Frozen Harbor

[Harald L]

May I introduce myself firstly. Since 2005 I'm a frequent reader of LL and learned a lot from this site and its forum. In particular I like the civilized and reasonable style of discussion here so I think it's a good idea to start to expose my pictures here for c&c.

City of Hamburg, Harbor. This year we are facing an unusual long and strong winter here in the north of Germany. Its still freezing at night and we have a lot of opportunities to see our harbor in a different way. This picture doesn't show the sunny side of our well known harbor but a quite messy industrial zone.

[WalterEG]

Welcome Harlem,

Be happy that you still have a real working harbour.  In Sydney we gave our working harbour away for a tourism postcard.  Bland and devoid of purpose.

It is an informative and attractive representation that you have posted.  Just my kind of thing.

Cheers,

Walter

[Chris Calohan]

Civilized? 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Comments: on the technical side, it looks like an HDR (not a criticism, btw), yet the sky around sun seems burned out?

Esthetically, I like the overall muted tonality, quite appropriate for a frozen sunset atmosphere. I like the panorama format as well, and especially how the length of the bridge is used to frame it and add to that "industrial feel." I also like the structure and pattern of the ice.

What I find less congruent with the main idea of a "messy industrial feel" is that port itself is much less prominent in the image, obscured by bridge, and instead we have a dominant, almost idilic row of houses and trees as the center of interest.

In any case, good start here!

[francois]

…
it looks like an HDR (not a criticism, btw), yet the sky around sun seems burned out?
…

Yes, I agree, this is weird but it's not too bad as my eyes tend to stay on the bridge, on the frozen waters and on the industrial constructions. That being said, fixing the sky, if possible, wouldn't be a bad thing.

[Harald L]

Thank you for welcome, comments and critique.

@Chris: Oh yes, compared to other forums it's quite civilized here. May be it's because I'm mastering the art of ignoring trolls and I use to handle critique like a t-shirt: In case it fits I wear it and otherwise I throw it away.

@Slobodan: Is it HDR? Hmm. IMHO it will be become quite difficult to answer this question honestly right. In times when the sensors had dynamic-ranges of 8 f-stops HDR meant that you have to merge more than one exposure to get your picture. Nowadays the sensors are outperforming the human eye in means of dynamic range. So if your sensor gives you 11 f-stops and you use this dynamic-range by tweaking the curves: Is this HDR? Honestly, I'm not shure and I'm interested in your opinion.

Anyway this is a one-shot-picture which was taken by carefully considering the histogram. Now I've tweaked it by recovering the highlights and lowering the brightness at all by a notch in order to reduce the HDR-effect a little bit.



Here's another example which makes me uncertain where Curves ends and HDR starts (same walk tru the back-side of the harbor of Hamburg

[sdwilsonsct]

Now I've tweaked it by recovering the highlights

A big imporovement.

Engaging composition. Welcome!

[RSL]

+1

[PeterAit]

Very lovely use of light and an effective use of perspective - bravo!

[RobbieV]

I prefer the edit as well. Thanks for posting and welcome.

[francois]

Very nice and well worth the additional post-processing.

[wolfnowl]

Welcome to the list!  The second edit is indeed better.

Mike.

[Tony Jay]

I glanced at the original posted image - didn't do much for me.

The redo and the second image are just so much better - transformational one might say.

Tony Jay

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Now I've tweaked it by recovering the highlights and lowering the brightness at all by a notch...

I think you recovered the highlights nicely, but went overboard with the overall brightness; the feel now is kind of murky, rather then crispy, as in the first version. Perhaps something in between?

On the other hand, I see others like it, so you can safely throw my t-shirt away.

[Harald L]

(snip) On the other hand, I see others like it, so you can safely throw my t-shirt away.

Why should I throw away a t-shirt without a try-on? I'm here to succeed and you're perhaps right. I'm pretty shure that the likers will like the new compilation as well.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Mind if I post my version? if you do, I'll remove.

I actually liked the overall tonality in your first version, except for the blown-out sky, so I tried to keep it that way. It just had that winter crispness in the air.

In your darker versions, the sun is the brightest part, thus becoming the center of attention. However, for me, the charm of the picture is not in the sunset, but in the industrial feel, thus I kept the bridge lighter and sunset toned down.

[RSL]

Very nice, Slobodan. It keeps the industrial feel and the very cold feel.

[Harald L]

Thank you very much to all of you for attention, discussion & help.

[luxborealis]

What a wonderful, productive discussion - a great exemplar for all the threads! Civilized (or civilized) - yes!

And a wonderful last post - it's great to see how the image progressed from the OP. Good suggestions and follow-up Slobodan and Harlem.