The Before and After series focuses on the two or three key creative choices, in terms of composition and processing, that go into creating an image. Specific technical details about the shot have been left out — you won’t hear me talking about tone curve adjustments and whatnot unless it was a key component of the end result.
Shot #6 from the SF architecture experiment.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/250
- Aperture: f/5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera: Canon EOS 1D Mark IV
- Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM (at 200mm)
Composition and Processing
- This is another one of those shots I had originally expected to make a horizontal cross section of, but found a bit lackluster once I started working with it. What I did find, by accident, was a maintenance guy working on one of the external stairwells. So I isolated the shot to the simpler patterns directly around him, hoping that would make him easier to spot and an obvious contrast to the rest of the image.
- When I pushed up the exposure I lost a lot of the wall detail, and when I increased contrast to get it back, the railings (and my unwitting subject) were solid black. So I manually brightened each exposed railing separately.
Original:
March 02 2012 | Photography | No Comments »
The Before and After series focuses on the two or three key creative choices, in terms of composition and processing, that go into creating an image. Specific technical details about the shot have been left out — you won’t hear me talking about tone curve adjustments and whatnot unless it was a key component of the end result.
Shot #5 from the SF architecture experiment.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/500
- Aperture: f/4.0
- ISO: 200
- Camera: Canon EOS 1D Mark IV
- Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM (at 135mm)
Composition and Processing
- I liked the contrasting patterns here. The lines are so simple and basic, even after I rotated it, but the shadows from a nearby group of trees created a very different set of patterns on the surface. I like that sort of thing, where the image is grounded in very stable, hard-edged shapes, but then made internally dynamic by a bunch of round and soft ones.
- Cropped vertically, this wall looks like what it is: a staggered set of vertical strips casting shadows on the one further back. Rotating it created a small visual disconnect where it looks less like a wall and more like a pure pattern, closer to my goal for the image.
Original:
February 27 2012 | Photography | No Comments »
The Before and After series focuses on the two or three key creative choices, in terms of composition and processing, that go into creating an image. Specific technical details about the shot have been left out — you won’t hear me talking about tone curve adjustments and whatnot unless it was a key component of the end result.
Shot #4 from the SF architecture experiment.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/250
- Aperture: f/8.0
- ISO: 800
- Camera: Canon EOS 1D Mark IIV
- Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
Composition and Processing
- I originally envisioned this as a landscape or panoramic cross-section of all the buildings in the image. I thought there’d be a ton of interesting patterns, all with the common vertical lines to hold it together. Only I could never quite get that to work — the buildings at this angle were jarringly distinct from each other and didn’t match well. So I ultimately settled for the top middle portion where I got a high degree of consistency in the pattern (I actually think this may be the same building or two by the same architect, but can’t remember from the shoot).
- I cropped so the black was entirely contained in the shot horizontally. That left the eye room to maneuver mostly just longer up/down length, and to a lesser extent along the diagonals toward the back. But leaving one of the white pillars at full width and against the right edge, the viewer is well contained in the image and doesn’t wander off the edge (the more extreme and compressed pillars on the left form a literal wall contained the other side).
Original:
February 23 2012 | Photography | No Comments »