Fringe benefits to themed photo-shooting

[ravnostic]

I was shooting for Classic Green this morning, downtown Tempe. Got the shot I wanted (for the most part–is anyone ever completely satisfied with their best picture?)

But whilst hunting for other opportunistic ‘green’ shots, I happened to be at the right sunrise place at the right sunrise time. Here’s a couple that I liked:

“Stairway to Heaven?”

(Okay, escalator to heaven–but it wasn’t turned on, so effectively stairs.) The ceiling was painted very da Vinci-esque; brilliant blues, but the sunlight was hitting it, giving it a sunrisy feel, except for where the support column blocked the rays.

Up the escalator, I found a wonderful archway, the curve of which was repeated in various elements throughout the scenescape. Can’t decide which of the many I liked bestest, here are two, though:

Win? Fail? Constructive criticism always welcomed. I only wish I had HDR know-how. THAT would have been an awesome time to use it (and there’s always tomorrow morning, so freeware suggestions?)

Anyone else want to share great shots that came when looking for something completely different?

[chupathingie]

Oh, FTW. Especially the escalator. They’re all nice, tho… there’s something about an urban setting devoid of people that’s kind of surreal. I’ve been tempted to do a series of locations and mask&stack just to get that effect.

For some reason, that last shot brings memories of the short film “World Builder”…

[ravnostic]

“FTW”? The only ftw I know is ” ‘fark’ the what”. Yes? No? I haven’t seen “World Builder” either. I live in a cardboard box.

[clouddancer]

FWIW, I think they’re great shots. Probably doesn’t mean much coming from me, but there it is. I like them.

[chupathingie]

“For The Win”…

And yeah, it’s not intuitive… years ago I heard FTN all the the time, completely different. I thought it was just me. I meant that in a very positive fashion. 🙂

[ravnostic]

gratzie, chupa! Sucks to be dense…

[chupathingie]

I still have to go thru a mental translator for “Fark The World” LOL

Tho I’m glad the ‘net has co-opted FTx with FTW… it’s clear, concise and good news.

[Curious]

#2 is beautiful. the golden light is really nice. #1 is also really nice but the column does detract a bit. #3 for me would be good if one crops just the bottom half but the blown out area around the arch and especially the upper middle ……. but hey that scene is a bitch to meter. with our contest rules you couldn’t spot fix it and burning in the over exposed parts and still getting the light highlights right would be tricky.

[ravnostic]

cloud, compliments mean something from anybody, so thank you!

curiousAgreed on the column (but not much I could do; perhaps crop out from the top of the column?)

#3 I left in the bottom specifically because of the circular brickwork, though I do have a version without it:

I can gamma out the blowout well enough, but lose some of details elsewhere. HDR would be perfect for the shot.

Thanks for the input!

[Curious]

the exposure balance is better in the last one but the first is more interesting. i had a similar problem the other day with alternating lighter darker stripes. set the exposure meter to center weighted and used the light areas for the exposure. did the shutter half way down thing and once i had the exposure captured changed the composition for what i wanted. it worked ok. using EV +/- settings might have given better results but for a quick fix it worked.

[chupathingie]

I can gamma out the blowout well enough, but lose some of details elsewhere. HDR would be perfect for the shot.

Lots of agreement here, HDR would treat that scene very well I think. You could even gamma out the blowouts and oh-so-gently tonemap to recover the darker details, even without bracketed exposures (especially if you’ve done the shoot in RAW). I’ve gotten to the point where tonemapping is a routine process for almost all of my shots. As long as you don’t push it off into the weeds of surrealism it adds a lot of clarity to the image without looking artificial.

[orionid]

years ago I heard FTN all the the time,

Heh. ETA: Sometimes I think whoever designed Eaton’s logo was disgruntled ex-navy

Elsewise, ravnostic, I agree with most of the constructive criticism and compliments. You’re really picking up an eye.

[sleeping]

years ago I heard FTN all the the time,

Heh. ETA: Sometimes I think whoever designed Eaton’s logo was disgruntled ex-navy

Oh, man, I guess you should get yourself one of these.

[Choc-Ful-A]

Just for grins, I took the 3rd image, rotated it to make different elements perfectly straight, then found a decent crop within that new shape, and did some global color/light adjustments to pull out a bit more detail in the bright areas without loosing detail in the mid/dark areas. I think the rotate makes a big difference, since it looked crooked to me in the original.

I like the first of your three photos A LOT, but all of them are very nice, especially since they were “bonus” shots while out shooting something else.

[ravnostic]

A fine eye, Choc, on the crooked; I rotated to align to the column on the left. Since playing with jpg kills quality, how about a look at the original RAW image:

http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2010/sep/15/img_1911.cr2 (40% uploaded now, so wait 5 minutes or so from post time.)

Hope you can view Canon RAW!!

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