Another Day in Purgatory (#1952)

trying to work with darker than normal tonal values for a more

sinister effect.

beautiful.... composition.. normally i dont like B&W .. but it works here..

Very nice series. I love the narrow tonal range and the mystery. Also, beautiful toning. Dave Gordon

6/6

6/6

I really like the way the central tree emerges from the rich dark mass at the bottom of the frame. Beautiful control of tones Doug!

 

The suggestion of sinistral omens I think depends upon the viewer's familiarity with forests, and degree of comfort within them. Whether sinister or not, this is really fine Doug, with a strong dose of originality too.

super! close to being my fav so far..

Thanks for these comments. I'm posting a widescreen view of this same image, wondering if the square cropping is better.

 

Good points, John, about one's regard for the subject matter.

they're both different pics, both nice. new version is pretty and aesthetic and the original is cerebral and narrative. me prefers orig.

I'm with B. A word about your method of creation for this set please Doug?

Can I vote for the 2:1 version? This is not a preference thing: these days I'm seeing more 4x5 than 6x12, but the square here creates a static composition. Combined with muted tones, static + muted ~= dormant. The expansiveness of the 2:1 ratio makes the sombre tonal range really work.

Here's what I did. Easy. It was really only two major adjustments, aside from cropping and fine tuning.

 

Shooting was easy, too. I didn't even get out of the car. Actually, I didn't even stop the car. The road here is very twisty, but I've driven over it no less than 2400 times over the past 5 years on my way to and from the office. There's no room for walking because of steep banks on either side: One going straight up, the other going straight down. After 5 years I finally figured out that I could get the shot with a motordrive. Traffic this time of day is 95% in one direction as everyone heads to work. I pulled over until there were no cars behind me, and then took the hill slowly. The stretch in question is only about 1/4 mile long, so it was over in about 40 seconds.

and I tend to agree with Leigh on the dimensions.

I definitely prefer this square crop.

Doug, a question about your levels settings. What was the purpose of clipping black and white before reducing the output dynamic range? It seems to me that you are throwing away shadow and highlight detail, whereas the crucial factor in the image's mood derives really from the reduced dynamic range.

Leigh, I'm glad you noticed that. I was wondering if someone would. Since the atmosphere was foggy, there was no highlight detail to speak of, just even gray tone taking the place of the sky. Sliding back on the highlights took that gray further down the scale, making it darker overall. No important highlight details were sacrificed, just the overall brightness value of the whole image. This affected the midtone values somewhat, and yes, detail was lost in them, but the shadows were not so much affected, although they WERE deepened by a separate adjustment using the shadows slider.

 

The goal was to eliminate the sense of brightness, hence, to increase the feeling of doom and gloom. Also, I hoped to make the picture appear as if made in the twilight hours, or even after sunset, maybe by moonlight, when in fact it was made at 10:20 in the morning. You can see from the original that the overall range was compressed, but there is still a brightness in the atmosphere that was contrary to my goal.

This is the histogram after the adjustment.

This histogram shows the final image after the highlights slider was rolled back to the position show, which added white pixels. Actually, they weren't added. What happens is that (I think)pixels valued at 132 (and higher) are changed into a value of 255. What I did was the reverse, changing pixels valued at 255 into pixels valued at 159, as shown in the first diagram. At least, I guess that's what's going on. I did it by eye, not by the numbers.

Technical details greatly appreciated Doug.