Closed Carousel [Canon 10D]
September 4, 2004 Germany
(click in the image for a larger version)
Another one from the archives. This is one of my favorite images that I've made in the past few years. I may have posted this before, but if I have it's been awhile. It's part of a series that I am putting together so it's fresh in my mind again. This series of images has been in the works for quite a while but has never before been displayed as a series. I am trying to get it added to the gallery section of my new web site. The redesigned site, and this series, is still not up, but hopefully will be soon (I'll announce it here when it's available).
Everything comes together perfectly for me in this photo: the sense of a story or narrative, the mystery and ambiguity and the strong role of symbolism and metaphor. Not to mention the simple serendipity of finding this enigmatic tableau. This image has received some extensive color and tonal transformations to alter the mood of the photo. I started off by combining two different processings of a single raw file in order to control the contrast between the brightly lit tarp covering the carousel and the more normal tones in the rest of the scene. I then applied quite a lot of localized lightening, darkening and color toning to arrive at the final result. You can see the two different interpretations of the original raw file below (click in the image to see it larger). Click here to see the Photoshop layers palette and the 18 layers that comprise this image.
I took this photo while visiting family in Germany and did most of the work on it on the same trip on my laptop. The layers palette could probably stand some rearranging and some layers might be consolidated or eliminated to achieve the same effect, but this is where it stands now. The original Photoshop master file was 8-bit and not full size to conserve file size while I was traveling but I recently transferred all the layers from the 8-bit original into a larger 16-bit version in order to have a master image that had the increased tonal integrity that a high-bit file offers.
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New Newsletter!
Beginning in a week or so I will be sending out the first issue of a new email newsletter that will contain Photoshop tips and tutorials, musings on photography and the creative process, and updates on upcoming workshops, seminars and special offers.
This is a low volume mailing that will be sent out approximately every 4 to 6 weeks. For example, the tip on exactly how to do the transferring of layers from one version of an image to another, as mentioned above will be featured in one of the newsletters (not the first one, but probably the second; the tutorials in the first one are about using Photoshop Actions).The tutorials will not be in the actual email, so you don't have to worry about image-heavy mail cluttering up your bandwidth. A link will be provided where you can view them on my website.
If you would like to subscribe, there's a sign-up form near the top of the left column of this blog. Should you ever wish to unsubscribe in the future, there will be a simple link at the end of each newsletter that will allow you to do this. Your email info will never be shared or sold to nefarious spammers. I've had a world of trouble with spam myself so I am sensitive to this!
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Workshop News
I have some cool workshops coming up in Hawaii in mid April, Pacifica and Monterey, California in late April and early May, and near San Luis Obispo, California in early June. For a complete listing of my upcoming classes, click on over to the Workshops Page at my web site.
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