Where the trolls are

[ELAY]

This kind of thing is a bit of a departure for me.

Shot under a bridge. The light toward the back is low sidelight from sun, at left, reflecting off the water. Colour on the other side is an official graffitti wall on the supports of the bridge; you can see it reflected a bit.

I was just on a walk with my eight-year old, with the D40 slung across my back, 18-55 kit mounted. We spotted the light under the bridge and I took a few shots, with him telling me when the cars were coming. His patience was short, so I had to be satisfied with this shot -- I would have liked to work a bit harder on taming some of the highlights, and maybe shooting a bit faster to better capture the car motion (surprisingly, to me anyway, at slower speeds the cars were mere ghosts -- I had to speed up to catch them). If I went back, I would bring my 55-200, to take some shots better capturing the graffitti.



I believe I shot this at f/8, 1/60, with the lens at about 22-24 mm.

I cropped top and bottom, did levels fairly aggressively for contrast, boosted saturation alot, and then added a bit of extra contrast to finish up.

Thoughts please on the idea, execution, post-processing, anything really.

EL

[porterd2nz]

Great shot. Puts me in mind of an impossible cathedral, even down to the far end which at first can be taken to be an altar and stained glass.

[xysmas]

This is an interesting shot from several perspectives.

I feel in a sense that the center, farthest wall is a bit overwhelmed by the first wall. Have you tried a portrait or sqaure crop of the center? I think it would give a bit better feeling of the lines to the back wall.

Cool spot - definatley somewhere to return too.

[stevesutt89]

great shot!
I think that if the left and right were cropped a little more it would help. I also find the blurred cars a little distracting, either if a much faster shutter speead was used so that no cars were in the frame (i'm suspecting that this may be impossible because of lighting and/or traffic conditions) or a longer exposure so that the cars were even more blurred and just lines at the bottom of the frame

[epeyton@tampabay.rr.com]

Elay,

It reminds me of the ceiling in the painting "The Last Supper". Love the shot, I would go back at different times of the day. I'm also distracted a bit by the motion of the cars, however I like how the sun light trails off out of the picture on the right. Great Shot

[ELAY]

THanks all.

When I first popped the lens cap off, I was thinking the picture would be about the structure of the bridge. You are all quite right though that the light and graffitti at the end (the "stained glass") are much more interesting ideas, and that a tighter crop suits, especially at the sizes that pictures get displayed here.

Here's the "cathedral crop" -- I have a couple of shots with no cars, I'll go back and look to see if they are sharp enough to do something with.



Thanks,

EL

[epeyton@tampabay.rr.com]

Love the edit, great shot.

[RexK_Cozumel]

the edit looks great. but I think you could crop alittle more maybe up to the curb therefore getting rid of that car which is distracting from the catherdral look. oh and clone out that light on the right side of the bridge it destroys the symmetry of the bridge.