Untitled

New scan and conversion of an older upload.

Your toning makes me think of old photographs, and yet shooting reflections and reversing the orientation is a more recent style. I would be tempted to dodge the white window sill, or some such part, to balance with the highlights of the cabana charis.

Ha, that should be "chairs," I must have Weston on the brain.

This is fun Carl - I immediately enjoyed it without having to think too hard. You really do have a thing for distorted realities! Why all the fuzz though?

I like your style and the abstract views that you take.

 

Looked at your folders.. Good work.. keep taking!!!

Aaron, I originally printed this in color without the chairs partially because of brightness issues. This time I wanted to emphasize distortions rather than colors. I tried to make the tone subtle, but maybe it's still too much.

 

Eric, the noise is the result of significant increases in contrast using curves. The reflecting surface is water in a swimming pool, with the all-too-common blue tile, that makes the original slide very unappetizing.

carl, for what its worth, here's what its like with neat image applied in default mode. i like it very very much - the distortion is very special, but i don't like the grain.

Thanks Ben. That's quite an improvement. I downloaded Neatimage for a test run, but they only let you apply the process to a small portion of the picture space, so you don't really get the effect. I'll keep it in mind if I decide to do something with this one or anything similar.

I thought there was so much noise it must have been added for effect! FWIW I am also a NeatImage user and often use it on my scanned images - especially the colour negative ones. And I'm scanning large format (I have a special aversion to noise I think).

That's understandable, given the large expanses of sky in many of your images. It also has to compete with texture, I would think.

carl, i'm not sure what you mean, since i only have the neat image demo model and can apply to the whole picture. after the tab that allows you to view the application to a small part of the picture, there's another tab in which you apply the software to the picture as a whole. does this make sense? I've found it invaluable for certain photos and worth experimenting with. feel free to compare notes here or by email.

Maybe that's Photokit Sharpener I'm remembering (or was that the one that covered your image with "$" signs?)

The foreground chairs work fine for me: such a dancing image needs some anchor, and they seem to have a very good effect at this.

 

I like this amount of reflections in general: you still make up much of the original shape, and even some tiny details, but the overall effect is slightly disturbing... I guess the old-photo toning also works in this direction: we are taken hostages of the lines and cannot rely on colours anymore to ideally straighten some of the lines (what I think our brain does anyhow).

 

I second the proposal of darkening parts of it and, mostly, to clean the noise...

Interesting. Nice balance. Water reflection effect makes for lots to think about.

Looks like an illustration to children's book,(the witch house.....)

 

Fun, and looks good in sepia. The grain adds to the illustration feeling and imo is not disturbing here.

I like it more with a little grain, printed large would look great in my opinion. Very nice combination of B&W and "Hopper" look.

A children's book and Hopper. Hmmm . . . interesting associations, neither of which had occurred to me. Thank you both.