Luke Bash

Although French Polynesia isn't an independent country, Bora Bora is beautiful enough to get a tile. This was a quick tile with a minimal palette. This is my 50th tile from different countries/regions, and finished just before the end of the year.

I remember a friend telling me about a beautiful lake with stunning reflections. (An interested conversation because they were Chinese and there is a similar place in China called Qinghai.) I found a good image of the lake, dried and showing the salt flats. With a lot of time and a limited color palette, the final tile is complete. Enjoy.

New Zealand is famous for beautiful landscapes. That being said, I struggled to find something iconic for New Zealand. I tried a couple different overlays, including a koru fern and a kiwi bird, but didn't fit. I ended up just using the beautiful mountains of Milford Sound. I was tempted to add fern to the foreground, but it was unnecessary. Enjoy.

Choosing Tower bridge is an easy choice for the UK. There are many perspectives to use and the resultant image with shadows came out well. I struggled with the background. I decided against using blue skies, like so many other tiles. I couldn't do a night scene without changing all the lighting and removing those nice shadows. I looked into using a lighter or stylized version of the UK flag, but it just didn't look right. So, I looked around for the official measurements and colors of the flag to recreate, resulting with this background. But after that was finished, I needed one last thing; a slight black trim around the bridge to highlight it a bit. Side note: I finished this tile a while ago and just forgot to post here.

I traveled to Tofo Bay, Mozambique years ago and really enjoyed it. I wanted to try a tile for it, but my memories were of the snorkeling with whale sharks and beautiful beaches. I used a couple images combined to complete this. The resultant tile isn't iconic for Mozambique, but it does represent many different countries and I like the tile. I have another tile for the Sahara desert that wasn't a single country, so I am keeping this one.

I am struggling with a nighttime tile. I looked into a northern lights style, especially since I had a few Scandinavian countries left. I found a great picture in Iceland with the famous Gullfoss Waterfall. But after completing the ground, I struggled with making the aurora look good. So, I decided to keep the falls and change it to a daytime scene. I like the falls and will have to find a better scene for nighttime. This gets me to 47 tiles, just 3 short of my goal. However, I have been slowing down because I can't find/decided on the right image for the next countries.

Although New Caledonia isn't an independent country, I saw pictures of the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre and knew I wanted to do it. I just needed to right angle. Instead of adding all the detail on this one, I liked the more abstract version. This is the final result.