Flurry

YAY SNOW!

I wanted a photo of something a bit more interesting than an all-white park or road (I have plenty of those).

As the sun went down and I decided to go home the snow began to fall heavily after a brief pause. The snow falling around the street lamps reminded me of bugs attracted to bright lights. I really wanted a total freeze-frame, but alas I had to sacrifice shutter speed. There's also a bit of lens flare, but seeing as I was shooting directly at a lightbulb it gets a pass.

Stone lion

I'm not usually a fan of photos with selective colour, but in this case I decided to give it a try.

I took this photo last year when I was still noobing it out with my new Nikon and kit lens. That's not to say that I'm "pro" now, but I think I know my camera a little bit better than before (and I might have used my 35mm prime in portrait orientation this time around). I liked the texture of the statue, as well as the lichen patches that had formed on it which gave it a nice splash of colour. When I looked at the picture later on my computer the features that I liked were lost in the background distraction of green leaves. Naturally I wanted to make the photo black & white but doing this would obviously remove the lichen patches, hence my decision to use selective colour.

It was just a case of overlaying the original colour image on top of a black & white version in Photoshop, then erasing everything from the colour image except the statue.

I then played with the blending mode of the colour layer and chose pin light. This had the effect of turning the lichen a bit more orangey-red instead of the original yellow tone, but it also added some definition to the lichen edges, as well as making it look less like a quick hack job using hue and colorization adjustments.

A few more adjustments with contrast and brightness to bring out more definition and a quick blur of the sides (to soften the spiky tree in the foreground which really distracted my eye) and it's done.


I suppose it's one way to rescue an image that's missing a certain something (or has too many distracting subjects), but I don't know if I'd use the effect often.

Sunset in the city

Happy New Year, etc.

I totally forgot about the New Year parade in central London, so when I walked into the area of the event I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately - and because I forgot about the parade - I caught the tail-end of it and only managed to take a few photos of the event (which I'll probably post another time).

Walking back through Piccadilly as the sun was going down was pretty dramatic. I snapped this sunset with the warm, yellow light reflecting off the buildings. Sunsets in the city rarely involve a real horizon.

The roads in the immediate area were closed, hence the lack of general traffic. It kind of gives this image a 28 Days Later, post-apocalyptic feel (always good), and the people frozen in time look a little like zombies aimlessly wandering around, looking for brains... brains.

Now I feel like watching a zombie film. Any suggestions?