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Author Topic: not quite a flag  (Read 1114 times)

colinb

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not quite a flag
« on: September 07, 2012, 05:42:37 pm »

This is rather embarrassing. I know I like this picture because I keep coming back to it, but I don't think I could tell you exactly why I like it. I had thought to do some meta-clever titling involving a national flag but a quick search didn't show up any country with red blue and green. So, let's just think of it as a[nother] grey day in Leith.

c

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RSL

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Re: not quite a flag
« Reply #1 on: September 07, 2012, 06:31:37 pm »

I like it even better without the blue color cast -- in fact, without any color other than gray.

I know what you mean about this Colin. This one doesn't strike me the way it strikes you, but I have several pictures I come back to over and over that aren't really good enough to let me account for my interest.
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degrub

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Re: not quite a flag
« Reply #2 on: September 09, 2012, 10:27:58 am »

Colin,

The image strikes me as about the strong verticals and the cascade of establishment signs. Try a square format to remove the distracting empty foreground on the left but keep the verticals of the church spires and adjacent building. i like the color over gray because the saturated blue van pulls me to the image and then the progression of signs holds my interest. i want to know what the "daily special" was !

Frank
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RSL

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Re: not quite a flag
« Reply #3 on: September 09, 2012, 10:52:15 am »

Frank, Everything, including the van, is a lot less blue-saturated when you get rid of the blue color cast, like this.
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degrub

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Re: not quite a flag
« Reply #4 on: September 09, 2012, 11:34:34 am »

Russ,

i agree. My first reaction was that it was a scanned Kodachrome  :).
i was focused on how to strengthen the composition based on how it hit me.

Frank
« Last Edit: September 09, 2012, 11:36:47 am by degrub »
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colinb

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Re: not quite a flag
« Reply #5 on: September 09, 2012, 02:00:27 pm »

Hi Russ & Frank.

FWIW I quite like the blueness, though I can appreciate that it isn't to everybody's taste. I assume some of it is in how LR auto-selected a white balance for me. As it happens, the blueness of the sky, the rather ominous clouds, the van, and the parking sign all struck me at the time.

If you're visiting Edinburgh, the nearer restaurant, Kitchin [named for the owner Tom Kitchin], has a good reputation though the lunchtime menus don't appeal to me. Too many slippery bits that my mother would have thrown away [though I think my grandmother might have made soup]

I took the photo around the middle of the day while walking back to my workplace with a sandwich. I'm so glad I made a decision to buy a camera I could take everywhere, and then to take it everywhere!

Here's a version, cropped 1::1, a little less blue, but not quite pink as Russ went.

thanks both of you for looking and thinking.

c


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Bruce Cox

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Re: not quite a flag
« Reply #6 on: September 09, 2012, 02:51:23 pm »

I agree with stopping just short of RSL's color correction.  I like the wider original cropping.

Bruce
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RSL

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Re: not quite a flag
« Reply #7 on: September 09, 2012, 04:12:28 pm »

Well gents, "You your fancy, and I to my Nancy," as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.

It's Colin's picture, so he gets to make the decisions. But to anybody who's done much photography -- especially digital photography -- a color cast that pronounced stands out like a sore thumb. The key is the underside of that cloud in the upper right. In real life that's sure to be an equal value in all three primaries: R, G, and B. In other words, it's almost a 100% sure thing that the color of the underside of any cloud that heavy is middle gray. It's really a good deal to have a cloud like that in your picture because you can eliminate any color cast by bringing the pic into ACR (or Lightroom's develop module, which IS ACR) and clicking the underside of the cloud with the middle-gray dropper. Or, you can bring the pic into Photoshop or Elements, bring up Curves or Levels and click the underside of the cloud with the middle-gray dropper. Once you've done that you know you have a picture with correct color balance. (I'm assuming you have a properly calibrated monitor so you can see correct color relationships.)

Once you've learned what the color balance actually ought to be, you can start making changes to your heart's desire. I wasn't completely happy with the real-world version after I clicked on the cloud, so I brought back a bit of blue. It also felt a bit overexposed to me, so I lowered the exposure just a tad.

And I'm with Bruce. The original "crop," which I assume was made in the camera, is the correct one -- as it almost always is, assuming you know what you're doing.
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Bruce Cox

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Re: not quite a flag
« Reply #8 on: September 09, 2012, 09:07:19 pm »

Well gents, "You your fancy, and I to my Nancy," as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.

It's Colin's picture, so he gets to make the decisions. But to anybody who's done much photography -- especially digital photography -- a color cast that pronounced stands out like a sore thumb. The key is the underside of that cloud in the upper right. In real life that's sure to be an equal value in all three primaries: R, G, and B. In other words, it's almost a 100% sure thing that the color of the underside of any cloud that heavy is middle gray. It's really a good deal to have a cloud like that in your picture because you can eliminate any color cast by bringing the pic into ACR (or Lightroom's develop module, which IS ACR) and clicking the underside of the cloud with the middle-gray dropper. Or, you can bring the pic into Photoshop or Elements, bring up Curves or Levels and click the underside of the cloud with the middle-gray dropper. Once you've done that you know you have a picture with correct color balance. (I'm assuming you have a properly calibrated monitor so you can see correct color relationships.)

Once you've learned what the color balance actually ought to be, you can start making changes to your heart's desire. I wasn't completely happy with the real-world version after I clicked on the cloud, so I brought back a bit of blue. It also felt a bit overexposed to me, so I lowered the exposure just a tad.

And I'm with Bruce. The original "crop," which I assume was made in the camera, is the correct one -- as it almost always is, assuming you know what you're doing.


I feel sure you moved the color in the right direction, but if that is the real color they need to paint their street; it is too red.

Bruce
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