Alcatraz Analysis

I thought I would take this shot from Alcatraz and walk you through what I was thinking about as I composed the shot and why I processed it the way I did.

The shoot: In some respects this shot was away from the main Alcatraz “attractions” but it caught my eye because of the barbed wired on top of the fence. I felt at the time shooting through the fence would convey the sense of imprisonment. Next I had to decide how to frame the image. I carefully chose where the fence supports were placed. The vertical post was aligned along the building corner and at around 1/3 of the frame space. This seemed to be the least intrusive way to include it. The lower horizontal was placed along the lower edge of the building for the same reason. Keeping the shot a bit wide helped add to a feeling of distance and separation. The prisoners clearly felt that 1.25 mile distance from San Francisco. Keeping the shot wide also let me include the barbed wire which I felt was important to the overall context.

Post processing: This was an HDR image processed with HDR Efx Pro. I did three primary things during the processing. One, desaturated the image to make it more dreary. Two, allowed the white balance to shift a bit to the blue side – prison seems more like a cool place than a warm one. Three, went with harsh contrast which makes the image a bit more edgy.l Prison is a harsh place.

Iris Fusion

I am continuing to work on new floral fusion images; adding little differences from my original collection. I will be sharing some of those down the road. This image is just one small variant – flowers with water on them. This Iris was captured in my yard a couple weeks ago - early in the morning before the morning breezes kicked in. Other variations I am working on are white backgrounds with the image pushed to a hi-key look (somewhat over exposed and overall very bright – most pixels in the upper half of the histogram). More images will be done with only black background. Each of these variants will likely be group into small collections of their own.

Infrared Mystery House

I went on a little tour last Sunday with a few local camera club members. We were primarily scouting/reviewing areas for future shooting. Along the way, we did get to grab some images. Given it was bright midday light I decided I would use my IR camera. This particular scene struck me as a good use of IR. IR adds mystery to an already mysterious place. Who lived here? Why did they leave? When did they go? What was their life like? This was out in the middle of no where. The large sky and the house dwarfed by the large tree add to this feel of remoteness and insignificance.

Blog Image: Shot with a modified Infrared Nikon D70. Converted to B&W using Nik Software’s Silver Efx Pro during the post processing. The glow was added using Nik’s Glamour Glow filter found in Color Efx Pro.