Travels of a Simpo

[simpo two]

Wandered round a couple of quaint Suffolk villages today... Funny thing is, I don't really figure out what to do with them until I get them home and engage the PhotoShop machine. With digital I'm discovering that often the best shot needs a bit of encouragement to emerge... (apologies for the filesize mangling)

[parrot of doom]

The bridge shot is superb, nice perspective, was the sun low in the sky?

[dcw@pr]

Very nice. Here's my interpretation of the last one,

[_dobbo_]

I like the black and whites!

It's amazing that you can make a good photo into a great one with a bit of messing about. However I still find that a crap photo is a crap photo no matter what you do!

Can you tell me, did you achieve the effect by increasing contrast and slightly dropping brightness? Or is there another trick that I don't know about?

[Marki]

What is a simpo any road upp

[wolves_wanderer]

Love the Lady Street shot. Am I imagining or is there a slight yellow/brown tinge to it. If there is, it looks proper bo, if not please excuse the deluded ramblings of a madman. Love the combination of textures in that pic though

Edited to correct liquid-lunch induced spelling errors

>> Edited by wolves_wanderer on Friday 22 October 16:02

[_dobbo_]

INterestingly, I've got a photo I took in Central Park which is almost the negative of this one:



Here it is - quality is very low, cos I used a low quality web version before I started;

[simpo two]

Erk - too many questions!! I will do my best:

Parrot of Doom (cool name BTW): No, the sun wasn't low in the sky but the sky was 'hotter' than the rest. Hence when I cranked the contrast up, the sky burnt out. Technically incorrect but in this case I can live with it.

dcw@pr: I increased saturation on this one but I see you were more ruthless!

Dobbo: B&W is a great but subtle thing - but I could never do it until I went digital. Your guess is spot on, but you can also play with channel mixer to emphasise certain colours. That's how I got the sky to go black - it was entirely unplanned when I took the shot.

Marki: A Simpo is... well, it's all on the profile.

Wolves w: Your eyes are still working through the beer goggles - it's actually a colour shot, no clever stuff at all!

The only shot that demanded other than 'P' was the one no-one mentioned: the waving grass over the tombstone - 1/50th at f22 to get the grass blurred. Perhaps this is where colour might have been better - or spot - unfortunately due to the blur that would take some doing.

Thanks for the comments folks and I hope you enjoyed a car-free post

[V6GTO]

Simpo,
I love that moving grass! Martin.

[bacchus180]

so your classic winibago doesn't count...LOL, incidently I prefer your version, the renewed one looks oversharp and oversat... but then working with such a small image can quite often do this...

You mention only not using P on one picture.... you should do it more often.....you got good results, also it will make you think more and then make minor changes in camera more. remember PS is a wonderful tool but it does just rip photos apart if overdone.

[dcw@pr]

simpo two said:

dcw@pr: I increased saturation on this one but I see you were more ruthless!

Actually it has saturation -50 in Photoshop! But the contrast in boosted a lot. My screen here is quite low contrast compared to an average one, just because it is more optimized for getting prints out of it - I looked at the photo on a "normal" screen and the effect is probably a bit OTT on there...