This site alone has seen three rebuilds and no-one has helped me more on that than Sean(spoofscript.com) for the code and Andrew (stormkeeper.net) for consulting. Thank you both for helping me transform this site, and of course a big thank you to everyone that has visited my site and encouraged me, given me feedback, and more. You’re all valued. Thank you.

I hope that everyone has a very, very merry christmas and will keep following me into 2010 and beyond.

For now though, I’d like to again wish everyone, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year.

Mark Crowle-Groves

This one is more special to me because of course we are coming to the end of a decade.

So, this year I have given you three things to fulfil my three promises.

1: A digital artwork piece as per usual,
2: a Christmas artwork Piece
3: Something special to mark the new decade

So, without further ado, here is all the information you need to enjoy my festivities.

The Christmas Digital Artwork Piece, entitled, New Year, New Decade (click the image)

Of course if you want to see the whole set, New Year, New Decade, you can click here

And finally, today I went to enjoy the photography opportunities up in Brecon with the snow. Click here to view

So that’s your lot for the new year, I really hope you enjoy the work I’ve done. All of these are in full resolution so you can enjoy all of it the way it should be enjoyed.

Have a very merry christmas, great holiday season, and a fantastic new year.

I today completed building and have now started rendering the 3D Landscape for this christmas and the end of the decade… that’s going to be a few more days, however in anticipation of that, later tonight I’ll be releasing my Christmas photograph for this year. 3 similar photos but all are a little different to suit everyones tastes, oh and every one of them is in HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography and in the highest possible quality.

Yup for the first time ever, you’re getting three pictures with no scaling, no reduction in size full HD quality from the 40D with almost no digital work other than the HDR blending.

There will be a separate post here later this evening when I upload them into the “new year, new decade” set, which may or may not have pictures specifically for the turn of the decade and not just christmas, and the images will be available here and on my Flickr account. I will also upload a 16:10 Widescreen version of one of them to fit most widescreen monitors, and for those of you using televisions as PC monitors or the brand new apple iMac’s I’ll stick the same picture in 16:9 resolution as well. Trouble is choosing which one!

Hope you like

Update: Here they are! Click here

But then, we also have the wonders of Cardiff Winter Wonderland which I missed out taking pictures of last year.
Alas that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about my traditional yearly Christmas digital art piece. Each year I try to find a theme or subject  and centre an art piece around it. Oh and there is the added challenge that I have not produced a piece of digital art all year! (minus the fact that 2008′s piece was late and got released in January) but pretty much a year.

So tomorrow I shall be building the art piece from scratch, (last years one appears to have been lost somehow from the galleries) but, since it will take four or five days to build, let alone it’s rendering time, you have an opportunity to make your own suggestions and push your own influence into the end result. Don’t worry, there are already bits of er… ‘you lot’ in the concept already.

So there are two, yes two promises I have for you here.

1: You will see pictures from Cardiff’s winter wonderland (though I am not promising when!)
2: You will see a Christmas digital art piece as per usual before the end of 2009

However there is another thing to come out of the woodwork, because of course December 31st marks the end of a decade, or at least the end of the 00′s. Yes indeed it has been ten years. Ten years of some of the most defining moments in our history, 9/11, The Iraq War.. you get the idea. However I intend doing a picture for this. Not sure if it’s going to be digital, photographic or a landscape. So I’m asking for your suggestions or ideas as to what I can do / photograph / make to mark this, so

3:You will see something created to mark the entry into a new decade

So three things, (more than my usual for december) and I am really looking forward to hear your ideas and suggestions. But for those of you that read this and then never respond, for once, say hi at least?

This year however should be different. I believe my photography skills have developed sufficiently, and my personal commitments are worked out, meaning that I may finally be able to take the type of pictures I want to for christmas. This is a first for me, being able to take christmas photography, but also gives me some unique opportunities involving long exposures, motion photography and scenes specifically involving people. Whilst this gives me some incredible opportunities to develop new photography skills, It gives me some unique challenges. The biggest question now is weather any of the photos will make it onto the site.