Thursday Doors: Jour et Nuit

Day and Night, that’s the translation of the little sign next to these doors in Paris. They are the doors you can’t park in front of, something I thought Norm who runs the Thursday Doors community would appreciate, so I took the photo:

ISO 200 22mm f/13 1/30sec

When I was looking at the scene, I was also thinking about an upcoming selective color challenge. The blue sky reflected in the windows, I thought that would be fun to accentuate by desaturating the image but leaving the blue:

ISO 200 22mm f/13 1/30sec

It turns out that I didn’t want to leave the red out either. This edited version which leaves in the red and blue gives the photo a bit of a jewel-toned feel that appeals to me.  When the original image was sitting waiting to be edited, I also thought I would crop it using the straighten feature. I gave that a try and was surprised at how much I did not like the straightened version. So, my final edit is cropped but not straightened.

Have you had that happen to you, an edit you think is going to be straightforward and an obvious choice backfires on you? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

 

 

Thursday Doors: You have to look up to see the Door

There are some beautiful wooden doors at Ely Cathedral:

ISO 800 50mm 1/100 f/6.3

The photo above was taken on the Octagon Tower tour so I was at eye level.  From the main floor of the cathedral though you would be forgiven for looking up and not realizing it was a door:

ISO 800 50mm 1/50 f/10

Even with one open, from the floor it’s not overly obvious.  Standing next to it though, it’s obvious:

ISO 160 4.15mm 1/35 f/2.2

Getting good photos in a church can be tough. Often flash is not allowed so you have to use the lighting available in a creative way. It was a sunny day when I was visiting, so that was a plus.  The first and third photos in this post have been cropped and sharpened. Particularly for the first photo, I thought the available light highlighted the photograph in interesting ways.  The middle photo is an HDR image. I bracketed the shots and then combined them in Photoshop. In this case, I was looking to add as much detail to the image as possible.

The tour of the tower was really interesting, but to me the highlight was these doors. Having the opportunity to see them close-up really allowed me to see what beautiful works of art they are.  What do you think of my edits? Do you also enjoy seeing works of art from different angles?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

 

Thursday Doors: Stone Doorway

Having visited Plymouth Rock as a child, I was curious about visiting the town of Plymouth where the pilgrims departed from. Overall, it was less of a tourist trap than its American counterpart. One of the more charming parts of town was an Elizabethan Garden that was tucked off the main drag.  This first shot shows the stone detail work:

ISO 250 50mm 1/30 f/7.1

of this doorway:

ISO 25 4.15mm 1/50 f/2.2

This is one of those times when I was glad to have two cameras at my disposal.  The top photo was taken with my Canon 50D.  I shot it as a bracketed image and then created the HDR version you see above. The second photo is shown as shot with my iPhone.  Having the two cameras allowed me to document the scene in two different ways.  In this case, the iPhone gets the opportunity to show the “big picture”. When I take photos like this I am also asking the iPhone to perform another duty, that of keeping track of the location of the photo. I find the GPS feature on the phone helpful later if I have a question about exactly where the photo was taken. I use this most often when a photo has been taken while on holiday.

How do you keep track of the location of all the photos you shoot? Your thoughts on the topic are welcome below. Do you like this stone doorway? the gardens themselves were formal and I felt the stone was a good choice.  Feel free to comment below.

Cheers!

Thursday Doors: Secret Garden, Secret Door

I was enjoying a day out at Buckland Abbey and came across this lovely door:

ISO 250 50mm 1/200 f/8.0

It’s an entrance to a secret garden that is on the grounds.  Beautiful, but not really easy to photograph, lots of dark shadows.  Here is one of the original shots:

ISO 250 50mm 1/200 f/8.0

The color of the flowers in the original is lovely but a bit overpowering. As for the dark shadows, I decided to go ahead and make friends with that element of the photo.  I was working in Photoshop here, but used the add-on Analog Efex Pro as a starting point.  I ended up liking a filter that had a bit a blue tone to it.  I also straightened the photo.

I posted an Instagram version here:

View this post on Instagram

From the beautiful #gardens at #bucklandabbey @nationaltrust

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Jun 29, 2017 at 7:39am PDT

and have the full-size original in my Picfair portfolio.

While I often edit to make a photo look more like the actual scene, in this case I liked the darker tones. I think it makes the photo a bit more mellow and serene.  Has this ever happened to you, an element of an original photo that you find bothersome ends up being its strength?  Do you like the darker tones of this image? Feel free to leave a comment below!

Cheers!

 

 

What I Saw

Maybe this happens to you. You are looking at something and you see what is actually there, but in your mind you see something else. This happens to me a lot. When it comes to my photography it can create a bit of tension; part of me likes to record just the facts while another part is off imagining.  This image is from that imagining side:

ISO 800 50mm f/10 1/640

This photograph is a panorama and the original files looked like this one:

ISO 800 50mm f/10 1/640

The original files are kind of just ho-hum, but what I liked was the green and also the texture of the brick.  I was also just intrigued by the fact that the building was there.  It’s part of an old sewage farm and was first constructed in 1887.

ISO 800 50mm f/10 1/640

The building now is in pretty good shape but does have an abandoned look about it. When I created the panorama, I knew I wanted to bring out that aspect of it.  A quick sketch of how I created this image looks like this.  I selected the original files that I wanted to use in Lightroom. Then Lightroom-Photo-Edit In-Merge to Panorama in Photoshop.  From there I cropped and straightened the image. Then I sharpened it and saved it back to Lightroom.  From Lightroom-Photo-Edit In-Analog Efex Pro.  I ended up using a wet plate camera setting but then changed the settings within that filter and saved it back to Lightroom.  In Lightroom I made a few more adjustments, mostly to get the green colors to a point where I liked.

In addition to posting this in the Weekly Photo Challenge, I am also posting it in an interesting challenge called Thursday Doors.

How about you, do you often look at something and imagine something completely different? Is the green of Spring emerging where you are or are you on the opposite side of the world, springing into another season altogether?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers?