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ZephonSoul — Hope or Faith?
Published: 2007-08-17 08:53:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 1057; Favourites: 32; Downloads: 22
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Description
... but as a stroke of lightningflashes tearing the darkest nightmare,
the sky opened as a sign:
was it for Hope or Faith?
-[
]-[]-----------------------------------------------------------------Koninklijk Paleis (mini series 2 of 3), Dam Square, Amsterdam.
This neoclassic building makes for the most impressive side of Dam Square, the living center of Amsterdam. It was built in the 1648 (finished in the 1665), after the great war with Spain. Today the Royal Palace is still used by the Royal Family to house official ceremonies.
This building raised interest in many photographers around the Dam. I saw giant cameras and giant objectives moving around the place in restless hands searching for the right spot and the right detail to capture (most photographers had strong teles, I could easily recognize a couple of Canon 100-400 IS).
This second photo of the Royal Palace portraits a specific detail of the building and was taken a bit later than the first one, when the clouds cleared a bit on the top of the palace. The manipulation used in CS2 was a bit stronger here since it includes the cross processing effect. The aid of the GND here was way lower here so I had to underexpose to preserve highlight details and the open the shadows (this brought up some grain in the very dark shadows, but nothing terrible).
- Dark Times
- Changes will happen...
[NFO:]Camera: Nikon D80
Lens: Nikkor 18-70 DX
Filters: C-PL + P121S
Focal Length: 40 mm
Aperture: F/8
Shutter Speed: 1/125 s
ISO speed: 200
[PSTWRK:] Full workflow in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.1, fine tweaking and cross processing in CS2
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Comments: 36
I like the point of view, seems as if the clouds left the building, a greeting!
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Thank you! I'm glad you do!
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The clouds are really very beautiful. Great angle and architecture. love those sculptures, lovely colours
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A cropped version with just the statue (s) and the clock tower at the top might be interesting too, placing more emphasis on the sculpture.
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Mhh thanks for the advice. I really can't decide when to crop, I'll try it out!
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ah yes that helps enourmously. Which GND filter is used ??
Question 2 (not quite as long). How did you achieve the dramatic effect on the clouds seen at the bottom right hand side of the frame?? your GND would have given the top half the dramtic effect but not the bottom clouds. And should they (the bottom clouds) have been over exps.
Many many many many many thanks
Chad
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As written in the description (why doesn't anyone read the description anyway?!?) the filter used is a P.121S, aka a GND8.
Answer 2. I assume you're talking about the lower LEFT corner of the frame... to understand this, you must consider the post processing. First, I recovered all the highlights possible with the "Recovery" slider in LR (which normalizes the light compressing the highlights and lights towards the midtones) and this process also normalized the sky on the whole (otherwise the differences where the filter wasn't present would have been more dramatic). As a final effect, I added vignetting to the photo, and that brought the darkness you can see at the angles. Most of the lower left sky wasn't overexposed by nature, since the sun was virtually over the top left corner, and the overall underexposure "almost" kept all the details of the clouds in there ("almost" because you can see that the borders of the clouds got clipped). To speak the truth, just taking a look at the original, I noticed that in PP I overexposed a bit the highlights to get more contrast, even the top left clouds had more details originally... I'll have to put some more work in this one someday...
Again, hope it helped!
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Ah actually, one quick question. Do you feel it is imperative to have Lightroom, or is Photoshop ok ??
i mean what is the difference, surely photoshop can achieve everything lightroom does ???
any thoughts
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Nothing is "imperative", and there isn't a single perfect tool (moreover each photo is different, and so it is the taste of the photographer). Lightroom offers an extra kick with RAW editing and photo managing, making it a photographer-centric tool. Everything you can do with LR though, can be done in Photoshop Cs, but often by different means/routes. Remember also that LR is a stand-alone software, so the RAW interpreter engine will be updated with software updates, while older Photoshop version than the CS3 won't get any ACR updates for new cameras (damn adobe bloodleechers!).
In the end it is your choice. I'm still trying more tools at once to understand which one fits best my needs, and up to now this seems to be the case with LR, though when I need conservative editing or I'm dealing with high ISO/high distortion/aberrations I'm best off with Nikon Capture NX which works just like the camera processor. You could also consider LightZone, Bibble, DxO... but in the end those softwares aren't going to make big differences: a good photo must be a good photo from the beginning!
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it did. i will slowly try digest all you have shared.
many thanks.
Chad Hefer
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No probs, I'm glad I could help!
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Thanks a lot, glad you liked it!
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Very beautiful sky, great use of exposure and postwork possibilities. Feels very balanced and somewhat amazing. I like this shot a lot, will even fave it
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Why thank you! I'm glad you liked it!
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well your getting the hang of your filters. Love the post treatment.
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ok question1. Is this some sort of HDR image? i say this because i do not see how you could have captured the detail of the building and yet also captured such depth in the sky (withouth over exposing it).
hehe
Any thoughts.
Chad
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Answer 1. As it is written on the description 
I hope the explanation was clear enough!
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this speaks for itself, a powerful image indeed! such a bold message, and eye candy colors and contrast.
should I dare to say that you went too far with the highlight-shadows tweaking? looks heavily manipulated, but I guess the clouds wouldn't look so impressive.
excellent work, thats for sure
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Whow, great work HDRI-Filter-man ^^
Very interesting postwork ^^
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Awesome!
The colors look really good and it has the perfect angle
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I have so many questions. should i bother asking ?
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You should, if you feel to!
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Maybe disillusion...
Anyway, wonderful capture (composition and angle of view)! Bravo!
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