Huntingdon Water Tower

Comments appreciated.

I like the subject, like the angle used, too. A bit more contrast would look good on my monitor. This would be a good shot for extra-wide angles or infrared- especially with the clouds.

Hi Dale,

 

Interesting angle and subject. Often with buildings it's good to get people in the shot to give scale. With regards to an earlier comment about contrast, here are some tips (if you have Photoshop or other editing software):

 

In Photoshop go to "Layers" - "New Adustment Layer" - "Levels. This will give you an adjustment layer that will leave your original untouched. You'll see a histogram with three sliders - one each end and one in the middle. By moving the outer ones approximately up to the points where the black 'mountain range' starts, I think you'll see an immediate improvement in the tonal range of your image. Likewise with "Layers" - "New Adustment Layer" - "Curves" (IMPORTANT - GO TO YOUR LAYERS PALLETTE BEFORE THIS AND CLICK ON BACKGROUND LAYER BEFORE CLICKING CURVES), click on the very centre of the line, then at each end, at approx the centre of the first and last box. You can then nudge the first and last points gently until you have a very, very gentle S shaped curve. Adjust to your taste.

 

Another tip is: when converting to B&W, instead of clicking on "Greyscale", open an adjustment layer and click on "Channel Mixer." Then bottom left, click on "Monochrome". You can then play with the three RGB sliders to get the result you want - Usually works best if the three values add up to 100 in whichever combination suits you. I usually find it works best for me when R is around the high 30s - low 40s, G is in high 40s low 50s with B less than 10. But hey play around!

 

The advantage of this method is that the tonal control is much better, your original is untouched and you can go back later and tweak if you want to.

 

Good hunting.

Hi Graham,

 

I'm sorry you don't like my choice of colour sampling; I don't use PhotoShop I use Gimp, where you have infinite freedom to define the colour transfer functions any shape you like, and can apply the transform to any part of the image at will. After messing around with it the best part of a day, I settled on the above because I felt it made a clear distinction between foreground, middleground, and background, bringing out the details of the clouds while leaving a good tonal range for the main subject. I tried to bring the foliage up a bit, alas the original was too dark and it just showed digital noise (it was a rather overcast day, which is why I went for the black and white conversion in the first place).

 

I do agree generally that it is a tad underexposed, but I'm actually quite pleased that I was able to make something interesting out of the sky which was actually quite a dull, uniform grey. I also edited away some unsightly telephone cables that cut right across the middle of the picture...