Monthly Archives: July 2011

Stohan’s Gallery

Dramatic effects.

This was snapped in Monterey through the chain link fence keeping trespassers away from the derelict property. The bland original was much enhanced for drama:

G1, kit lens @ 17mm, 1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 320.

Here are the Develop settings in Lightroom:

A final touch of post-crop vignetting and you are done.

The Ghost Tree

Needs a bit of help.

The Ghost Tree is located on wonderful 17 Mile Drive at Pebble Beach, right at the entrance to the viewing area for the Lone Cypress, of which I wrote here.

It’s right on the edge of the Drive, surrounded with clutter. A fence here, the road there and that awful sign.

A few moments with Photoshop CS5, using Content Aware Fill and Lens Blur, plus a bit of messing with Curves to add punch to the poorly lit subject, and the result is transformed. A final touch-up with the clone stamp tool and the out of focus highlights are gone.

Here’s the after and before, in Lightroom 3:

And here’s the final thing:

Ghost Tree. Panasonic G1, kit lens @ 25mm, 1/160, f.8, ISO 320, processed in CS5.

Getting all high falutin’ about image manipulation? You like Adams‘s work? He did much more of this sort of thing in the darkroom.

This is your brain ….

…. on drugs.

G1, kit lens @ 25mm, 1/400, f/8.

Years ago there was this advertising campaign which showed a couple of uncooked eggs in a frying pan (“This is your brain”) and then the same eggs fried (“This is your brain on drugs”).

I was reminded of that when snapping this in Monterey, CA the other day.

The message of that campaign was about as successful as the one here.

All change

A new mural.

I chatted with this worker in the Mission District and he told me the mural was actually rendered using stick-on vinyl and that the store’s owner likes to change it a couple of times a year! In contrast, most murals in San Francisco’s Mission District are either painted or sprayed directly on the masonry.

G1, kit lens @18mm, 1/3200, f/5, ISO 320.

It reminds me of a snap I took on Broadway in New York 25 years ago:

Leica M3, 50mm Summicron, Kodachrome 64.