What Would You Do (#14)

[Nicole]

Back again for another week of What Would You Do?

I'm putting out a call for photos if people want the thread to continue (I've only got one more after this week). So, if you want your photo to be the subject of one of these threads, then send me a PM with a link to the medium and large size of the photo.

Now, on to this week's photo. It comes from Winterminute :) and the question is, how do you create a focal point in a very busy scene?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/winterminute/842305625/" title="Untitled (by Winterminute)"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/1214/842305625_bb15d168fa.jpg" title="Untitled (by Winterminute)" alt="Untitled (by Winterminute)" width="500" height="375" /></a>

Available larger (http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1214/842305625_bb15d168fa_b_d.jpg)

Last week was great, and there were some really creative entries, so I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone would do with this picture. So have at it, and don't forget to post it back up along with what you did so that we can all learn from you. :D

[Nicole]

I actually really wanted to do something with this one because it reminded me of a photoshop tutorial that I'd read a while back... It was one on how to make your photo look like a movie still. So, what I came up with was this:

http://static.flickr.com/1061/1190055071_0f137cb441.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolesphotos/1190055071/)
View larger (http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1061/1190055071_79d7722e30_o.jpg)

I'll just post the link to the tutorial (http://ebin.wordpress.com/2007/03/21/how-to-turn-your-photo-into-movie-like-effect-using-photoshop/) that I used because I didn't make many changes to the steps that they show there. The only things I changed were that I added less noise, and I did a little bit of work in the sky because it looked very strange after one of the steps. I just liked how doing this put the focus more on a single point.

[shazzt]

Here is my humble attempt - again nothing fancy:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shazzt/1190090353/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1024/1190090353_03c64e05c2.jpg" width="400" height="500" alt="postprocessstreet copy" /></a>
- Cropped the photo to portrait orientation to simplify the image
- Defogged it with the Unsharp filter
- Applied a high pass sharpen
- Added a slight vignette around the outside to contain the image more

[matthewchj]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1269/1191096096_07192d97f4.jpg

Cropped it a bit, general tweaking with Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation and Levels. Despeckled it, applied Radial Blur to draw attention to the taxi, and then Unsharp Mask.

[shazzt]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1269/1191096096_07192d97f4.jpg

Cropped it a bit, general tweaking with Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation and Levels. Despeckled it, applied Radial Blur to draw attention to the taxi, and then Unsharp Mask.

That is cool - looks like a different photo!

[winterminute]

I'm always amazed how much can be done in the post-production step. Nicole, I wanted to look at large image but I don't have rights (and I'm a contact of yours), did you mark it public?

Thanks to everyone so far. As I said to Nicole, I love this image because it captures so much of the atmosphere of this street in Bangkok and really goes a long way to showing how it feels to be there, but to the average viewer it just looks busy and lack focus.

I can't wait to see more :)

[Nicole]

Nicole, I wanted to look at large image but I don't have rights

Should be fixed now, forgot to just link to the static jpg :p Sorry about that! (extra link to the picture (http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1061/1190055071_79d7722e30_o.jpg) so you don't have to scroll back up)

[jiminyClickit]

Looking for a hook, a small story as old as civilization appeared in the lower right quadrant. Girl-watching guys in a truck seemed worth highlighting with a dark mask layer over cropped copy of original. Moved taxi over to give a line-of-sight. Moved shopper over. Erasing parts of mask gives a suggestion of scattered sunlight, helping to direct attention to truck occupants and woman tourist. Some saturation, contrast just to liven it.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/47146451@N00/1195741523/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1135/1195741523_5ab5c287d3.jpg" width="500" height="382" alt="The Club" /></a>

[xxpinballxx]

Great work Jiminy. The changes you made really improve the shot and still the shot looks straight from the camera. I like it. I can't think of anything to do with this one....trying to focus on one of the many signs or something....just to make it a bit different.

[Sime™]

Went all color selective... and grey scaled out the rest, contrasted the grey and color seperately.

JC - amazing cloning skills!... great job.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/visper/1197654830/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1212/1197654830_e1b8410052.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="What would you do?" /></a>

[hpebley3]

For some reason, I immediately thought of something like this:
<a href="http://www.zooomr.com/photos/hpebley3/3013221/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.zooomr.com/images/3013221_755b76fd68.jpg" width="500" height="384" alt="WWYD 14" /></a>

[hpebley3]

Girl-watching guys in a truck seemed worth highlighting with a dark mask layer over cropped copy of original. Moved taxi over to give a line-of-sight. Moved shopper over.

Very nice cloning!

[Nicole]

For some reason, I immediately thought of something like this:


Makes me think of the music video for A-Ha's "Take on Me" :)

[winterminute]

hpebley3 >> How did you achive that effect?

[peeperita]

my mental blocked stab

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/10338505@N05/1198098785/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1283/1198098785_8128e6383a.jpg" width="500" height="394" alt="842305625_bb15d168fa_b" /></a>

i kept telling myself....'better luck next time, peeper"

peeper

[jiminyClickit]

peeperita,

Getting unblocked means doing something, anything. You made the original better; that's all anyone would ask. This is #14, lots of opportunities coming up.

[Nicole]

my mental blocked stab

i kept telling myself....'better luck next time, peeper"


Welcome to the club :rolleyes: Except my mental block extends to my photography at the moment too, so I'm taking the opportunity to play with post-processing. My goal is to take at least 3 sets of photos per week and upload at least 1 per set. So we'll see how I do, I'm hoping it gets me past my mental block.

This is #14, lots of opportunities coming up.

Only if people send me links to photos to put up in future threads (please, come on, everyone who enjoys this thread should want to put a picture in for future threads, right? :p ... that was my subtle plea for images)

[peeperita]

Only if people send me links to photos to put up in future threads (please, come on, everyone who enjoys this thread should want to put a picture in for future threads, right? :p ... that was my subtle plea for images)


careful what you ask for....i have like a bazillion imperfect shots...

and thanks for a fun project thread.....

peeper

[oriolhdz]

What you think? Hope you enjoy it! XD


<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/oriolhdz/1200403924/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1212/1200403924_22d9d214af.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="DPS A 14" /></a>

[hpebley3]

hpebley3 >> How did you achieve that effect?

I loaded the original as the base background and did a bit of cropping.

Then I duplicated it into three layers.

On the layer closest to the bottom, I created an elliptical selection, with a large feather, centered on where I wanted the focal point and then deleted the selection. This left a smallish, feathered hole to the background.

I then did the same thing on the next two upper layers, each time making the center of the ellipse about the size of the outside of the feathering on the layer below it. This gave me a fairly smooth transition, layer to layer with a large hole on the top layer and a small hole on the bottom one.

Finally on each of the layers I applied a "Black pencil" artistic effect. On the top-most layer I applied it with 100% opacity and on the next two down I used about 66% and 33%, letting more and more of the color through and less of the pencil lines. The background showed through the smallest hole with no effect.

Make sense? Let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers.

[xxpinballxx]

Well I missed last weeks due to lack of motivation. This week wasn't much better but I got something, well lets say different?
I took the sky and the foreground and used a cutout artistic filter.
Then I selected certain parts to highlight. I felt the signs were the focus for me.
Then I upped the contrast on them and took the contrast and sat down on the cutout filtered parts.
Finally i gave it a radial blur on zoom set to a value of 45 at best.
http://xxpinballxx.zoints.com/image/68755-city

[jiminyClickit]

hpebley3,

Thanks. I'm practicing tonight to see if I can apply your steps to my program. That's a good look.

[PollyK]

Used Quick mask to place the 2 vehicles on seperate layers then added a colour overlayer to the background copy using the colour burn mode
<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb242/Pateshia/untitled.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a>
hope this works putting the photo in here:confused:

[EllaBites]

I actually really wanted to do something with this one because it reminded me of a photoshop tutorial that I'd read a while back... It was one on how to make your photo look like a movie still. So, what I came up with was this:


I'll just post the link to the tutorial (http://ebin.wordpress.com/2007/03/21/how-to-turn-your-photo-into-movie-like-effect-using-photoshop/) that I used because I didn't make many changes to the steps that they show there. The only things I changed were that I added less noise, and I did a little bit of work in the sky because it looked very strange after one of the steps. I just liked how doing this put the focus more on a single point.


Fabulous and thank you for the link.

[winterminute]

Going off of Nicole's vibe, I came up with the following:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1152/1326562939_a06511dd91.jpg

[Teewinot]

Let me just start by saying....WOW! The edits in this week's WWYD are super cool! I can't even come close to creating one as worthy as these, but I wanted to at least join in the fun. So here's my 2-minute version:

GOAL:
-Make it look gritty and raw

What I did (in Paint Shop Pro 8):
-Desaturated and colorized mild sepia
-Adjusted histogram midtones (-20)
-Added noise
-Slight crop off the left to remove some really black distracting objects

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/7845858@N05/1337630523/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1031/1337630523_ab8d367419.jpg" width="500" height="401" alt="What you would do #14" /></a>