C&C - Balconies

Dimy

These are the balconies of a hotel, there was a clear blue sky backdrop and it just caught my eye... somehow fascinated me and I took the shot.

Just wondering what people think about it, too boring? Simplistic... brilliant? or just utterly crap?

AnimalRights

Bit simplistic but yet compelling.:o

ColmDawson

I quite like it. The tones could be better, I think. Try fiddling with contrast or converting to black and white with different colour filters.

melekalikimaka

i ike it, the vignetting is quite distracting tho

Heebie

I agree on the vignetting.. a bit distracting.

I really like the building.. the sky is a bit boring by itself. (which could be part of the "statement")
I'd love to see more detail in the clouds.. or maybe see it in color if its a deep blue sky.

AnCatDubh

i like it. What i like about it is the use of the negative space, the verticals, the patterns on the right hand side, and the three rectangles which break all of the above. For me it works for these reason. The vignette is a little harsh on it and imho doesn't enhance the viewing. But overall good work.

Dimy

Thx for the feedback, I'll go back and re-process the image tomorrow with the feedback in mind. The vignetting effect was added and I see now that it doesn't work in this picture.

I'll post the re-edited version later.

Thecageyone

Nice. Bit much empty space though no? I'd crop in just over where the vignette ends, and leave vignettes out. Nice image though

Eirebear

I dig it, quite a lot actually.

I like the grey tones rather than solid black and white too, kind of similar to the colours of many towerblocks in my experience.
As for the vignette, i dont mind it...but lets face it vignettes are photography marmite.

eightcell

Love the minimalism!

Dimy

Updated version:

melekalikimaka

i dont know how well it might work or if im imagining it...

but is the edge of wall coming in at a 'slight' angle from top to bottom...

AnimalRights

1st pic is far better, it loses what Eirebear described about flats.Grittyness too it loses.

Dimy

melekalikimaka wrote: »

i dont know how well it might work or if im imagining it...

but is the edge of wall coming in at a 'slight' angle from top to bottom...

you have a sharp eye... i just measured it in Photoshop, about 0.29 degrees angle

AnimalRights wrote:

1st pic is far better, it loses what Eirebear described about flats.Grittyness too it loses.

Yeah, it's such a simplistic picture but difficult to get right.

melekalikimaka

Dimy wrote: »

you have a sharp eye... i just measured it in Photoshop, about 0.29 degrees angle

i find is a wee bit irritating, that, less the vingetting, and mabe under expose 1/3 a stop even to bring back a bit more black into the sky, and boom you have a 10grand photo...less my fee of course

AnimalRights

also in the 2nd pic where the sky is you have round circles...fairly sure it's not my monitor and I don't see them in the 1st pic which obviously the darker tones hide.

melekalikimaka

AnimalRights wrote: »

also in the 2nd pic where the sky is you have round circles...fairly sure it's not my monitor and I don't see them in the 1st pic which obviously the darker tones hide.

i get it too

concentric bout 20 of them

AnimalRights

Thats what their called then?
Your fancy College course is making you proud son!

melekalikimaka

AnimalRights wrote: »

Thats what their called then?
Your fancy College course is making you proud son!

lol got it from engineering, not tog. i used to call it russian dolls thingy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll

melekalikimaka

fairly sure its from the processing... what way did you convert to bw?

oshead

AnimalRights wrote: »

also in the 2nd pic where the sky is you have round circles...fairly sure it's not my monitor and I don't see them in the 1st pic which obviously the darker tones hide.

Looks like the gradation could have been caused while converting the image to 8bit B&W and doing some editing in Curves or something. The profile used for the conversion was Gray Gamma 2.2.

Anyway, The original one looks better IMO. Keep the vignette but maybe just ease back slightly with it and make the overall image a little bit brighter. Apart from that, it's excellent.

Dimy

melekalikimaka wrote: »

fairly sure its from the processing... what way did you convert to bw?

with adobe camera raw, hmmm call me crazy but I dont see any circles on my monitor

melekalikimaka

oshead wrote: »

Looks like the gradation could have been caused while converting the image to 8bit B&W and doing some editing in Curves or something. The profile used for the conversion was Gray Gamma 2.2.

aye it goes look like its missing a chunk of data or two

melekalikimaka

Dimy wrote: »

with adobe camera raw, hmmm call me crazy but I dont see any circles on my monitor

look at it at a70 degree andle and it'll pop out

Dimy

melekalikimaka wrote: »

look at it at a70 degree andle and it'll pop out

Wow...that's remarkable... now I see them too! The aliens did it, like cropcircles.

I'll make another effort tomorrow thx again for the feedback!

-Dimy

Heebie

I find that for getting to greysale.. I much prefer using a channel mixer over any of the "automatic" grey conversions. The "auto" ones tend to only look at the red channel.
I like to use 4 layers to get to my final black & whites.

First, the image itself as the background layer (or rear-most if you don't leave it as the background..some don't like background layers.)

Second, a "levels" layer.. on which I separately for the red, green, and blue, bring in the toe-in points for black & white to JUST.. outside where they begin to clip. (this tends to make the color look really ****e.. but I'm making a B&W so I don't care.)

Third, a "channel mixer" layer set to mix to greyscale, with 50% red, 40% green and 10% blue.

Last, a curves layer to tweak the shadows & highlights to what I really like.

(if I want sepia, or some other shading like imitating a cyanotype, I'll put in a hue & saturation layer and set it to "colorize", then tweak the values.. I find hue of 50 with a saturation of 15 [within a Kodak ProPhoto color space] gives a really nice sepia-ish tone)

I've never run across the haloing that we see in the sky on this shot.. but it's probably from doing some form of tweaking in 256-color mode. (8-bit color is only 256 shades of grey... not very fine for doing tweaking.)

oshead wrote: »

Looks like the gradation could have been caused while converting the image to 8bit B&W and doing some editing in Curves or something. The profile used for the conversion was Gray Gamma 2.2.

Anyway, The original one looks better IMO. Keep the vignette but maybe just ease back slightly with it and make the overall image a little bit brighter. Apart from that, it's excellent.