A shot on the juggle

In between ferrying a friend around while he dropped of his car for his wife (long story...) and us visiting a friend in hospital, I managed this opportunistic shot...

Dodging the traffic

..well, not quite. There were only a few cars around and I was stood in the cross-hatchings in the middle of the road. I did have to seek the pavement (sidewalk) a couple of times for safety while I was looking for the best viewpoint. It happened to be outside the rear car-entrance to Plymouth's Charles Cross police station and I got a lovely smile from a woman police driver who saw what I was up to as she turned into it.

It just so happened that the only parking space I could find near to the Uni was just opposite this spot and as I got out the car to stretch my legs while I was waiting, The first view I had of it was from this angle and, as it turned out, it was the best viewpoint—I only had to get closer to fill the frame.

Sanity's Edge

Ok, I've given it a bit of a film-noir treatment, as that's how it spoke to me, but what really grabbed my attention was the way that the glassless window-opening framed the stairwell and its lovely bold shapes—patterns framed by patterns.

Well, it appealed to me anyway!

In answer to a comment a little earlier by Donna I said to watch out for my next post. I hope it was worth it! It's certainly turned out better than I'd dare hope. What do you think? Does it do anything for you?

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Introspective - Barbican Steps image

I've moved this introspective over from my main site where it's been for a while. A lot of my followers only read my blog and would otherwise miss it.

Barbican Steps

Ancient and worn granite steps. Plymouth Barbican, 2008

I'd never had occasion to go up these steps until I used a car park (Lambhay Hill) for the first time, one which
overlooks the Barbican. My destination was the B-bar for a catch-up with a mate, and to fill up on one of their renowned Thai Noodle Baskets.

Making the capture

Spotting the shot

As soon as I started down those narrow, almost claustrophobic steps, their character began to sink into me. I could see that although the steps were made of granite, they were still showing a definite dip from the wear of countless thousands of feet.

Another quirky thing... because of the curve, you couldn't see if anyone else was coming the other way, until you'd committed and were a few steps down yourself. I imagine that there must have been some tight squeezes as people passed each other down the centuries.

Also, the curve, in shortening your view, added to that closed-in feel—it was definitely a transitional space, a
between-places space, not one to pause in but one to pass through.

Ok, so how to capture that and make the shot?

Making the shot

So having briefly noted this little lot, I got to the bottom of the steps to check how it looked. Perfect. Apart from a pub sign that was padlock-and-chained to the handrail—but that was easily moved to the side, out of frame.

For me this sort of shot requires what is almost a side effect of the HDR  / tone-mapping process,
getting enhanced local contrast. I find that this best reproduces the texture and feel of
stone under bright light.

I also needed the enhaced dynamic range that comes from using HDR (I used 'simple' HDR where the different exposures all come from a single (RAW) shot). This was because the range betwen the bright summer sky and the deep shadow in the corners of the steps was just too much—either the shadows would lose all detail or the highlights, the sky and clouds, would be blown.

Exposure, ISO etc.

f16 1/80th 17mm HDR ISO 200

So with a basic plan in mind I whipped out the camera and checked readings etc. I needed to be at the 17mm end of the zoom to get it all in and use a deep depth of field.

So, with aperture priority set as usual, I rolled it up to f16. That meant, at my usual setting of ISO 100, the shot would have been made at 1/40s.

Much too slow, given that people were up and down the steps all the time. So I pushed the ISO up to 200, (which gave me 1/80s) and waited for a lull in the sudden foot-traffic that always happens when you're finally ready!
It didn't take too long and I made the shot. Actually, I took two or three, choosing different exposure locks from
different parts of the sky. Then I chose the best one to take forward when I got back to base.

Digital darkroom

Pre Photoshop

I pushed the shot through my usual RAW workflow to get it into Photoshop. In short, 3 exposures from RAW, followed by HDR / tone-mapping software to combine the three into one shot.

Photoshop

Once in Photoshop, I cloned away a a small amount of litter on a copy of the background layer and then applied TLR Capture sharpening (and erased any sharpening in the sky—it was already quite noisy). The bw conversion came next, juggling the sliders to get the tonal balance right.

Another little trick I picked up, this time for applying perfect contrast. I create a new curves layer and immediately ok it. Then I change the blend mode to overlay and reduce the layer's opacity to somewhere between 7% and the mid-twenties—whatever suits the image. This time it was 26%.

Then a little dodging and burning to enhance the difference between the mid-tones and highlights of the wall and steps not in shade.

Next I applied a soft light layer and erased away the centre to form a little vignette. I repeated this to get the balance I was after.

A final step to tweak the levels was in order. This was to make sure the darkest parts of the image equated to pure black and the extreme highlights to pure white. It didn't take much and I also shifted the mid-point grey to be a little lighter.

To prep the image for upload I did the usual sharpening, final contrast tweak and image resize. I'll give you that tip on another occasion.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed my walkthrough and maybe have found something to inspire you on your explorations.


comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Waiting for collection

I think this is called "a shot from nothing", borrowing a term from snooker :)

Pallets, Tyre And Junk

Serendipity

I was out with my camera, walking around an interesting area near where I live. I was specifically looking for photo opportunities when I bumped into this scene. The junk was in a backlane beside some small work-yards, stacked and waiting for recycling collection.

I didn't touch any of it — the composition is just as I came across it. What initially drew my eye were the lovely relationships between the elements and their balancing shapes. The pooling of light and the way it fell across the scene was what made the shot for me.

comment / critique / feedback positively encouraged!

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Introspective... Sutton Backlane

Every so often when I update the main site, I feature a photo that I really enjoyed crafting. When it's time for the next, I move the current one here.

So here it is. A back lane in the Sutton area, looking towards Sutton Harbour and the Barbican. Shepherds Lane, Plymouth, 2008.


I was doing what I call an opportunist photo shoot - a walk around the areas close to where I live to see what turns up.

I'd seen this back lane many times (people including me have often used it as a cut-through during the rush-hour) but I'd never seen it looking down towards the Barbican and it looks totally different. Luckily we had fairly fast-moving broken, but angry clouds. This gave different lighting conditions by the minute as the clouds scudded across the sky.

Composing and making the capture

Composition was fairly straight forward, it was an obvious choice to go for a vertical format, to frame the whole lane and to give the emphasis to following the road/cobbles with the eye.

I made sure there was a diagonal lead in, using the kerb and the handy dog-leg at the bottom left.

Finally, I made sure that the place where the lane came to a point with the diminishing perspective, was close to one of the thirds' power points. I was happy the way this lead the eye on to the roofs of the Barbican beyond.

The ground was still damp after on-off light drizzle and you could see how reflective it was - so I knew I would get a high contrast shot (just as I like them).

Exposure, ISO etc.

I was using my trusty Canon EFS 17-85mm IS USM. It was a bit dark so I set my ISO to 400. This would give some noise in the sky but to get the wide depth of field I wanted (basically, from my feet to infinity), I needed to be at f9. I exposed for the darker right hand wall and ended up with 1/125 sec. If the light hadn't been changing so quickly, I might have dropped to ISO 200. But there you go...

Digital darkroom

Once it was in the digital darkroom, I treated it pretty much as standard for this sort of challenging shot (one with a wide dynamic range).

I combined three exposures (from the one RAW file) and worked on that. A bit of TLR capture sharpening first, convert to mono, paying particular attention to the overall interplay between the bushes, stone and sky, followed by some noise reduction in the sky.

A tweak on the curves to increase the contrast and a slight adjustment to the levels around the mid-tones and that was it.

Stumble It!