Tag: visual venturing

leannecole-block-arcade-melbourne-after

AB Friday Week 29 of the After and Before Challenge

Over at Visual Venturing it is AB Friday Week 29 and I thought I would have another go at doing an image for it.  I do images all the time, but I don’t always think to show the before and after, but sometimes it is really good to do that.  I liked what I did with this image, and I like how much it changed from the before, so I really wanted to participate this week.

The Block Arcade Closed

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The after image.  I like the silence of it, and the peek into a world that we don’t get to see very often, when things are shut, especially in an arcade.

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The before image, it looks as it usually does, well with the exception of the people.

When I went to the Block Arcade on this particular evening I was so surprised to find it with no one in it.  For about 2 or 3 minutes I was there taking these photos no one entered, it was like a dream come true for me.  So I quickly took some images.

Most didn’t work because my ISO was too low, but I just had to go for it, I knew if I stopped to muck around with settings or put my tripod up, the moment would be gone.  The only downside to the whole thing was that the shop right at the end was still open and there were people in it.  So my challenge for this image was to remove the trace of people and close the shop and try to make the arcade look like it was closed, or had been closed for some time, like it was stuck in time.

I don’t know that I quite achieved that, but I am still fairly happy with what I got.  I do need to get more textures though, ones that are more suitable for this sort of image.

Don’t forget to go to Stacy’s blog and see all the other entries for AB Friday Week 29.

I just need to remind people that you can comment on this post, and while it doesn’t look like anything happens when you do, but it does.  I get all the comments, though it can take me some time to approve and respond to them yet.  I don’t know why this blog is so weird to leave comments on.  I will have to get onto the developers and see what they can work out.

Here is a gallery, so you can see the images individually.

 

Before
After
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Visual Venturing’s AB Friday

Challenges can be great, especially for people who are starting out in photography and need help taking photos, or help finding inspiration.  I don’t do a lot of challenges, I don’t really need the help with finding inspiration, but the challenges I do like are ones that make me process images. Well I don’t really help doing that, but I figure I am doing them anyway, why shouldn’t I enter the images into challenges as well.

One of the challenges I quite like doing is the AB Friday from Visual Venturing.  You work on a image and then send the original or before photo and the end result, the after photo to Stacy, then she posts them all on her blog on Fridays, hence AfterBefore Friday.

My After photo.

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This is a photo that I took of a fountain in the city of Melbourne near Parliament House. I decided to make it monochrome because I thought the water would stand out more, which it does.  The park behind it was too distracting.  Once I turned it into black and white, and made the greens and yellows a lot darker, then the water started to be more prominent, the distractions gone.

melbourne-fountain-water-before

See what I mean, the water doesn’t stand out so much, you see it, but then look through it to the garden on the other side.

Quite a few people do this challenge and if I can, I like too, so if you want to see more entries then go and take a look at Stacy’s blog Visual Venturing.  If you want more information about the challenge then go to the AB Friday Forum, how to do the challenge and what you need to do is all there.

I will put the photos into a gallery so you see them free of the blog, better background.

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Replacing The Sky

Last week I did a before and after of the following image, and Stacy from VISUAL VENTURING wanted to know how I replaced the sky in the image. old-buildings-skyscrapers-closingin-melbourne I thought if she wanted to know then perhaps others did too, so using my new Camstasia Studio software I did a video of it for her and others.  So Stacy, I hope this helps you to work out what I did.  Of course if anyone has any questions, please ask, and if I can answer them I will.

Please consider helping me, if you have enjoyed this post or learned something new, then please consider supporting me and helping me to continue helping you by making a small donation.

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old-buildings-skyscrapers-closingin-melbourne

The Before then the New

Over on Visual Venturing Stacy has started a new series of posts where you show the original image and then the after, so people can see what you have done.  Someone asked me to do this for this image I think it was.  So here is the before image. before-building-skyscrapers-melbourne I saw this in the city a couple of weeks ago when I was doing a One on One with a client.  We went exploring old parts of the city.  I liked the juxtaposition of the old building in front of the newer skyscrapers. I found I couldn’t take my eyes off it, then I started playing with it. old-buildings-skyscrapers-closingin-melbourne This is what I ended up with.  I put in a new sky, so it wouldn’t be white and yuck.  I also played with the colours quite a bit.  You can see that I got rid of the horrible  power line cutting across the image.  I also played with the light.  I am trying to do some things that resemble some movies, I like the colours that they use in them, so I have been trying to work out how to replicate that effect  So blues and yellows.  I did desaturate it a little, but not a lot.  I also tried blurring some aspects of it.

I think that is what I was meant to do, I should have recorded what I did with a video, but didn’t quite make it.  I didn’t think I would do so much on this image.  Just goes to show, you never know.  I put this image up on Google+ and it received one of the best receptions, actually the best, I’ve ever got with an image from there.  If you haven’t checked out Google+ you should, there is some amazing work going on over there, I get so much inspiration from the images there.

Please consider helping me, if you have enjoyed this post or learned something new, then please consider supporting me and helping me to continue helping you by making a small donation.

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