new york state (buffalo area and western new york) Buffalo, NY City Hall

ChrisH. in Southern California is trying to convince me to get into shooting RAW. I'm still not convinced, but promised him that I would shoot in RAW a little bit and play with it. This is the second result that I'm posting here on PN.

 

It snowed a little bit this morning here in Western New York, then the sky cleared for a few hours, and then the clouds rolled in off of Lake Erie and we're supposed to get some real snow again tonight.

 

I did most of the adjustments in the ACR software, then went into PScs3 and worked with the tweaking things ... levels and colors and cloning out power lines, etc. Any thoughts you have would be most helpful! Thanks!!

I am attempting to convert from shooting jpg to shooting raw. This

image is my second attempt to work with one of my raw files (the first

is also in this same folder). Any thoughts, comments or ratings you

have for me would be greatly appreciated! :-)

One of your best, Lou Ann! Regards.

The color is nice Lou Ann. There are some perspective and straightening issues that could be addressed. But mainly I just want to back up Chris - I cannot imaging shooting jpeg instead of RAW except in certain situations where repetitive speed is critical. Six months from now you probably rue the day you were still shooting jpeg.

Good going Lou Ann for making the switch to RAW ~ on certain easy-to-shoot shots you may find it hard to see the benefits but it is 100% worth it. For example I wonder if your new method, allowed you to recover or maintain that lovely 'unblown' cloud detail. I see perspective considerations here on this shot too, but then again I have on occassion deliberately left things untouched on that aspect to emphasise or dramatize tall buildings such as this one.

Regards ~ Mike

very good angle and light...congrats

Thanks for the comments and the RAW encouragement, all. I want to mention that I like the wacky perspective that I get with my 10mm. If I were to adjust that, I would (1) have the same photo of City Hall that everyone else has (boring!) and, (2) would not have the nifty sky that I love getting when I shoot with the 10mm. Yes, I'll keep playing with the RAW shooting. I'm still not decided. I guess it's because I don't understand white balance well enough. The websites & tutorials all say "play with the temperature slider until it looks good". That's not quite good enough for me ... I don't trust my own eye with color casts, and I found that there was an 800+ degree temperature range that I found to be acceptable when I was "playing with the slider". I simply don't yet know what "looks good"......

Great sky, although I find the clouds on the left just slightly blown out. Another interesting perspective with this shot. I especially like that flag! :)

Hi Lou Ann - nice shot. The converging angles add interest. I'm not so sure I agree with Kim about blown-out clouds. After you have used RAW for a while, you will love the control it gives you over a lot more than color (I have an extremely bad time with the color of Utah red rock). Anyway, have fun and thanks for sharing this with us.

Nice work on this; and I like the building centered with the lion in LL. I also don't think the clouds on the left are blown; there's still detail in 'em. The wide-angle really gives this some pop. Once you go raw you can't go back! LOL! Have a great day! Cheers! Chris

Me too! I love the unusual perspective your wide angle gives to this beautiful towering building and the lion for foreground interest is perfect. The clouds look good to me but the sky has that "polarized" look that I don't like, but who am I too talk when I often over saturate my skies trying to get detail. And yes keep experimenting with RAW conversion, I shoot both JPEG's and RAW, depending on the camera I'm using. In my RAW converter there's a list of choices for white balance....such as; as shot, with flash, cloudy etc., and I have better luck using them for my white balance. In my Canon, when shooting in RAW, I leave the WB set to auto and then change it during editing. If I'm really serious about the shot I'm after I always use my tripod, between RAW capture and the use of a tripod I can see a noticeable difference in the quality of my images. And sometimes I'm just plain lazy and I "point and shoot".

Thanks, everyone!! Susan - didn't use a polarizing filter here. I might have tweaked the sky color a little (really, only a little) in PS. But this is a very good idea of what the sky looked like yesterday. (Today ... snow, snow, snow!)

I have a hard time editing skies, and if I'm using the little P&S camera I get a lot of artifacts and noise in my blues, but I know what you mean about it being pushed "just a little", some of my sky colors are so stange, but real, that folks think I've tinkered with them too much. Snow and cold here too.

Hi, Lou Ann,

 

From what I see on the news, if you go and take this same shot today, things might look a little different. You could do "Buffalo City Hall in White," perhaps. It's been cold here, and a bit of snow to the West of us, but no snow here yet. Maybe for Christmas.

 

Cheers

I like the wide angle of the building. Capturing blue skies in Buffalo is great. Pretty clouds. Very nice.

This is incredibly good, Lou Ann. The wide angle combined with the sky and the lion make this into something way out of the ordinary. On "Larger" it is really something special.

 

I actually remember this building from traveling from Akron to Niagara Falls way back in 1954, at the age of nine. Your picture is much better than the ones on Wikipedia:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_City_Hall

 

--Lannie

Very interesting composition! Like it very much!

Excellent shot, and KOLOSSAL architecture.

Lou Ann, very majestic City hall, the wide angle is well used here, and the blue backdrop of sky adds to the feeling.

Outstanding !!!

I was told "Raw" compositions are good and yours

proves it.

 

When I looked at this Pyramids cross my mind.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

Keep warm in there, your part of town gets

frozen.

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Sally

This is excellent and may have been an excellent candidate for the HDR (High Dynamic Range) feature of Photoshop CS2+. Something Wilson Tsoi makes great use out of by making multiple exposures of the same scene differently in RAW format. One for just the shadows, another for mid tones, and a third for the highlight detail. Then layering them all together and painting out your mask (black - white) for each layer to allow what you want from the different exposures to come through. Or use the HDR feature and let Photoshop do the work! I am also curious as to why there is a Canadian flag at half mast in from of a city office building in Buffalo, New York? Was it that they just chose their new Prime Minister in Canada? That would have been reason enough for me to put my flag at half mast too!

Thanks, Phil! You know, I took this shot when I had just started shooting RAW, so I could definitely give it a try! Hmmm....

 

And as far as the half mast, I'm not sure. There's lots of Canadian stuff around here though ... the flag is flown around much of the area, and they sing both national anthems at professional sporting events (they don't do that all over the U.S., do they?) I guess it's probably a symbol of respect ... as the Canadian border isn't but a mile or two away (or at least "international waters").