Stairs

Nice shot. Interesting, why background is grainy, maybe because you had to clone a lot. Or it was color noise if ISO was like 200+.

Saw these stairs jammed between two buildings in London. Managed to

take in as few buildings as possible, the rest were cloned out in

PS, added noise to the background.

Very interesting, graphic image. I wonder what this looked like before you removed the other buildings... Do I understand you correctly that you added the background noise deliberately? I guess it works, provides a more interesting background than plain white/grey/whatever...

Hello Vlad & Michael, thank you for your comments.

Vlad, the ISO setting I used was 100@F8. The backgound was a very clear blue sky before converted to b&w. I added 'noise' to give the image a stronger feel.

Michael, the buildings that I cloned out was low on the left hand side, laced into the steps, I had a choice of crop or clone. Crop would result in one less lot of steps.

Just gotta love that grain effect, works really well in this picture. A vertical grain might have worked even better, giving the picture more length. nice photo

That's a good shot, though I'd find it more challanging if there were some details in the black areas.

Interesting. I liked it better before I knew all the digital manipulations you did to it. Good shot nevertheless (by the way, did you try it with a much brighter background?).

Thank you Timo, Dorian & Ilan for your kind comments.

I decided on the 'grainy' mid-grey background on this image because the orginal shot with a clear blue sky looked to me less graphic, more snap shot.

Ilan, I hope the PS work hasn't put you off too much - I have always wished to take a shot of fire-escape stairs like they have in New York, this was the first I saw in London, so went for it!

Very nice. I love the grain and the sky's darkness here, as well as the composition. Beautiful result, really. By the way, have you seen Carl Root's series on similar stairs - in color...? They look great too. Cheers.

Hello Marc, happy that you like this shot.

I did go look at Carl Root's very impressive work.....came away knowing how much I have yet to learn!

Well thought.

I can't rate it although I like it, because with with all this digital manipulation it doesn't match my old-fashioned notion of a photograph anymore (see, choose lens, compose, set aperture and shutter speed so as to expose the photosensitive medium to the light that YOU want, shoot); I can only see it as a picture. And it is wonderful as such.

Hello Thomas, I'm very new to digital, and so I fully understand and appreciate all that you say about digital manipulation. My first love is B&W film photography, but even in film, I had to learn the different skills of darkroom manipulations, most of which had been handed down since photography began. As far as I understand, many of to-day's photoshop steps are based on wet darkroom manipulations. I find myself still prefering film but wishing to learn digital as well and am amazed by what skillful and creative people can do with an image on the computer. Thank you for commenting here. I also have the same shot in B&W film(with background), someday I will post it and would love for your comment.

I have nothing against computer applications in anything. I actually use and programme computers a lot. I just think that manipulation to this extend takes us to a different kind of artwork that icludes photography but at the same time extends (or by-passes) its limits. And I can't judge something I don't know. I can surely say that your work is of high aesthetic value. I'd certainly love to see the "raw" version of the photo; maybe a bit of ugly background adds to the beauty of the subject.

 

There are many more of your photos that I like (e.g. the windows); when I have more time I'll come back to them.

Thank you Thomas for taking the time to come back here. You have given me much food for thought, deeper then a driveby rating!

You have some interesting comment s here but I have to say I like the choices you made with cloning and the noisy background. It makes for a stark image and for me simply tells of what happens to all of us every day as we are presented with options, choices etc up, down. right, wrong etc.