Paris - La Defense IV

Carmelo75

Here comes the next shot from "La Defense" series. This time I wanted to play with the geometry and colors of the modern buildings, keeping the composition as essential as possible.

There is still some barrel distortion that I have to correct...

Do you like it? Any suggestion to improve the image (cropping, contrast, colors...)?

Andrea.

P.S: if my frequent C&C requests bother you, just let me know...:D I'm missing the refinery so much...:cry

Richard

Hey Andrea,

No need to apologize for requesting C&C--that's what we're here for .

This shot appeals to me a lot. The blue/green/gray color scheme is great and I like the contrast in texture between the raw concrete and the polished surfaces. What isn't working for me in this one is the featureless sky, which doesn't really contribute.

If you're going for geometry, then I think you're right that the lens distortion needs correction. Easily accomplished with CS5's Filter->Distort->Lens Correction. Besides a bit of pin-cushioning, there's some vertical perspective distortion that needs correcting, and you can do both with the lens correction filter. On my (uncalibrated) monitor, some of the detail gets a little muddy in the dark blue building, so a little shadow/highlight correction helps. Perhaps it looks better on a better screen so this would not be necessary, dunno. I would play with the crop some, perhaps an 8x10 anchored at the bottom. If you want to make it somewhat more abstract, you could also do a square crop that eliminates the sky altogether. I have a particular (peculiar?) liking for shooting modern buildings this way.

HTH.

Carmelo75

Richard wrote: »

Hey Andrea,

No need to apologize for requesting C&C--that's what we're here for .

This shot appeals to me a lot. The blue/green/gray color scheme is great and I like the contrast in texture between the raw concrete and the polished surfaces. What isn't working for me in this one is the featureless sky, which doesn't really contribute.

If you're going for geometry, then I think you're right that the lens distortion needs correction. Easily accomplished with CS5's Filter->Distort->Lens Correction. Besides a bit of pin-cushioning, there's some vertical perspective distortion that needs correcting, and you can do both with the lens correction filter. On my (uncalibrated) monitor, some of the detail gets a little muddy in the dark blue building, so a little shadow/highlight correction helps. Perhaps it looks better on a better screen so this would not be necessary, dunno. I would play with the crop some, perhaps an 8x10 anchored at the bottom. If you want to make it somewhat more abstract, you could also do a square crop that eliminates the sky altogether. I have a particular (peculiar?) liking for shooting modern buildings this way.

HTH.

Richard, I'm always happy to get good suggestions like yours!

I'm learning how to do lens and perspective correction with Hugin and that's a good image to play with. As soon as I'll have a bit of time I'll post a couple of versions, one with a better textured sky and one with a tighter crop. I'm quite curious to see the results... There is also some blueish cast in the shadows of the gray building that I have to cure.

Thanks again, Andrea.

Carmelo75

Richard, here is my best attempt to follow your suggestions, and some more work to get closer to the result I wanted...

Interesting for me to see how the final image diverges from the initial attempt... now I think I have come to a quite clean and essential composition, or at least that's what I am aiming for...

I would be very curious to see what you dgrinners think about this final cropping and tone adjustment :D:D!

Andrea.

Richard

Much, much better. I'm amazed at how much detail you were able to restore in the sky--I had thought it was hopelessly blown. The cloud reflections in the glass didn't really come across at all in the first version either--they were there, but almost unrecognizable as such. Good job on correcting the lens distortion too. The tones are great. Very well done.

jiro

Richard wrote: »

Much, much better. I'm amazed at how much detail you were able to restore in the sky--I had thought it was hopelessly blown. The cloud reflections in the glass didn't really come across at all in the first version either--they were there, but almost unrecognizable as such. Good job on correcting the lens distortion too. The tones are great. Very well done.

+1! thumb

Carmelo75

Richard, Jiro, thanks a lot for the very encouraging comments :D:D!!!

Actually that's the magic of raw digital files: I started from my D300 raw file, applied a +1ev correction for the buildings and a -2ev for the clouds, and did some masking to mix them seamelessly. The clouds on the building where there, and just popped when boosting the contrast, a nice side effect...

When I look close to the high res tif file I can see quite some noise in the buildings, due to the exposure correction + contrast boost, but... who cares? I'm not a fan of digital perfection, I just try to produce visually good images.

I'm also going to post soon the final edit of my post #2, (the one that Jiro has managed to improve a lot in lightroom), if you are curious...

Andrea.

Dogdots

The re-do is good thumb Photos with lines are my favorite.

Azzaro

I have come back to your pic. several times.....The rework is a real improvement. :Dgary

Carmelo75

Mary, Gary, thanks a lot for looking (even several times!) and the very nice comments!

Andrea.