Jan 15, 2012, 13:07
..Well, a faux pano really, achieved only by cropping.
Now, I'm not saying this "works" in terms of leading the eye in compositionally, but I did intend it to be at least an exploration of textures. To this end I wished to minimise colour(as arguably a distraction) and maximise the contrast within tones. Thus, I visualised the equivalent of something like red-filtered black and white film..perhaps even push-processed or approaching something like Konica's Infrared film(I'm not sure if this is even about any more..?..)
As usual, here's what I did.
Composed, whilst knowing in advance what I wanted the final result to be: I always find it surprising that many photographers do not "see" in advance in their mind's eye, what the final shot will be, be it colour or monochrome. I stress that I consider such people extremely skilled: I've absolutely no idea how some other folks' work turns out so excellently, let alone know how to ape it! It's only by having the result in my mind to begin with, that I know what to do to get there...I'd be stumped if not, a bit like driving to somewhere I don't recognise without a map.
Anyway, philosophy aside: I wanted the width of my 21mm, with it at maximum definition. That happens to be around f5.6 without question with this lens. I could have gone for f11: f11 is the aperture that gives the best correlation between edge, corner and centre with the lens.
However, this would have involved either getting the tripod(too cold and I was too lazy) or upping the ISO. Thus I chose f5.6(f5.7 to be precise) at ISO 100: I knew that depth of field would not be an issue, as most of the "subject" was effectively within the same focal plane. This gave me a shutter speed of 1/99s, more than enough to counteract the gusting wind and resulting camera-shake.
After converting to a high-saturation RGB tif I cropped away some hot spots in the sky and some blurry foreground, then boosting reds and blues by differing amounts in duplicate layers: knowing the effect of "red filtration" I knew that boosting and lightening reds would appear in mono as white, and that darkening/saturating blues would multiply blacks.
On this gaudy. colour mess I placed a black grad from the sky to just under the hillsides with the gradient tool...I did this either in Soft Light or Overlay mode, varying opacity on a duplicate layer to suit.
I flattened this, repeating the same, this time placing the grad from foreground to midground.
Flatten, resize to web( I never let Photoshop do this), add a tad of smart sharpen on a duplicate layer, erase what is too sharp(!), flatten, add the sig(I'd saved the jpeg of my signature I scanned in, as a brush, folks! One dab = instant sig.)
Job done. (And now you know pretty much all my secrets!)
![[Image: 3001pano_websig.jpg]](http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/images/upload/3001pano_websig.jpg)
Now, I'm not saying this "works" in terms of leading the eye in compositionally, but I did intend it to be at least an exploration of textures. To this end I wished to minimise colour(as arguably a distraction) and maximise the contrast within tones. Thus, I visualised the equivalent of something like red-filtered black and white film..perhaps even push-processed or approaching something like Konica's Infrared film(I'm not sure if this is even about any more..?..)
As usual, here's what I did.
Composed, whilst knowing in advance what I wanted the final result to be: I always find it surprising that many photographers do not "see" in advance in their mind's eye, what the final shot will be, be it colour or monochrome. I stress that I consider such people extremely skilled: I've absolutely no idea how some other folks' work turns out so excellently, let alone know how to ape it! It's only by having the result in my mind to begin with, that I know what to do to get there...I'd be stumped if not, a bit like driving to somewhere I don't recognise without a map.
Anyway, philosophy aside: I wanted the width of my 21mm, with it at maximum definition. That happens to be around f5.6 without question with this lens. I could have gone for f11: f11 is the aperture that gives the best correlation between edge, corner and centre with the lens.
However, this would have involved either getting the tripod(too cold and I was too lazy) or upping the ISO. Thus I chose f5.6(f5.7 to be precise) at ISO 100: I knew that depth of field would not be an issue, as most of the "subject" was effectively within the same focal plane. This gave me a shutter speed of 1/99s, more than enough to counteract the gusting wind and resulting camera-shake.
After converting to a high-saturation RGB tif I cropped away some hot spots in the sky and some blurry foreground, then boosting reds and blues by differing amounts in duplicate layers: knowing the effect of "red filtration" I knew that boosting and lightening reds would appear in mono as white, and that darkening/saturating blues would multiply blacks.
On this gaudy. colour mess I placed a black grad from the sky to just under the hillsides with the gradient tool...I did this either in Soft Light or Overlay mode, varying opacity on a duplicate layer to suit.
I flattened this, repeating the same, this time placing the grad from foreground to midground.
Flatten, resize to web( I never let Photoshop do this), add a tad of smart sharpen on a duplicate layer, erase what is too sharp(!), flatten, add the sig(I'd saved the jpeg of my signature I scanned in, as a brush, folks! One dab = instant sig.)
Job done. (And now you know pretty much all my secrets!)
All my stuff is here: www.doverow.com
(Just click on the TOP RIGHT buttons to take you to my Image Galleries or Music Rooms!)
My band TRASHVILLE, in which I'm lead guitarist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6mU6qaNx08
