COMMENTS THREAD FOR RANDOM PHOTOS LIV

Cooper coast is a fantastic coastline.
I'm down in West cork this week and it's a dream.
2 kids in tow doesn't make for frequent photo stops unfortunately:(

West Cork is glorious, particularly the Beara peninsula.

Wailin wrote: »

West Cork is glorious, particularly the Beara peninsula.

Agreed. Stayed in castletown bere this week:)

dinneenp wrote: »

Many might find this a boring photo. There's something about the circles that drew me to take the photo

Very thought provoking.

Who eats like this? The crumbs suggest there was toast, but the beans remain untouched. Beans and toast, but eaten separately? This is crazy. And then there's the ketchup, it looks relatively untouched.

https://flic.kr/p/27o8Gpb

Keps.....No birds ???? What's happened to you?

Judge wrote: »

Irish Management Institute

This may be a silly question but how do you get the effect of the rays of light coming from behind the building?

fixXxer

It's cloud moving during a long exposure.

fixxxer wrote: »

It's cloud moving during a long exposure.

The Flickr info must be wrong then, it says exposure was 1/160? Is flickr often inaccurate there?

Mike Litoris

awec wrote: »

The Flickr info must be wrong then, it says exposure was 1/160? Is flickr often inaccurate there?

I think Judge uses multiple exposures. One might be a long exposure? I could be totally wrong though!! He posted some stuff on his technique a while ago. It's a great effect all the same.

Mike Litoris wrote: »

I think Judge uses multiple exposures. One might be a long exposure? I could be totally wrong though!! He posted some stuff on his technique a while ago. It's a great effect all the same.

I went and found it for anyone else curious. Sounds like a lot of work

Great photo Judge (again)!

Judge wrote: »

Thanks to both of you for your very kind comments.

You've probably guessed that the black and white pictures I've been posting recently have undergone very significant post-processing – much, much more than my colour work, which in most cases has involved little more than a few adjustments in Lightroom (15-20 minutes work per picture on average). No changes have been made to the physical structure of the subjects (bar removing some distracting elements like poles or wires) but the light that appears to fall on the buildings is almost completely artificial. The intention is to create a highly subjective view of each building – one that uses light and shade to emphasise and highlight shape, form and volume.

The technique for taking and processing these pictures follows that pioneered by the likes of Joel Tjintjelaar and Julia Anna Gospodaru. Work by Jay Vulture, Gediminas Karbauskis and Jin Mikami have also been influential. Joel Tjintjelaar's website contains a number of useful tutorials on the techniques used.

Most shots are long exposures using either a 10 or 16 stop neutral density filter with exposure times of anything from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. This eliminates any people or traffic at street level and to smooth out the sky. In a few cases I've cheated and replaced the sky altogether.

The post processing involves:-

- Initial developing in Lightroom to correct any perspective issues and to produce a neutral, rather flat image with limited contrast.

- Conversion to black and white in Silver Efex Pro.

- Moving into Photoshop to make an often painstaking series of selections of elements of the picture, mainly using the pen tool but also using other select and mask techniques such as channels, color range selection and luminosity masks. The picture of Fitzwilton House has approximately 100 individual selections. This is the longest and most tedious part of the process.

- Using the selections I have made in combination with Photoshop's Layer Mask, Curves and Gradient tools to build up the light and dark portions of the image.

- Tidying up removing any artefacts, halos etc. caused by the processing and applying sharpening as required.

- Returning to Lightroom for final tweaks to the image, plus captioning, keywording and geotagging.

Metric Tensor – as a novice I hope the above doesn't scare you off! We were all novices at some time. There is a lot of work involved in putting together these images – including a lot more time in front of a computer that I'd really like – but the payoff in terms of personal satisfaction has been worth it (so far).

wersal gummage

Myksyk,

If you see this.... How did you you create that look in that portrait you posted? I've seen they style obviously before and when done well (as you have) it looks very good. Is it elaborate set up with flash and background screens etc, or post processing, or both?!

Thanks!

Myksyk

Cheers for the thumbs up wersal gummage. The lighting for the portrait is extremely simple ... a one light set up using a 135 octa set slightly in front and above to achieve a standard Rembrandt effect. It is shot against a grey background.

There is a lot of (hopefully reasonably subtle) post work on this. Skin clean up, cooling specular highlights, sharpening eyes and adding selective colour, a lot of painstaking dodging and burning to create depth in the face, replacement of the background, three to four LUTs and a B/w layer all set at low percentages but masked off the skin at least 50%, significant de-noising to create a waxy, painterly look with a hi-pass filter to bring back sharpness in the small detail and an unsharp mask to bring back contrast. a little liquifying where required. Think thats about it.

Hope that's helpful!

ED E

PaulieC wrote: »

My OCD hates you.

ED E wrote: »

My OCD hates you.

not straightness ?

Mike Litoris wrote: »

Another one from Monday morning.

Wild grass by Anthony Murray, on Flickr

This is class.

You had some Monday, Mike!

Church of Christ the King

That is top class redape. Superb processing.

awec wrote: »

This is class.

You had some Monday, Mike!

Have to agree, great photo

Mike Litoris

awec wrote: »

This is class.

You had some Monday, Mike!

Thanks guys. First time this year I was up before sunrise. I was off work and actually thought it was Sunday. I was swanning around the Dublin coast oblivious to what day it was until I hit mental traffic in the docs.

got something very similar last week with my phone

Mike Litoris

^^^^
Lovely shot, Paulie. Mega impressive from a phone!!

Mike Litoris wrote: »

^^^^
Lovely shot, Paulie. Mega impressive from a phone!!

The best camera is the one you have with you, right ?:) While it's never going to compete with DSLR lenses, it's fine for snaps like this.

What phone is it Paulie?

awec wrote: »

What phone is it Paulie?

Galaxy S8. I'm selling it, just ordered a replacement (for non-camera related reasons, the camera is probably the best thing about the phone)

Judge

awec wrote: »

This may be a silly question but how do you get the effect of the rays of light coming from behind the building?

Sorry, only saw this now - I think the replies from the others cover everything. The streaks are caused by a long exposure (5-6 minutes) on the sky but I blended the shot with a faster exposure to get rid of some unwanted movement in the trees.

redape99 wrote: »

Church Of Christ The King by redape99_, on Flickr

Nice one, especially the toning. Next time I'm in Cork, I'm determined to get down to Turner's Cross to have a crack at a few shots of that church myself; it's probably one of the best examples of modern architecture in the country.

Wailin wrote: »

Wicklow sunrise

How do you get to this walkway Wailin?

redape99

Wailin wrote: »

Church of Christ the King
That is top class redape. Superb processing.

Judge wrote: »

Nice one, especially the toning. Next time I'm in Cork, I'm determined to get down to Turner's Cross to have a crack at a few shots of that church myself; it's probably one of the best examples of modern architecture in the country.

Thanks guys. Yep it's a striking building alright. I didn't do too much processing on it, have the Silver Efex Pro plugin for Lightroom and that has some nice tones (this is Selenium).

copperhead

thats a nice pic wailin,
love the original you posted in january in colour though

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4636/38652241234_7b3819c991_b.jpg

Thanks copperhead. It looks identical to the colour original i posted before but it's actually taken on a different part of the boardwalk. You can see the sun in the bw one wheres its a bit overexposed in the previous one.