Project

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And now here is a "quickie" that I did for the war anniversary. As we know the Swiss don't do wars, they just help out with the Red Cross. However, we do have an army, even conscription. My son did his 10 years in the Swiss army, three weeks per year. When there is a war it is the only time the Swiss have a General. In the second world war it was General Guisan, who is a bit of a hero amongst the people. In the first world war it was General Wille. I was in our military museum some time ago and took a few photos. Here is one that represents the first world war a bit. In the middle the bust of General Wille, some commemorative Swiss flags on the wall and some older guns that were used. I put the picture into monochrome and brought the colour of the flags back to it. I also did a sort of highlight on the general. A quick red and white frame and here we have it.

Armoury, Solothurn