That's pretty much a specular highlight. Totally exceeds the contrast range of color film or digital. Not much to be done about it, except trying to use a polarizer to eliminate it, or reducing everything else to a sihouette...or shooting b/w film and altering the contrast range in development, and that still might not work...binary visions said:
Just depends on how much of a photoshop guy you are, since Derek shoots digital.MikeD said:
Ah, you can do the same thing in a darkroom, but it's way too laborious for me...split-filtration was all I ever used to help out issues like that. I guess I'll have to learn more about Photoshop than adjusting levels.binary visions said:
Wish I had a little more darkroom experience, but there's a sort of universal acknowledgement that the photography classes at the local college suck and that's the only way I can get lab time - the guy who runs the photo lab absolutely will not allow non-students to use it.MikeD said:
MikeD said:That's pretty much a specular highlight. Totally exceeds the contrast range of color film or digital. Not much to be done about it, except trying to use a polarizer to eliminate it, or reducing everything else to a sihouette...or shooting b/w film and altering the contrast range in development, and that still might not work...
Derek, that pic strikes me as something you could sell to a stock agency or whatever, and it's a nice view of the city that avoids being antiseptic (as skylines can be)...but it's not really compelling in any way, IMHO, like 100% of the other pics you've shared with us. Was there anything you were going for other than showing us what Seattle looks like?
Your people/action pics are very compelling, but using the same treatment towards the city doesn't evoke the same feelings. Normally, it's a compelling subject that we see and appreciate through your skillful method of photographing it, which is subtle; you spend lots time appreciating the referent of the photo, and your (Derek's) photographic presence is sort of submerged in all of it, not standing alone, but being the method by which we see the subject as compelling. We're not just looking at the photo itself as an aestheticly pleasing object...with things like this, it's going to be more about the photographer and his methods than the static subject, unless you're just going for a nice image of the city so that we can see what it looks like. But you can do so much more than that with your abilities.
I dunno...have you ever seen Eugene Atget's stuff? Wierd French dude, wandered around turn-of-the-century Paris doing photos on a camera that was antiquated even by the standards of those days. Took thousands on thousands of empty street scenes with this dry plate camera, sold some to artists to be used as backgrounds for their paintings, but died poor and bitter. Did photos of archetypical street 'characters,' too. Used to have students who were shooting urban scenes look at his stuff a lot. The surrealists, of all people, loved him.
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget.html
MD
