After Dark

hendie

A few photos of my After Dark Collection, my personal choice of post processing night shots, its new for me and I am looking to add more in the future so it would be nice to know what others think. Any comments or criticism is appreciated.

Singapore:





NYC:

squirl033

try shooting these a stop underexposed... it'll help keep the lights from appearing overly bright, and will give you better definition...

Crokey

Hey Hendie, I know the blurriness and blown-out highlights aren't clumsiness as I've taken a look at your site and clumsiness isn't what came to mind when I saw your other work! I love all your city shots, and you have a similar photo to the one here with the petal shaped building done more conventionally. Is that why you have chosen to process these photos thisway, to see what happens when you throw away some of the rules? For me, the best photo of yours I have seen done this way isn't actually here, it's the Radio City One on your site. This treatment really compliments the subject and gives a nostalgic,old world feel to it(don't know if that was your intention, though!). The road is very interesting too. It's abstract enough so that sharpness and "correct" exposure don't matter, but I personally find it kind of distracting with these photos here, some more than others...probably because the subjects are so identifiable. This is more than likely because I'm so used to looking at and taking "properly" exposed and sharp images that it jars with my pre-conceived concept of how the photo should look. If that's your purpose, then it's a very worthy one, but I don't think it will work with every subject equally and I personally much prefer the 2 I mentioned. Can't wait to see what else comes out of this experiment, though.

hendie

Thank you for the comments. This post processing is experimental for me and the blown out highlights and the lack of colors are intentional. I have taken and seen many conventional photos that we perceive as "normal" and "natural" to most of us because they are seen through the "normal" human eyes. There are times where I wonder how animals see the world we live in. Are the contrast the same?, are they blinded with the lights we have? I have a slight myopia and I dont like wearing correction lenses except when I am driving, so what I see everyday is a bit blurry than most people. I have a friend who is red color blind, one day he wanted to buy a bag, he said he loved the " beautiful grey" color. I smiled at him and told him that the color is actually pink. We had a good laugh, it was quite funny but also intriguing for me. I've always wondered what he actually saw. That is one of the many reasons why I went with this post processing. But you are right on about the subjects being predictable, I think the collection arent coherent enough and can be misleading in some ways. Thank you for taking the time to see and analyze this, it helps me better understand what others perceive. Cheers

Crokey wrote: »

Hey Hendie, I know the blurriness and blown-out highlights aren't clumsiness as I've taken a look at your site and clumsiness isn't what came to mind when I saw your other work! I love all your city shots, and you have a similar photo to the one here with the petal shaped building done more conventionally. Is that why you have chosen to process these photos thisway, to see what happens when you throw away some of the rules? For me, the best photo of yours I have seen done this way isn't actually here, it's the Radio City One on your site. This treatment really compliments the subject and gives a nostalgic,old world feel to it(don't know if that was your intention, though!). The road is very interesting too. It's abstract enough so that sharpness and "correct" exposure don't matter, but I personally find it kind of distracting with these photos here, some more than others...probably because the subjects are so identifiable. This is more than likely because I'm so used to looking at and taking "properly" exposed and sharp images that it jars with my pre-conceived concept of how the photo should look. If that's your purpose, then it's a very worthy one, but I don't think it will work with every subject equally and I personally much prefer the 2 I mentioned. Can't wait to see what else comes out of this experiment, though.