London's darker side?

[drmarkf]

I was playing around with shadows in shop windows and on an interesting bit of pavement near Oxford St last weekend. Not sure about these - what do people think?

P1040106 by drmarkf, on Flickr

P1040104 by drmarkf, on Flickr

P1040085 by drmarkf, on Flickr

P1040066 by drmarkf, on Flickr

All GM1 with 12-32mm, Capture One and various tweaks in Silver eFex Pro. I started off with them rather dark and soft, but then lit them up a bit and added some more clarity.

[PeterBirder]

Re: London's darker side?

An interesting set.

The last two work best for me.

Thanks for sharing.

[Zuiko]

Re: London's darker side?

an interesting bit of pavement

And some people think that photographers are nerds!

I really like these - especially 1 & 3. Great use of shadows and reflections.

[IanB]

Re: London's darker side?

GREAT!! someone finding something different that everyone looks at without seeing it
the 3rd works very well imo

well done

[Ricoh]

Re: London's darker side?

Mark, did you expose to create silhouettes, or did you shift exposure in PP? I'd be interested to know what distribution you had in the original histogram, taking the first as an example.

Again taking #1 as an example, it look like night time shot with a strong directional light, but I guess that's not the case. It's confusing to my memory of how light and shadows work, it looks somewhat artificial

[raymondo]

Re: London's darker side?

Hi Mark, a really nice set, of shadows,light and reflections but I cant help noticing the chewing gum spots all over the pavements, it would be good if we could photoshop them in real life, as we can in the photograph. this is not a criticism, its just an observation,thanks for posting them

[Wee man]

Re: London's darker side?

Interesting Series, With Terrry Wogan in the last one?

[drmarkf]

Re: London's darker side?

Yes, exposed just to retain detail in all but the very brightest highlights - I'm away from home today so I can't recall the exact details, but they were always going to be silhouettes. I cropped and straightened in Capture One then did most of the work in Silve eFex: mostly beginning with the High Structure Harsh preset I think, but I did move away from that a bit both globally and selectively.

Reality certainly wasn't an aim: 1, 2 and 4 felt depersonalised to me and I emphasised that to concentrate on shapes and textures, whereas 3 is a bit different. I lightened his face just a tad to make it visible, but his head and shoulders 'glow' is unenhanced.

I did do some dimming selectively of some bright areas around the peripheries of the images, to make them less distracting and I'm sure that makes them look unreal if you think about how and when they were taken (around 09:15 am). No cloning of fag packets, though!

I thought they'd be a bit marmite and I'm grateful for people's views. There's a genre of street photography like this: I might try them on my local camera club, but imagine a few traditionalists there may have a small infarct...

[Beagletorque]

Re: London's darker side?

Interesting set, slightly freek's the brain out as it looks dark but there are sun shadows! Very striking. #3 is a better balance for me.

[OM USer]

Re: London's darker side?

It works. #1 for me. What am I saying, its B&W.