Better Days

OK. I know you've gone over this before, but how DO you do this?

Very, very carefully.

Love the harsh, high-contrast look here, and it really contributes to the "better days" mood. This one is quite stunning to look at.

Beautiful Pat. These tones are just beautiful. This one has very much a dream-like quality to it. You look at this scene and you know it shouldn't look so beautiful and alluring. Yet, it pulls you in as if something magical is going to happen next. This is pure magic. Your capacity to cast a spell keeps getting stronger...

 

Composition wise, you have worked well with the geometry here.

Thank you all for your comments. I've attached the raw file to disclose a small cheat and ask a question.

 

The cheat is my cloning out the top of the right-hand pole. That doohickey went up at least 20 feet so I had no way to enclose it within the shot.

 

The question is about focus. I did an initial processing of this shot and printed it. Looked good, too. Then I posted a JPG here and it looked blurry. Not entirely OOF, but not really in focus either. So, I processed from scratch a second time, paying particular attention to sharpness. The print is really, really sharp. But even this JPG, while an improvement, just looks slightly off to me. For example, you can't read the trailer label. As you can see in the raw file, the shutters are a rich blue. To pull out detail, I used a lot of blue channel information. I'm wondering if there is something about the blue channel's makeup that might degrade sharpness (although, the print itself seems not to suffer this fate)?

That doesn't count as cheating! But I like that you kept the bit of it for symmetry with the other pole.

Excellent tones, your work with channel calculations is stunning ! Nice cheat, and good idea not to clone that pole out completely. Agree with the comment on the left side, a bit more space there would not hurt IMO. Difficult question with the blue channel, my limited experience with B&W from channels is that the LAB lightness channel is by far superior for details and sharpness, and heavy reliance on a single RGB channel can deteriorate detail and sharpness (should be so, because the sensor has less pixel and thus less detail if you work only with R, G, or B). I tried a red over LAB (multiply blended) as compared to a red-red multiplied with calculations from a RAW with the 17-40 lens recently, the latter was definitively less sharp.

Re the crop, it is as tight as it is because there is a severely burned out area just to the left. No data there at all. I could have cloned in some low opacity data but took the easier route of just cropping it out. I have to agree about the barbecue, though. I'll resigned myself to a third round with this image.

 

Carsten, your observation about the Lightness channel is brilliant! I'm going to incorporate that into my calc workflow immediately. Makes my day, it does.

This is beautiful, Patricia. I have just discovered your portfolio and all I can say is that I wish I had your skills and knowledge in photography and editing! By the way, thank you very much for the kind comment and good technical advice!

What you achieve is outstanding, the tones in this picture are really fascinating. The brightness of the whites and greys on the trailor and this gorgeous shiny sky, wow! I like the composition very much too, a very American subject for a Frenchman! We don't have wooden made trailors like these in France! Very classy! Best Regards and thank you very much again, Laurent.

Amazin BW as allways I just want to add somenthing.

Working with LAB you should allways add USM in the L channel not in a or b.

 

When working with RGB as layers, they can be interpreted as

R: Light tones

G: middle tones

B: dark tones, a sensor has more green pixels do not forget about that, (as I remember).

 

Strange about the OOF, but as Carsten said, work with LAB and add USM in L.

You will fix it.

 

So this photo was done with calculations?

Do you use LAB or RGB?

The calculations on this one used the RGB channels, although I used the Lightness channel as part of the initial B&W conversion (Caponigro's method).

 

I rarely use USM as a straight sharpener anymore. I do use Smart Sharpen (sparingly) and I use PixelGenius' PhotoKit Sharpener for capture and output sharpening. These days, I use straight USM only for local contrast enhancement, (low dose strength/high radius/zero theshold).

 

I think the real answer on this on this one is to have used my tripod. I used to shoot with a D30, which pretty much required a tripod to stay at ISO 100 but I've gotten into some bad habits with the 20D.

Pat, do you need tripod with that sun and pretty empty sky?

So the shutter lag of the D30 has to be pretty slow I suppose.

 

Anyway your work is amazing!

Well, I see you have managed to attract some of the usual suspects to your portfolio. (Laurent, Gustavo, Chris, yes I'm talking about tou). I'm hurt that they didn't let me know about your portfolio. Me, a POW laureate! A little respect, gentleman! Anyway, my dear Patricia, I have found you now so I'll be stopping by frequently. PS: I like good strong coffee and peanut butter cookies. As for the picture, it's a beauty. Your post-production comments are especially informative.

Gus: I was shooting at 200 ISO, with a small aperture and using a strong polarizer, so speed on this shot was down to 1/90s. That's too slow for perfect focus in handheld shots.

 

Jack: Strong coffee? Alrighty! I am a barista of some renown in these here parts. My espresso gear dominates my kitchen and always will...: )