An experiment in Dodging, Burning, and Blurring.
When I was in Scotland I took this picture on Buchanan Street. It seemed perfect for a black and white shot so I went through and edited into one. It was on my old camera so the image size is smaller than typical. Also you may noticed I labeled the file wrong as Sauchiehall St. (the neighboring street), forgive me for this it has been 2 years since I was there.
My initial transition did not have the clouds but I went back and did not overexpose the sky because I thought it might look good. In my opinion it looks awful. So then I re-overexposed them and noticed that a central focus would give it a cool effect.
And thus this is Buchanan Street, Glasgow, Scotland 2006. To me this picture captured my Glasgow experience. It isn't a beautiful city in the way that Edinburgh or Vienna was; it has an air upon it that cannot be described easily. And for me it was a second home in Europe.
EDIT: I really wish that Picasa had a size in between medium and large!
My initial transition did not have the clouds but I went back and did not overexpose the sky because I thought it might look good. In my opinion it looks awful. So then I re-overexposed them and noticed that a central focus would give it a cool effect.
And thus this is Buchanan Street, Glasgow, Scotland 2006. To me this picture captured my Glasgow experience. It isn't a beautiful city in the way that Edinburgh or Vienna was; it has an air upon it that cannot be described easily. And for me it was a second home in Europe.
EDIT: I really wish that Picasa had a size in between medium and large!
6 comments:
That second picture makes it look like we were being invaded by UFOs!
I'm glad you liked Glasgow - it is a great place isn't it? I'm not a native Glaswegian (actually I'm a sassenach!) but I think it's a fantastic place, I love living here. I agree with you - it's not *pretty pretty*, but it is pretty cool.
Nice work on the pic. I noticed how you totally changed the mood by going with the B&W and adding the efx.
The original in noteworthy IMHO because of the warm lights from the window and the contrasting cool colors of the street and sky. Really makes the room pop out and beg for the eye to come peek in the window. The last pic emphasizes the sombre almost forboding nature of the place. I think it expresses the ambivalance you express in the writeup. That is note quite inviting, yet something attractive about it.
UGHHHHHHHHH. I just spent an hour typing out a comment, and them my internet pooped out and lost my comment when I tried to post it.
Anyway.
Nice! I have neither the time nor patience for burning and dodging--not digitally, anyway. Applause all around. :)
...Two tips/suggestions, if I may make them without stepping on any toes :) :
1. If you resize your photos to something like, say, 1000 pixels by 800 pixels or so before you upload them to Picasa, then your page will probably load much quicker. (It's on the very slow side right now.) Juuuuust a suggestion.
2. How to make your photos somewhere between "medium" and "large":
A) Copy/paste the code for the "large" size.
B) Find the part of the code that looks like 'img src="http://blahblahblah.jpg"' and add width and height tags. Meaning: if you want your 4x6-proportioned picture to be, say, 650 pixels wide, your final code will be 'img src="http://blahblahblah.jpg" width="650" height="433".'
(To calculate the height, I usually just pretend I'm going to resize my image in GIMP; because the height and width are locked together, when I put "650" as the height, it automatically tells me that the image will be 433px tall. Saves the trouble of calculating. You also might be able to just ignore the height tag completely, but I've had varied success with that.)
Hope this helps some. Good luck! :D
Jackie- I know didn't the clouds turn out awful!? I need a bit more work with how to dodge/burn the sky for sure. I loved Glasgow! It really was fantastic. Where are you from in England? I studied in Newcastle when I was there.
Dan- You know I never really gave the original a chance. I'm pretty sure the moment I took it I immediately thought to change it to black and white. I do see your point though, it really does have a warmth to it that the edited versions do not. And I'm glad the last pic expresses what you described, that was essentially what I was aiming to do.
Josy- Ahh! That sucks! I can't stand when that happens. Thank you for your reposting though. (Heh, I may have the patience for D/B pictures but the only reason I have the time at the moment is because I'm without a job... though that may change w/in the next week!)
And I employed the advice you gave me about the picture size for both uploading and posting. It worked fantastic! Thanks so much! I probably won't go back and change the past pictures so it may take a few days for the page to load faster after the old posts are replaced. Using the resizing'll work pretty well especially cause I'm already opening that for the thumbnails.
hi i really liked their different moods although they are all very intriguing and mysterious, i liked the first and the last best
Thanks BC!
Post a Comment