[Kombisaurus]

There is a bridge currently being built to cross the freeway near my house.
I use the freeway most days to get to and from work, and about 2 weeks ago I noticed they'd put up a few of these fantastic light poles.
I continued driving past it, watching. I was waiting for the right time and the right sky to photograph them against.

Anyway, last Friday things were looking good so I went up and took some shots. I reserve the right to go back and re-shoot these if I find a better sky (hehe), but I was quite happy with the shots and loved the place and the feeling it gave me. It was quite a surreal experience being up there on a desolate bridge with nothing but some huge bizarre sculptures for a sense of scale.
I think there are about 6 of the poles there, and I'm not sure what the plans are, but I think they are a wonderful idea! Its great to see a bit of thought put into such mundane things as street lights and some effort to beautify roadworks, or at the very least provide an interesting conversation topic when you drive past.


1. "At the end of the day, the parents return home to tend to their young." - This scene totally reminds me of the movie Jurassic Park and the herds of Dinosaurs wandering around.


2. Radiating Lines


3. Local John - While I was up there I met a local resident named John who was out for a walk. We had a bit of a chat and he told me about the history of the freeway, and he seemed quite proud of the fact he'd grown up in the area and seen all the changes happen around him - so I thought this photo was fitting.


4. John Heads Home - This is John on his way home after our chat, and gives a good sense of scale and eerie emptiness of the place. I did some photoshopping to make John a bit clearer and remove some distractions (power lines, tops of some trees).


5. The Moon Comes Out - As if on cue, the moon appeared in an excellent position. Unfortunately the angle and exposure needed to get this shot meant it was just a little white blob, so I took a second photo of just the moon (exposed properly at a longer focal length) and replaced the moon in this shot with it. This shot gives a much more accurate feeling of what it was like being at the scene, although technically it is not just one shot.


6. Old and New - I think this is my favourite shot. I want the light posts to come to life, jump the guard-rails and have a fight in the middle of the road... and I want the mutant light post to win!


7. Compactor Dreams of the Big City - This shot shows the freeway that the new bridge crosses and you can see another bridge (Farrington Rd) just a bit further up the road, with Perth city in the distance. The blurry thing in the foreground is a compactor used for roadworks - I thought the handle made a nice framing device for the city.
I'm not so sure that the concept of this photo really "works" though, but it is a stark contrast to the feeling of isolation you get from the other shots (which were taken just meters away).

[noisynoodle]

Terrific series - You've made something mundane not just interesting, but truly beautiful. These are super shots, and many of them are real works of art.

Jan

[shuttertalk]

I don't know what they're feeding these light poles are, but it sure is good!!

Spectacular series, Kombi... just totally awesome. I think this has got to be one of the best to date for me... The colours are absolutely beautiful especially in the clouds and sky. And the compositions are truly skillful...

[adam]

very nice!!! the first one looks like from another planet!

[Russt]

I agree with the above, just a great series...........!!!

I think you have named #1 wrong, its got to be ........"war of the worlds"

Its a hard choice to pick a favorite but I would have to go with #2 breaking the rule works, well balanced with the other pole and sky. (for me anyway)

cheers

[sg]

Kombisaurus, what sort of settings where used in taking that first shot, or does a magician never reveal his secrets? The angle the colours, i just think that shot is very eerie. Love it.

[Rufus]

Excellent, wonderful, brilliant. Yes, the Terrier is very impressed indeedy!!!


SG: Asking about settings, is a bit like asking a racing driver what fuel he uses.....It wont help much to know.
The trick is in the photographers eye. He/she knows how to "see" like a camera. Does that make sense????
HTH.

[byrt_001]

hi

those are realy great, the only one i do not like is the one with john. he is not a pole material.sorry.

christian

[Petographer]

A very sci-fi looking series. The image quality with the colour and compisition are fantastic. Great work Adrian.

[guerito]

These pictures are amazing!!! #1 is my favorite, but all of them are great. Thanks for sharing!

[Kombisaurus]

Wow.. I wasn't expecting this much of a response. Thanks!
But I can't take much of the credit, the scene was just begging to be shot.... and whoever designed those poles I'm sure had exactly these scenes in mind. I'm sure I won't be the last person to shoot them.

I was really happy while I was up there shooting, thinking "these are going to be great!". But then a bit disappointed when I started massaging the exposures on my PC, as I struggled to pull out the true colours in the sky. #4 probably most closely matches the cloud colours, but unfortunately I think that shot looks a bit over-cooked as far as processing goes (and it has had a fair bit, even though the intention was to simply re-create the scene as my eyes saw it, not the camera). I actually nearly didn't post these pics.

I was most excited and also most disappointed with #1. This is very similar to a view you get of the poles when you drive past on the freeway below, so I already had this shot in my head for a week before I got out of the car to take the shots. But unfortunately I missed the most spectacular sky for this shot by about 10 minutes (lots of shafts of sunlight visible through the clouds), and I just can't seem to match the colours to what they were really like. So even though I'm very happy with it, it annoys me to know that it could have been better if I'd have been there a bit earlier.

As far as "settings" go SG, well, the look of this photo wasn't so much to do with camera settings as it was processing (and of course the scene itself). I did use a polarising filter to put as much contrast into the sky as I could when I took the shot, but beyond that its just a matter of using an aperture that will get everything I want in focus and getting an exposure as bright as possible without blowing out any details in the sky (with the intention of fine-tuning exposure later).
But there are two photoshop techniques I used in this image which give me a lot of flexibility in getting the exposure, tones and colours how I want them.

The first involves creating seperate tone curves for the background (sky) and foreground (poles/ground). Normally the biggest problem with a shot like this that if you expose for the sky then the foreground will be horribly underexposed, but if you expose for the foreground then the sky gets overexposed and eventually blown out to white. This scene was obviously too large for a fill-in flash to be of any real use to brighten the foreground, so I simply create two seperate tone curve layers in Photoshop (one for sky, one for the rest) and create layer masks to ensure they are applied to seperate parts of the image. This way you can tweak the exposure of the sky seperately to the foreground, and get satisfactory exposure in each simultaneously. An alternative method is to take two seperate exposures of the same scene but with different amounts of exposure (ie bracket the shot) and then combine the two exposures together in photoshop. Or you can even perform two sepereate RAW conversions on the same image and re-construct them in photoshop, but personally I find the method I used to be more flexible and just as effective.

The second technique I used here to give the photo a bit more atmosphere is a third tone curve layer with a very soft, subtle mask to create a vignetting effect. I generally adjust this tone curve to underexpose the image drastically, and then hand-paint a subtle vignetting effect around the corners, edges and sections where I want detail to disappear into shadows. In image #1 I tried to give a bit of an effect of shadows being cast on the sand by overhead clouds and reduce the bland flatness of the sand. I also use it in image #2 to emphasize the lines of the photo and hide some of the distracting houses in the bottom right, and again in image #6 to frame the image, draw attention toward the pole in the centre, and give a bit more texture and character to the road surface.

This amount of processing (three stacked tone curves) is the reason why I shoot RAW and try to do everything in 16-bit RGB in photoshop until I need to save as JPG. It's very easy to get nasty posterisation and blown highlights and shadows otherwise due to limited dynamic range and colour resolution. 16-Bit RGB is not perfect, but it is much better than 8-bit.. and it retains much of the extra dynamic range stored in a RAW file that isn't used when converting to 8-bit JPG's.

Cheers
Adrian

[EnglishBob]

WOW.

A truly spectacular series of what can only be described as a very mundane subject! Very nice series Kombi.

[Russt]

and create layer masks to ensure they are applied to seperate parts of the image.

Kombi, thanks for the insight in to you post processing. I have been playing with this type of processing myself, I am just feeling my way round and not sure if what I am doing is right or the best way. It would be great to read some more detail as to the type of mask used and how its applied. When you are making the curve adjustments is it done to a background copy or in an adjustment layer?

Sorry to highjack the thread and turn it into post processing.

cheers


PS only if you don't mind..........

[sg]

Excellent, wonderful, brilliant. Yes, the Terrier is very impressed indeedy!!!


SG: Asking about settings, is a bit like asking a racing driver what fuel he uses.....It wont help much to know.
The trick is in the photographers eye. He/she knows how to "see" like a camera. Does that make sense????
HTH.

Rufus....... i had a feeling it would come back to the "feel" for the type of setting or "moment".... once again coming back to knowing when and how to get that shot..............

Kombisaurus, as was said in the post above, the information and the methods regarding post production give a good insight into the effort involved in getting those shots to "come alive"

Thanks again for providing the information

[shuttertalk]

I simply create two seperate tone curve layers in Photoshop (one for sky, one for the rest) and create layer masks to ensure they are applied to seperate parts of the image. This way you can tweak the exposure of the sky seperately to the foreground, and get satisfactory exposure in each simultaneously.

Awesome trick Kombi... works well too (evidently)!

I guess it's sort of good to know that shots straight out of the camera doesn't usually match what your mind's eye saw (mine don't anyway) - some work needs to be done to make the difference between an ok shot and a stunning one.

[matthew]

Amazing series; and thanks for the impromptu tutorial.

[Schellamo]

Very cool, you've out done yourself...again!
Thanks for the insight into your post processing too, I'm waiting until we upgrade the computer before I start shooting raw and I have a feeling it will be a bit of a learning curve. But its great to get a 'feel' for the sort of steps others are taking in their processing.

[Toad]

A really great series. I started out to discuss my favorites, but I was including them all.

So to take the opposite tack, the only one that I am indifferent to is the last one - but I applaud experimentation, and it is difficult to do a series where everyone loves every shot, and the last one is the most experimental.

Well done!

[momshouse1959]

WOW! Great series. I really enjoyed every shot. what an amazing subject. I live in an area near Washington DC and we are going through a lot of changes but nothing like this. Gave me some ideas on things to look for to experiment with..

Well done!

[Kombisaurus]

Thanks Craig, Russ, Steve, Jules, Matthew, Michelle, Rob, and Jen! *phew*

After explaining that technique with the two different tone curves and masks for the sky and foreground, I took another look at that particular file (shot #1) and noticed that I did things a bit differently for that particular shot! That'll teach me for writing based on what I *thought* I did on particular shots.
But the technique I explained is the one I most commonly use to tackle these kind of shots (high contrast with lots of sky and foreground detail I want to retain), and it would've produced the same kind of thing.

I guess it's sort of good to know that shots straight out of the camera doesn't usually match what your mind's eye saw (mine don't anyway) - some work needs to be done to make the difference between an ok shot and a stunning one.

I've pretty much given up on the whole idea of "shots straight out of the camera".
The camera might not lie, but that doesn't mean it tells the whole truth either.
Any shot like this that doesn't capture the real feeling of "being there" isn't telling the whole truth in my opinion... and unfortunately it is very common for shots straight out of the camera NOT to portray that feeling (for me anyway). In which case I think processing them can make them more truthful.
It all depends on the purpose of the shot I guess... And the photographer and his/her principles and preferences.

[Petographer]

Looking back on these images #4 makes me think that there was some kind of nuclear explosion or something and the pole is melted. When I look at #3 the first thing that pops into my mind is "the aliens are coming". I must say again, these are fantastic shot Adrian.

[Zig]

I've again been away too long! I seem to run out of meaningful adjectives here, with "masterful" and "atmospheric" being not quite enough. Every so often, there come along some images that for me really have an added presence, and these are they. A chum recommended me to have a look at these and I am glad I have. I've gone all agog! I was thinking the planes+building one was the tops for me until I saw these. I really don't know how, but they have that high-end Magnum sparkle about them...you haven't grafted a Leica onto your kit recently have you matey??!

[Kombisaurus]

wow.. Thanks again guys. I don't quite know what to say about this series though... I like them and am happy how they came out, but am really quite suprised with these comments. I feel like I hardly did anything.
It's also interesting that these are the first landscape shots I've posted in a while, as I've been concentrating on other types of photography. Hopefully the lessons I'm learning in these other areas might also help improve my landscapes I can only hope.

And to help illustrate some of those processing questions, here's a link to a photoshop file of one of my shots with all the layers still intact. It makes use of that "dual tone curves with masks" technique to expose the sky seperately to the rest of the image, among a couple of other things.
The shot is a product shot I took of my car to help sell it (I posted it in a thread here a few months ago). I chose this shot because it presented quite a difficult challenge due to the huge contrast between the bright sky and the backlit shiny black car.
I had to downsample it to very low res and convert it to 8-bit though because the original file is over 100mb (it is now about 800kb).
I can't really show the settings I used during the RAW conversion, but I can tell you I did a *very* neutral RAW conversion using ACR. The intention was simply to get the white balance spot on, retain as much detail as I could in the shadows and highlights (which usually means dull contrast), and make sure I converted to a 16-bit photoshop file (which seems to have a much higher dynamic range than 8-bit, so you can still pull details out of a pure white sky after the RAW conversion). If you strip the layers back to just view the background layer then you'll see it looks quite dull. This is quite deliberate to keep as much dynamic range in the shot as possible, and being 16-bit, there is still loads of colour resolution tucked away in that dull picture. I've started using this approach more and more instead of tweaking the tone cuve much in the RAW converter (ACR).

Anyway, here's a link to the file:
http://digitalkinetics.smugmug.com/misc/...xample.psd

Edit: I might just point out that although I use a Hue/Sat layer to saturate this example, I usually tweak my colours using a tone curve instead. I don't often use a Hue/Sat layer, but because of the specifics of this shot I thought it better to just concentrate the tone curves on tones and do the colour tweaks seperately.

Tone curves pwnz!